so hello everybody welcome to new
traders improve podcast today we have a
very special episode
and we are gonna end uh interview and
talk to paul
paul is a retail trader he's not one of
those educators and we thought we do
we i want to do this for quite a while
to bring a different perspective
to talk to other traders who have
different
problem struggles maybe a different path
because i think this is going to be
really valuable so stay until the end i
have a few
questions that i'm really really excited
to to dig in so hello paul thank you for
making the time
hi guys good morning good morning to you
hello morris as well
hi so just to give people a little bit
of context
where are you currently in your in your
trading in your stage as a trader how
long have you been trading and
where do you see yourself right now i've
been trading longer than i can remember
um certainly at least 20 years
okay and i started off being being quite
successful
and then had a sort of spectacular loss
and um that was trading stocks and
options
and i learned a lot from that exercise
so since then
i've realized the stock market is very
manipulated
so um i'd much prefer forex which is so
large it's
rather hard to manipulate so since then
i've been trading
forex off and on um
right now i've revisited it since
joining
the master class which has been really
really helpful i've studied pretty much
every trading methodology you like over
the years
i've had some success but never
uh sufficient consistency to be able to
make it my main
my main source of income so i think i
like you guys no nonsense approach it's
very methodical it's very disciplined
it's actually realistic unlike most of
the stuff on the web
so i'm really enjoying that cool that's
great yeah and thank you
um yeah that's very interesting probably
was it around the 2000
area when you had your first experience
how did you guess
yeah i had one particularly good year at
work where i made a very large bonus so
i put it in a pot
and started investing in i've been
working a systems engineer by background
so i work in the high tech industry
i thought i knew all about high-tech
stocks no technical analysis at all at
that time i knew just i thought i was
trading on fundamentals
and i didn't realize that um
you know a rising market raises all
ships so
i thought i was doing great i just kept
market just kept going up i was trading
in
big high-tech stocks like you know
microsoft amazon vodafone
all you know funny things like qualcomm
and i thought hey this is great and i
was trading on 50 margin
then i thought no this is this is too
difficult i think i'll just
let's trade in options instead so i find
you could get like a
10 times leverage with options the only
slight problem being that if
if it didn't get to the appropriate
price by the strike time strike time
came around
your options were absolutely nothing
unlike stocks it didn't just go down in
value it went down value to zero
so um in the end i got caught in the
tech stock crash
which was i think around was about april
in 2000
the nasdaq was heading for 5000 except
we didn't quite make it
so that was a very salutary lesson
right yeah that was by um
in the year 2000 i was just around 15 16
but this was actually my
first introduction to to the stock to
the world of stock
stocks um as well and i got hooked
immediately um
luckily back then everybody was in into
stocks in germany as well even though
you i think we're more conservative in
general when it comes to investing in
stocks
i think such an early success experience
of success is really helpful to just
stick with it because
once you have seen that it's possible
then um
you are more likely to stick with it i
think do you do you see any similarities
between
back then and the world today or or is
there anything
similar i always wonder it's it in
it's constructs i have some friends at
work who um who are getting into stock
trading and i'm trying to
tell them that you know it is quite a
manipulative market
uh so i think that that aspect is still
there
um in that sense i much prefer forex i
think the advent of algorithmic trading
has meant that the market can be a lot
more volatile
so if you're trading on the shorter time
frames it's
somewhere between difficult and
impossible to make money on a reliable
basis
so zooming out a bit to the longer time
frames and taking more of a
swing trading approach i think works
more effectively
okay so can you tell us a bit more about
your spectacular loss
how did that happen sure um
yeah it was it's incredible to think of
those days these are the days where you
could buy
microsoft for i think like maybe say 100
per stock in january and then by
the end of march it could be 140 150 it
could be 200 and then split into two
it just the growth rate was incredible
so it's kind of seduced by the growth
rate
and um like greedy i guess i thought
okay let's
let's trade let's do with options let's
not just buy some options let's
trade the options too so i got into
traded options
which is a very fun market but it's very
hairy because it just
falls off a cliff at the end of the
period
so if you for example if you could buy
say for example you could instead of
buying microsoft stock at a hundred
dollars a pop
you could buy an option in january for
ten dollars
um at the strike price of say a hundred
and if it went up to let's say 150
within three months
you had increased your investment by 400
percent
but if it didn't make it happen to be
down at that particular point
um your options were absolutely nothing
so unlike stocks say the stock had gone
down to 99 dollars you would have lost a
dollar
the stock was down to 99 you lose
everything if you're trading on options
so you were basically over leveraged
trading options
i'm sorry so you're basically over
leveraged in options
and then over leveraged to death yeah it
was incredible
yeah it was just i got i guess i got
greedy and used
far too much leverage which is funny
because when i started trading on
um trading and forex
the standard sort of margin was 100 to
one
and a number of people like fx solutions
were offering 400 to one
so you could create 10 000 a lot by
putting down 25 bucks
you know just it's just it's just
madness which is fantastic when it's
going up
unfortunately exactly the same leverage
applies going downwards which is not
good
right yeah so you know i i've learned a
lot of lessons hard way but uh
i don't regret any of it but it was it
was fun at the time
yeah i want to get into the to the
lessons a bit but
right now i see many similarities and
you probably all
many people ask me how do you get
involved in stocks right now because
it's at the all-time high and everything
is going so great
and i see many i always try to caution
them as you said um
in a in a storm even turkeys can fly and
it's a
it's a it's really you hear all those
stories with those robin hood traders
and all of those guys it's really
it's a good time to get into well it's
an it's a it's a market that makes it
interesting for new traders but i think
it's very dangerous as well
if you don't have the the the position
or the risk management um principles in
place
did you how did you get to well when
when did you get to position sizing or
is that because i guess
after a big loss then you didn't have
any real position sizing in place
and how did you how did you get there
well i didn't trade again for a while i
got sort of badly burned at that point
and then i started getting to forex and
my wife and i um
actually went to vancouver and did some
training with the company which is then
called fx trainer
set up by you know they all have gurus
don't they set up by this hungarian guru
um to learn how to trade forex i look
back at what we're doing then it's
laughable we're trading like uh the five
minute was the long term
chart and the one minute was
just i mean it seems madness and they
did they said yeah uh trade maybe not
more than five or ten percent of your
capital any given time
and you don't have to lose very often to
lose all your capital doing it that way
so i i learned some bad habits i guess
but um
i don't regret i don't blame anyone else
but myself it's my own stupidity and
gullibility to do that so i learned a
lot from that
right what do you think was
because i many people always ask me what
do you what you should focus on in the
early beginnings and
what do you think is the what's the
biggest waste of time that
um you engage in because there's so much
there's just so much information out
there unfortunately also so much
misinformation
what do you think because for me i think
um the biggest problem was that
i've joined a trading community and they
were
they were really against indicators for
example and
in my mind it was then always like
indicators are bad indicators of that
and
i came over the years to realize that
they are actually quite good if you know
how to use them but it just cost me
probably
um a lot of time a lot of energy a lot
of frustrations that wasn't necessary
is there anything that really stands out
like a big waste during your first years
or something that couple couple things i
guess one one is short-term trading
trading on the short-term charts and
unfortunately from a psychological point
of view one can get seduced into the
excitement of short-term trading and
making quick profits very quickly also
making losses very quickly
um and so one gets into a sort of
psychological cycle which is not healthy
from a trading point of view so working
on longer-term charts what's much more
effectively i believe
that's that's one of them one of the
main messages that came out of that
and also system hopping
there was always you know something have
some problems with one particular
trading methodology
okay just dump it for the moment let's
try not this one looks good let's try
this one
and so on and so on uh whereas in
reality much much more sensible to
find a a decent trading methodology
focus on it when it doesn't work work
out why it doesn't work
and i think a lot of this comes back to
well you guys background
journaling wants trades um being
methodical about how one approaches it
recording what one's doing reviewing it
analyzing it
retroactively and so on to see what
works and what doesn't work
so come your approach i think suits me
much more effectively
that's good here yeah the one thing i
just i cannot underline it
um enough you said that if you lose
you just figure out why and most traders
never get to this place they just think
that trading system is flawed
um and i think this is like yeah this is
one of those biggest mindset shifts that
you can have in trading once you get
away from the system hopping
uh mindset um and you you really start
to look at
why aren't things working and i think
today
many people are just there in obviously
for the quick for the quick money and
then
um obviously all the the whole approach
is geared towards short term
gratification and not the long term long
term game
um so i guess you are journaling your
traits as well
i'm not generally as effectively as i
should be doing i'm doing a lot of sort
of paper basis at the moment but i i
need to buy edgework and really get into
that
because i think that that will help more
effectively i'm trying to working with
the master class
trying to net down to the methodology
that i'm going to use most
and i'm turning to use the swing trading
approach that you take ralph
but i find that um maurice the daily
bias
angle to that has been really really
helpful
um in terms of setting it in context for
example the uh
aussie cad went into last night making
some money on this morning
um that was a nice little setup set up
nicely on the on the daily
weekly supported that and then you go
back in it's like an inverse head and
shoulders thing
and it looked like a very nice inventory
last night that's going quite
a moment i have this one just right now
in front of me
um but um yeah the the paper
journal i think it's a it's really
really a great start in the beginning
it's definitely
much much better than nothing and if you
have a paper journal that's how i
started as well it's it's really
because in the end it's all about first
i think about raising awareness
just getting a little bit into the
practice that you need to to do certain
things and then
over time you can um you can you can
take it from there but
yeah i don't think in the beginning if
you feel many traders feel overwhelmed
with edgemonk and i can totally
understand that
but you need to start journaling somehow
a paper journal is good
just a piece of paper or just collecting
screenshots i think is
is also a good approach no screen
definitely it helps you a lot with
pattern recognition and
knowing when you took a weird entry when
you took a great entry
so yeah screenshots was a big game
changer for me
yeah so say for example you there are
let's say five key points you want to
check
uh for a reversal setup just mark them
all down tick them off
and if you find that you know cases
where four or five out of five were
all those trades worked well and when it
was three or less
they tended to fail there's a pretty
clear message there isn't there
yeah pretty much yeah there's a lot of
um
as the saying goes the common sense is
not so common anymore these days there's
a lot of things i think that
they're just really they should be
really obvious like
you just record your trades you don't
expect to become a millionaire next week
um you are consistent and you just
figure out why things aren't working and
you slowly get better
i think those are it's you don't have to
make it too complicated but
um obviously that's that's a whole
different story yeah you mentioned a
checklist also in the
in the email that you sent to me um is
it is what is on the checklist because i
get a lot of questions from people who
who like those specifics those technical
things that it just can apply
is it like a trading checklist for get
into getting into trades or
well for for example for reversal
patterns looking at the various aspects
of it
is it an established pattern um is it
less than
what 25 of the previous run down or run
up as the case may be
and these sort of aspects is there
separation between the two points that
make the
the top line of the of the pattern and
so on stuff that it's
it's easy to sort of fool yourself about
if you don't look at it methodically
right so it's it's pretty simple stuff
really um
but many people don't do it i think
there's so much
disinformation out there on the internet
that uh
you need to be more focused one thing i
have done in the past is i've traded in
online trading rooms with other traders
say trading a certain methodology
which in some ways is really good
because you're swapping ideas but other
ways
it's bad in the sense that it also
reinforces bad
ideas so i think the fact that you guys
have some sort of control over the
the approach and you have a standard uh
set of documentation of what it is a set
of
educational videos and so on that is
very very helpful
right if you want results you need to be
consistent in the first place i guess
that's what also a lot of people simply
don't get when they
system up and so on because every time
you system up you start from zero again
and if you have like a base of a
strategy
and you can build up on that but you're
consistent all the time
and everyone else in the community is
trading the same way
that really goes a long way for sure
yeah
i think one thing that helps is to
totally decouple yourself from the idea
of making money forget about making
money to begin with
to learn learn your craft i think you
know van tharp in one of his books he
talks about the um
you know malcolm gladwell book outliers
where he talks about this magic ten
thousand hour idea
so to achieve um
a decent capability in any field of
endeavor be it a you know
brain surgeon engineer whatever you need
to take
uh pop musician you need to do your ten
thousand hours a hard graph to actually
learn your craft
so it's perhaps not ten thousand hours
in the case of trading but there's a
certain amount of time it takes
to to get to the point where you're in
charge of it
and that is the process i think
but the point of course you need to
forget about making money right away and
you need to play the long game but
this is also i think it's obviously it's
very hard to do that because
i most people are in it for the money
and that's the only driver for them
so what is there something that helped
you to get into this mindset where
you're not
obsessing about the money all the time
yes because i
it's if you let go of it it comes to you
which is a bit
sort of paradoxical but uh if you let go
of that as a motivation
and just do your job effectively
then hey you start making money like
yeah this last night for example when i
did did the markup
and saw an opportunity on the yoshi cat
it was very clear
when in i'd never normally go in at nine
o'clock at night that seems like crazy
when the market's not doing very much
but
it seemed like such a good setup and
it's going really well that's
absolutely classic based on the sort of
stuff that you teach
so hey by the way you will make a lot of
money
once you actually do it effectively but
don't
get so focused on that that it excludes
the discipline
i was talking to a good friend of mine
my fund manager
and i was asking him like how do you do
that like when when one trade is worth
like five ten million bucks or so and he
said
"one R is one R". that was his answer
i was expecting something really
elaborate and uh yeah please give me a
wisdom he said one R is one R,
what do you want
sure i think if you if you look at you
know work on the simple rule you're
looking for
reward to risk of maybe three to one or
better
and then even if you win only say 50 of
your trades 50
win rate you're actually making good
money
and just if if you're not getting a good
reward to restoration on the trade
just let it be wait for the next one
right
yeah it comes back to the to the
consistency most traders will never get
or will never have those statistics that
they can actually back back it up what
win rate they have
and what reward risk ratio their trades
are because it's always
a mess and it's always all over the
place so yeah
it always comes back to to consistency
in my
in my in my mind i was trying to make it
i was trying to make a video in the
morning i scrapped it two times but it
was exactly the same topic it's just
consistency is really what it's what
it's all about
i i traded divergences for years and
only divergences was super boring
but after you've taken like a few dozens
of the same exact traits you will pick
up little nuances here and there
um what happens before a breakout is
there something that may increase the
chances of finding a successful breakout
and you will only find those things by
applying or by doing something
for many many uh weeks months always the
same
approach without a lot of deviation this
is really it's boring but it's
it's the it's the only in my opinion
it's
one of the only ways to get there
one of the biggest differences about you
guys approach which i really like
is that i'm i'm used to trading say you
know i used to trade for example the
cable time dollar pound dolce con
pan kiwi because they were they moved
quite well got a decent average trading
range every day
um however this idea that okay
the world is your oyster you can trade
any pair you like but just look where
the setups are good if setup's not good
leave it be so that it's it's actually
more
time consuming to begin with but once
you've narrowed it down to those
which do have acceptable patterns then
you're greatly increasing the
probability of
having successful twitter aides so
that's been a bit of a revelation to me
it seems obvious looking at it now
but um that has been quite a liberating
factor from my point of view in my
trading
and i really like that that's good but i
think this is also
um due to a change in the market
dynamics when i started out which is
like
40 yeah 15 14 years ago it would act
more or less active forex
um back then you could trade on i knew
traders who would only trading the cable
or only euros with frank because
they were moving very very nicely and
these days i think the markets
move very differently there's a lot of
more correlation as well so i think
things have changed um not necessarily
to the worth
to the worse i think change things will
always change but
yeah you need to uh you need to in my
opinion follow more
forex pairs so that you can just be more
selective and that's the one thing that
i'm always jealous of the of the stock
the stock guys because they
they can choose between thousands and
thousands of of
options and or stocks in this case um
and you can be very very very selective
whereas in forex you only have so many
forex pairs i guess
so this is uh yeah um i want to ask you
since
i saw that you are i think you are
self-employed as well right
i'm not self-employed no i work for a
company um
i work for company which is the one of
the world market leaders in automated
warehousing technology
so i spend my days looking after robots
which is quite funny so i sit in front
of this big array like trading screens
six trading screens
six screens um looking after these
little robots all the time so that's
quite
they don't mess up
and you think that so you have more like
an
i.t engineering background i guess
yeah i have a systems engineering
background i used to look after all the
operating system software for the
world's largest oil company in saudi
arabia for
five years that was my first sort of big
break and then i worked
internationally pretty much all over the
world since then so i really love
working with different
languages and cultures and i found that
very stimulating
that's cool um do you think you're in
because i've seen
in our master class we have seen many
many people from all different
jobs and whatever and do you think your
engineering background has
helped you in a way because i've seen
engineers that are very very methodical
sometimes too methodical but it can be i
guess it can be
can be it have pros and cons i guess
i think the left brain side helps the
often the people who become engineers
they're not necessarily so good on the
right brain in terms of the pattern
recognition side of things
and strangely enough it's quite funny
training with for example my wife my
daughter trade
um they don't trade in the same sort of
methodical way i do but they seem to be
quite successful and they have a
i don't know if it's a more effective
pattern recognition
but they they can see patterns more
effectively they can recognize
patterns as they happen where i can i
have to use engage my left brain to do
that
so okay okay what are the
characteristics tick tick tick okay well
yeah that's right
so which is a kind of a left brain as
opposed to right brain just
immediate visual recognition right yeah
the problem with the um
with the uncertainty in trading because
in systems engineering i guess you
always have the truth 100
and in trading you never get that is
that a problem for you psychologically
or
it's it's something you have to you have
to get into
you you have to accept that you are
you're
embarking on a discipline where let's
say let's say you're going to lose half
the time
and that seems madness why would i want
to do something where i'm going to be
wrong
at the time right because when i'm right
i'm three times
more profitable than what i lose so on
balance so
it's kind of something it's the maturing
process i guess you have to get
get into and that that's can be
difficult for somebody who's more left
brain oriented but um
i think i'm into it now mm-hmm good
but then i guess it makes total sense i
convinced myself that's how it works
sorry i guess then it makes total sense
to
have to have the checklist if you know
that this is maybe one of your potential
weaknesses
that you implement something like this
in your trading and i i really love to
hear this because i always encourage
the people and our students and other
traders to just
to just look at themselves always people
always try to
to get like this template you just
follow this step by step and at the end
you will have the exact outcome but this
is not how it works and trading there's
a lot of uncertainties as maurice said
so yeah you really need to get to know
yourself and i think this is one of the
beauties of trading
that um you have to just get to know
yourself and there are
obviously nice things that you will find
out about yourself there are other
things that are not so nice but
you need to be open-minded and then yeah
work with the things that you can do
well and
improve the things that are not going so
well yes you have to you have to come to
terms
with in exactitude which for an engineer
is a difficult thing to do
but you that's where things like the
daily bias approach is really helpful
because
you get a you get a steer for where
you're heading from the very beginning
and then you drill down into the more
detailed analysis
and it gives it a context right
yeah the daily bias video um i've
learned so much
since we started the master class i've
uh i really i've never
um i've never understood how to do a
multi-time frame analysis it never made
sense to me
but ever since i listened to moritz um
tomorrow's
webinars and the videos it made total
sense and it's um
it's really interesting the daily bias
it's really cool i think it's a it's a
good one
i think whenever you add another
parameter into the into the trading
decision making process
it looks like you're making it more
complicated but i think the daily bias
is not that it actually
makes it easier because it helps you
focus your energies in the right place
and then you can do more detailed
analysis only on those situations which
fit well
yeah yeah i like it when you're on the
daily chart and you know exactly okay
i'm only looking for longs right now
that makes it
on the lower time frames it makes it so
much easier than
flipping through the time frames all the
time and trying to hunt something
yeah that's a it's a it's a good way to
add new rules
you have to be careful too to add new
rules to your to your trading system
yeah i mean adding complexity not always
makes things better
often it makes it worse but in this case
definitely like i was always wondering
about stock traders
day traders because they say you have to
learn the short side or the long side
first
don't learn both at the same time what
in forex we trade long short all the
time what's the difference
but they do it like that right they have
people that only go short
and people that only go long you rarely
see someone who does both
it's quite interesting yeah another
little training exercise i've seen is um
they did a little program on tv some
years ago here where they took
six newbies and just gave them trading
trading training and they said right
you're in the market all the time so
you're either long or you're short but
you're one or the other
using demo accounts obviously and that
was quite an interesting exercise
okay not recommended for live work but
uh it's a good training exercise
was it um i know i know the the series i
think uh i'm blanking on the name but
yeah
i saw it as well is it with it um one of
those famous educators now
um yeah but yeah
i think it was on the bbc right yeah
that's right yeah that's right yeah
there's one thing that i'm really
curious since i'm
i'm now in my mid 30s and uh many people
approached me that are older than me and
they they asked me so is it too late for
me to get into trading and from my point
of view obviously
even if it takes like 10 15 20 years i'm
still
i'm still not too old to still enjoy the
the benefits of trading
but when when people come to me and
they're in their 50s and they ask me the
same question i'm sometimes blanking on
or to say obviously if you're in your
50s it's still
worth it if it takes 15 years you're 65
it's a great challenge but
it's a very very different perspective
since you are a little bit much
more mature than than we are what is
your
what is what would your advice for a 50
year old new trader be
pretty much exactly the same as for
anyone else i think they bring a lot of
very useful life experience and maturity
so hopefully they will um avoid some of
the
silly newbie mistakes that we would
otherwise make when we're younger
i don't see the age as any i think it's
actually part of anything
rather a positive in terms of life
experience and maturity
the ability to accept perhaps the
discipline that you need to be more
effective
um right yeah i think financially i
think if you
set up when you're setting up
necessarily an attractive view of how
long it's going to take to become a
trader
but to me the reality is that if you
follow those disciplines you will
actually become a very effective trader
possibly in even in the short term
if you follow those disciplines as long
as you don't
expect to make mega bucks every week
no i agree it's like older people
sometimes they have a lot of ego and
sometimes they don't have
any ego at all that's what i observed so
some people they really don't want to
learn from us
because we are younger than them but
some people they are so humble
in their older or more advanced years
that they say
okay i'm gonna do exactly what you tell
us and they are actually quite great
students so
yeah yeah well it's it's a tourism isn't
it the the
the more you learn the more you realize
you don't know
so it's you know learn from the people
who have the expertise and experience
why not
yeah of course right yeah the eagle just
ego and trading just gets in the way if
you if you've got too much of an ego
probably don't bother starting because
it's
you're going to have trouble problems
yep
yeah i think that's true with everything
in life the ego if it's too big it
always gets in the way
yeah this is one of those things that
i've been putting all my focus on
over the past two or three years working
on those
mindset ego related things it's really
fascinating to see
how it influences our decision making
and how we interact with other people
um what not even interact but how we try
to display ourselves to the world and
um the the wrong
decisions that we then take uh and in
trading it's very very apparent you see
it right away
uh people with big egos they they
usually don't stay around for too long
yeah and they become very loud on
twitter
and as you've discussed before posting
potential trade setups and so on
why are you doing that you're doing it
because you're trying to educate people
are you doing it because look at me i'm
clever
if it's the latter reason that's not
good and there are many people educate
that's fine
right and there many people many
problems associate with that
uh because many people then try to
defend their traits or defend their
positions and
then it's a whole different problem and
this is also because you mentioned it
a few times i think to me via email as
well that
you would like to see more of an open
discussion forum in
for our students and um we
we did we do have it actually um it's
currently limited
the enrollment is closed um because we
found that
um it has pros and cons obviously and it
has many many cons for new traders
and it has many cons for if there are
traders from a beginning trader an
experienced trader
and often the responsibility is
the personal responsibility is not being
taken anymore by the people
when you see that somebody who has been
who's been there for maybe a year or two
is posting a trade and uh you are taking
it as well and then it doesn't work out
and then you can always blame somebody
else
so it's a it's a very very fine line how
to how to structure this
this education it's a it's a very
delicate i understand that it's nice to
exchange
uh but we want to
it's uh we want to approach it from the
right way we always want to try to offer
the best
options for our students and i think we
sometimes feel that this is not the best
approach
maybe now we are doing those weekly
webinars which are a way to at least
exchange a little bit but it's a
and this is for everybody out there if
you see that you're engaging with a
group of traders
um really watch how you how you engage
and
how do you you see them as signals and
do you
avoid taking responsibility then and
it's a it's a very very fine it's a very
fine light
yeah and i think i think that's
absolutely right i've been completely
with that
um i spent a lot of time like everyone
has on forex factoring the like and
these forums can become horribly
horribly toxic
they usually get taken over by a bunch
of trolls of one type or another
and it becomes a really negative
experience and
you know the more experienced person
everyone tends to follow them and maybe
not take responsibility so
i think in the sense that you guys are
controlling you you two
as the leaders if you will of the
disciplines
and people are following those and there
is some consistency there i think that
is that is
a very good thing right it was actually
quite interesting for me even
in the beginning when we started
teaching because
i had i mean i had a written trading
plan but not
one thousand percent details and then
suddenly people
post me their setups and i was like oh i
didn't see this in my scanning process
would i actually take this what the fuck
is this
and then i was like trying to dig deeper
and then i even i myself i got doubts
about
some setups and also some people posted
really weird setups that worked out and
then i started getting doubts in my own
training plan and i had to go much more
into detail in my own trading plan and
so i could also
articulate it more better for our
students
so i think if you are a new trader
and you go into a forum like forex
factory for example and you don't know
who is good and who is not
right but everyone is acting like an
expert all the time
so it really takes a lot of time to weed
out
the people that have no clue and only
their ego is talking like oh i took this
trade on euro dollar
for five thousand dollars they don't
show you their 100 losing trades before
that
so it's really hard even for me as a
as a experienced trader it was quite
interesting to be part of a community
uh where people posted trades that
didn't really align with my rules but
they kind of did
i think the biggest learning opportunity
because i don't think you have to
necessarily avoid those places
but what i find really interesting these
days is um
you watch you watch yourself you watch
how you how you react
um to certain things when you i find is
really really
fascinating because you get to know
yourself on a very deep level
which will help you in trading and in
business and
in any human interaction and just feel
more happy when you
when you engage with somebody and
they're posting a successful trade
how does it make you feel doesn't make
you feel like you want to just
completely change everything that you're
doing and start something new because
somebody posted something that might
tell you something about who you are as
a person and
this level of awareness is really really
interesting and you need to bring it to
trading i think
because as you said you said in the
beginning we are always so good at
fooling ourselves
and um yeah you need to you need to get
to know yourself um
very intimately as a trader because in
the end i sit here all day by myself in
this in this room
and i can i can make anything sound
great in my head and no matter how bad
it is
so this is a it's uh
journaling also helps because you can
see it's black and white
it either works so it doesn't work it
doesn't work and it's in the right
proportion that's okay
and you understand why it doesn't work
that's fine um
but i i do think that taking personal
responsibility is an absolutely basic
principle
if you any time you give away personal
response responsibility to someone else
um that's a cop-out now you if your
trade doesn't work it's your fault
it's not the market's fault it's not
your advisor's fault it's not your
educator's fault
it's your fault if you didn't do it
right okay so you know how to do it
right just keep working
on the discipline of doing it
effectively and doing it consistently
and you will be successful right yeah
so i have a what i like to ask is um
what are you currently focusing on to
make the next step in your in your
development as a as a trader is that
something that you're working on
currently
right at the moment i will kind of work
for i work funny long
12-hour shifts um so i'm i'm focusing on
trying to
try to work out how i can trade most
effectively within that context
some of them are on weekdays and some of
them on weekend days so
when i get weekdays free that's great i
can trade all the time but sometimes i
don't
um so trying to work out how to do that
effectively
and i'm trying to use the normal sort of
top-down approach that you're using with
the watch list
as a way of driving myself into that and
that's what i'm working on in a minute
yeah yeah watch lists and routines are
um
it sounds like you have already done i'm
not sure if you have done the whole
um psychology course for the master
class but
i haven't i need to do that i've done a
lot of psychology stuff in the past
and i'm completely into that yeah i
think it's very important
i think yeah and i stress always the the
routines and um
processes are very very important i hate
i absolutely hate it myself
i don't like to have a i don't like to
have a schedule or i don't like to
um just be bound by okay every every
morning at eight i have to do this thing
i don't like this
rigid approach but it there's no way
around it so
i think you have to accept certain
certain routines in order to
get to where you want to be and i think
it makes if you know okay i do
i do this thing every every day eight to
nine a.m
and then that's it uh it will have my
training over the long term that's uh
yeah
routines routines are really really
important um and that's something that i
i'm also still always working on
struggling with and it's
it's always a it's always a challenge
same for me
like it's for me it's the worst but
this one quote um like your options are
limited by what you want to achieve
it's just stuck in my mind forever and
it's just so true
like if you you have this end goal and
that's what you want to achieve you just
have very limited options how to get
there
and you just have to do it right and in
trading it's
100 routine routine routine process
consistency
all the time you're an early of maurice
and that helps doesn't it
yeah mort's now converted me to to
waking up early it does help to get in a
few
quiet hours of work before everybody
else wakes up so that definitely does
help yeah
the market has its own cycles anyway so
you know we know when the the hot times
are one cent mark like
london opens and then new york opens and
so then in the evening it's not not so
busy so
it has its own little cycles yeah i like
the
when i and i'm moving back to asia i
like the asian
um sessions actually because you wake up
in the morning and the whole world is
still
asleep so it gives you like this
psychological advantage that you can
you can take a few hours to get ready
before europe and london opens and then
you have a lot of time until
new york opens so that's i really like
that as well historically my performance
in asia is better whenever i'm in asia i
have a better trading performance than
when i am in europe
what do you think that is because i
think it's mostly because
i have the whole morning to like i go to
the gym
i unwind i do my emails i have a great
lunch
i'm just super relaxed and then 2 or 3
p.m i go to my charts it's like
i'm 100 complete send mode and
you just make a much fewer mistakes and
when i'm in europe i get up and i do my
workout and then i go to the charts and
it's
straight away you have to be there 100
right and i'm just not that big of a
morning person at least my brain is not
and the whole day is still in front of
me so that also makes me a bit of
anxious as well and it's just easier to
make mistakes i think
right yeah yeah yeah i think
one's own psychology is very important
it is
probably one of the biggest
self-development programs in the world
isn't learning to be an effective trader
because you have to
you know there are technical matters
there are psychological matters which
you have to get together to be effective
and in the end it's all you against you
there's a
yeah sure i mean anyone can learn the
craft i mean
drawing trend lines and support
resistance levels is not
black magic everyone can learn that but
not everyone can master themselves to
really make money with it
yeah on a consistent basis yeah
that's the that's the thing which is the
trick obviously yeah right
yeah especially in days these days and
um where the market is only going up
um it's uh yeah it will be interesting
to see what happens afterwards
but that's uh we can we can wrap we can
see that in a few weeks probably i want
to
ask you because people love to read and
our audience loves to read what uh
maybe one two three books that you
find that really stand out um
that has helped you over the years okay
um okay from a technical point of view
um i went to see steve nissan present in
london and i've followed all his
candlestick stuff which is very
very very good i think the initial
documentation is very good that's been
really helpful
from a psychology point of view um books
like market wizards
it's great to hear everyone's experience
and it's a real
you know the real life experience about
the practicalities of executing trades
and
that's really good i'm listening to uh
reminiscence of a stock operator
now i listen on audiobooks on audible at
the moment and that's
that's been really really good there's
just so much so much wisdom in that
and told in a very um self-effacing sort
of manner
i followed you know technical
documentation things like bollinger
bands elliot waves and so on
but it's the ones which were real
traders talk
and they talk about their real life
experiences as opposed to the
analytical theory that um they're most
effective i think
right have you read the then um the
the book from adi schwarz seems like
it's right down your alley pitbull
champion trader
no i've been looking for that actually
but it seems to seems to be out of print
it's not available as an audio book and
it seems to be out of print
it's probably um a bootleg copy that's
sitting around on the internet somewhere
right yeah it's uh if you like the
market wizards and the stock operator
this is a
it's my absolute favorite trading book
it's about the life of uh
and the routines and approach for marty
schwartz
and who was in the who was also in the
market wizards so it's a great
it's a great book yeah i'll look out for
that what was the
the name of the first book i didn't i
didn't fully get it i would put it in
the show notes
um something was neat nissan who's the
candlestick guy
nissan n-i-s-o-n
uh very well documented explain all the
different candlestick patterns and the
like
so that's very very useful
candlesticks popular in the west right
yeah yeah oh interesting right i've
never heard of it never check it out
before that it's the travel stick guy
yeah okay cool i will check it out
and i will put everything in the show
notes for everybody who is watching or
listening
okay um thank you paul i think this is a
good place to wrap up with
45 minutes in so thank you again so much
for your time this has been uh
something that i've been looking forward
to and yeah thank you again for making
your time
and maybe we can we can do a round two
um in a few months
yep sounds good thank you and yeah
everybody else who has been
watching listening make sure to leave a
comment if you enjoyed this episode
let me know what you find especially
interesting
so that we can do more of that and until
then thank you for watching
and see you soon thanks guys
