 Okay, so I'm very pleased to hold an informal conversation with three current and former traders. And I know it's coming up to International Women's Day on the 8th of March. And so I just wanted to, I know amplifies the business of talking on the students side to some of those guys have gone on and secured internships and graduate positions. And I wanted to, because I'm involved on the trading side and I'm if I live talk to some of the female traders. And I have with me Shreya Fran and Katie, all of which are either current or former traders of ours. And they've, they haven't actually I don't think met each other before so in order for them and everyone who watches this to get get to know who you guys are what your backgrounds are. So I wanted to just kick us off so Katie what are you. So, yeah, sure. So, I'm Katie I have a background of about seven years in marketing so this is completely new to me and I sadly lost my job. So this is my impact of redundancy back in November and during the amplify program late January and completed the course the course one and two and actually managed to become a back trader so this is completely pushing me to my limits and I'm still very much in the early stages of learning but yeah that's where I am. And then, Fran, you're the experienced statesman in the room, you've been trading for a while now and you're doing you're still trading full time right. Yeah, so I joined amplify in February 2019 and completed the training there. And then, yeah, eventually it took me a good like five six months to find that consistency to go full time but then managed to do that. And since I've just been playing around with different strategies and different time frames different markets and I finally settled down in the past few months with one that I'm fully confident with and I am trading full time. I know, Shreya, you're a you're a GB athlete. So I mean what what's the first of all, a little bit about what is your sport and then the level of, you know you're still doing it now how's it been with COVID have you been able to do anything on that side and then was there any transferable skill from being an elite athlete to trading. Did it help at all in any way. Definitely so I, I started fencing at primary school so I've done it for so long as I can remember now and it's a really great sport and I think one thing about it that's been directly useful for my professional work was the discipline but also forming under pressure. It's helped me really built my work ethic. And I think so when I started trading, that was the psychology aspect was so interesting to me actually, I didn't understand how big a role that played in kind of navigating when things got a bit tougher strategies didn't fall out the way he wanted them to. And I think being able to fall back on that amount of resilience and patience, the type of trader I was as well. I think for me to be consistent it meant that I had to fall back on that patience. And so I think that that sporting aspect was a real asset for me in that sense so it was good but yeah sadly I haven't been able to fence it all throughout lockdown everything's been happening stop so hopefully it will pick up again soon. I could see Fran and Katie nodding their heads then you were talking about psychology you didn't quite realize it was as important as it is so is there any comment that you guys could make on that in terms of, I guess. The stresses that you've had and obviously Katie you've just gone into training live funds for us. Whereas Fran you've been doing it with your own capital for a period of time now and you've kind of gone probably through the, the peaks and the troughs along the way to like you said consistency is there. Is there any kind of like tips or advice or, you know reflection that you have over the psychological side. I think that, especially now I'm sort of, I've just passed this challenge for an FTMO prop fund basically to trade so it's now trading like quite a significant amount someone else's money. It's not that stage and it's not just your own capital you're trading with. There's definitely, you definitely need to have that confidence in your strategy and be able to, you know, still execute it perfectly without kind of floundering or. I mean, yeah, you've got to be able to take a few losses, sometimes in a row, and like work out ways that you're going to be able to deal with that like, be it maybe trade less markets, take fewer trades. I think it's going to raise my trade setups as valid high probability and very high probability. So maybe if I've taken a couple of losses in a row and I'm feeling it's slightly uncomfortable, I'll either have the day off or reduce my risk to half, or just take the high probability setups for a while and then just, just to make sure the accounts not, you know. So was there a period of time to get to that point of self awareness to have these kind of checks in place? Yeah, definitely and definitely I think another thing is removing as much discretion as you can from your trading, especially if you are kind of sizing up to trading bigger capital is. The discretionary aspect was huge for me, like once I started trading, trying out strategies and sort of forming and refining a strategy where I had these very strict management rules, very strict entry rules, very strict like lot sizes. And then not veering from those at all, then, yeah, then that's when it sort of, it became, you know, like automated just a while and you're not no longer fazed by the losses, like they'll happen, but look at the bigger picture and backtesting as well. Yeah. Really helped like three years for each strategy. Yeah, I remember the last time we spoke, you said that you were like deep into backtesting. You had like baggy eyes and you were like. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that helps a lot as well just just in terms of confidence in the strategy. And then as long as you are taking the following the same rules taking the same sort of trades that you would in your backtesting, then you don't really have anything to worry about as long as you've proven through the back testing that it does work over time. And I'd usually do about probably about 200 trades per strategy over three years and then sort of look at that data, analyze it, kind of look for similarities, differences between the winners, the losers and then filter those, filter the losers out, backtest again, and that would normally I mean sometimes it would like double or triple the results. So you end up trading a strategy that's not even one that you sort of set out to start testing because you will end up have changed it so much by that point that. And yeah, it really really helps with the confidence. And you're unique to the other two because you did all of this training online. So where are you at the minute? I'm in Abu Dhabi at the minute. So I am four hours ahead of obviously the trading in London hub. So one, it was amazing because I put this course to the back of my mind thinking right I'll face it when it comes and I could log on to the sort of amplify community early and just sort of get a taste of what I was going into so I wasn't feeling blind. So that really helped me. So yeah, I'd recommend for anyone if they're ever thinking they want to do it to definitely sort of speak to more people and sort of look at that material because that really helped me understand right this is the format of how I'm going to be taught and what's what's going to work. And then yeah, it gave me the flexibility to go actually no I didn't quite understand that I want to go back and at my own pace and I think that was actually a real benefit of learning I'm usually someone who loves to be in the room with other people but there was a in the sense that I had everything at my fingertips I could go back I could pause things write it down rewind and and yeah so the videos were amazing help for me in terms of learning that technique and learning what works for me. So for the others, the other to who you were with me at the time on the trading floor in the city. One thing that was obviously quite obvious and was still obvious but you Katie as well being online was that you were in the minority I mean I think Fran particularly I remember. I don't know if you would maybe as one other female with you in the group perhaps or think in that intake. It was just me. Right just out of maybe how many 10 people. Yeah, people maybe. Yeah whereas show was coming from the internship which I'd say it's much more diverse and split but when you start carving out the niche of trading, particularly prop trading. It does tend to become very male oriented so how was that experience for you guys like when you were doing it in 2019 was it make any difference is it even in your mind or not. I think it was. I think it's something that was that I expected just because I mean probably probably less so now even a couple of years later but it's sort of trading has always been seen as a males. Kind of kind of industry so and the same with I mean a lot of the a lot of the jobs in the city and so yeah did expect that but it didn't I don't think it I don't think it negatively affected. Sort of like the experience as much I mean it would have you know it would have been nicer to have a few women there as well but. I agree. I think I didn't really think about it too much for a one in I think like he said I was more worried about oh my gosh there's so much I don't know. I have no idea what buying sellers or belay short of that was so I'm more focused on that and then in my group as well as just one other female I think we naturally gravitated towards each other. But I think very quickly when we all you know started to speak more I think having that community and actually learning from the other males that a lot of different types of personalities and I think especially seeing that and being able to take a lot from that was really useful. And it helps me kind of react to my trades a bit more patient or kind of objective and not as emotional as some other members of being so I think actually that having that split. It was definitely noticeable but it was actually kind of like an asset at that point. I just going back to the beginning you said that you've now secured a job which is fantastic so the experience that you've gone through and trading. Was that beneficial in any way for the process that you went through to secure that job. Definitely I think it gave a very unique perspective with understanding markets what drives markets understanding asset classes and their interaction. So it definitely helped me with you know the interview process in general because I was able to apply that understanding to that specific industry and understanding more my role and what that will entail. So definitely the kind of the knowledge that you learn through that trading course was extremely beneficial and that thought process you build as well that discipline was really great. So definitely did help. I'm going to go to two more questions because I know you're very busy but one I wanted I want to know for each of you right what's the main challenge that you've faced with trading in general could be could be anything. What's the main thing that you found quite difficult. And that's taken a lot of persistency to get over if you like what a master. So being that when I went into it I especially like doing it on a trading floor with you know with eight other trainees ten other trainees. A lot of whom had been trading for maybe a year or a few years beforehand and so everybody everyone has different trade ideas everyone has different risk appetite strategies. So just sitting there sort of like trying like getting really confused because maybe I thought I thought one thing someone else is saying something else someone else had a different idea and I was just trying to let consolidate everybody's trade ideas like into sort of one trade. And that caused a lot of confusion. So I think, yeah I think that the kind of going into amplify and sort of forgetting every anything you might have heard about like the industry or anything you might have like watched or read beforehand and just starting from scratch and yeah just just get like getting a good base. Also, I think the most difficult part was deciding which aspects you want to focus on in your trading like what kind of what parts of the strategy you wanting to focus on you wanted to be more of a technical trader, a fundamental trader, maybe even look at quant trading. Because I think if you mixed mix all of those things too much, or sort of like your 80% fundamental trader one day and 80% technical trader one day, then that's going to cause a lot of difficulties in how your strategy plays out and. So yeah I would, yeah it was it was choosing kind of what kind of trader do I want to be like what style suits me best. And then it's just a case of testing those things out and and just seeing what works for you. So, as everyone's everyone's different. I think mine's kind of similar to that it was, you learn a lot from your peers and you know the experts in this but it's not only the lessons you learn but learning when to apply them. And a lot of that stems from understanding your personality and character and how you behave to risk and and stress and so that process of understanding my psychology and taking what I'm learning and and most importantly having the confidence to execute that one I need to was was a really big thing to me. Yeah, I remember, I mean obviously Sam, Sam North was the main mentor that was dealing with you, you guys a lot and I remember he used to talk about you a lot I mean if you, if you go back to the summer internship you're pretty much with us for a year almost and he always used to say about your ability to just hold trades and that's obviously one of the biggest things that people find a difficulty with which is like relying on the confidence of their strategy is solid, they've done the work and the analysis and then just playing without tempering with it to tempering with it too much and you always excellent at that and whether or not that's as you described part of your sporting background or not perhaps it might be because we have had other people from that similar type of background before which have shown similar characteristics that's always quite quite interesting but great stuff and then Katie, any, anything you'd want to add on that. Very similar to what we've said of obviously learning your sort of style and your edge, but I would say the biggest thing probably FOMO and because you can see everyone trading or they're posting you know their ideas and that's what this whole period has taught me is actually you need to stick with your principles and and yeah it's that self control of I'm not just going to rush into a trade and I even had it before I was on the course in terms of oh I'm a bit jealous that that person's put that trade on and I want to know more but I actually don't know how to do it so I think yeah that's a real factor that you overcome I guess in general and lockdown is probably taught us all to not feel FOMO because there's nothing going on anyway but in terms of trading that is the biggest thing is that self control and sticking with your principles. Well, I mean one of the things that I'll encourage you guys to do is definitely exchange zoom zoom details I guess it's 2021 so, but it's definitely something we try to encourage is that community. Obviously we house that now with amplifier live but I think that's a really important thing to have is other people around you to you know trading I've always in conversations with people it's found quite a tricky thing because you'll talk to other people who are not in this profession. It can often be a difficult thing to talk to people about because you're talking about money and you're talking about you know you're sat there. You know there's people, you know like the NHS, for example doing a phenomenal job and here we are talking about the yield curve and inflation and just clicking buttons but. You know I think a community is definitely important and it's been fantastic with you guys I know I've kind of had individual chats as well along the way about careers stuff and you know that's a that's a part which I'm quite proud of is that we want to get involved beyond trading because I think being good trader is more than just technical ability. You know it's all about psychology and the having a framework a supportive network around you. So, yeah it's just really pleasing to see what you guys have done. I think that's what's helped with you guys as well as you're able to see our skill sets you know I'm coming from marketing right where do I fit in in the finance industry and what's the best next step so I think that's really helped me in terms of that guidance especially in this period where we're applying for jobs and keeping on track and keeping that routine and keeping motivated so yeah I would say that's been really really helpful so thanks for your help. Yeah, cool. All right well let's wrap it up there. I mean, thank you very much for giving up your time. I know it's, I just, you know, I'm so proud of what we do at Amplify to meet have the access and privilege to meet so many different types of people. And definitely for my career being very focused on the prop trading world. It has always been very male dominated, but it's just great to see you guys getting stuck in and performing, you know and being based and judged on your performance as it should be. I think that's one thing I'm really grateful, sorry, for you know through this process is you meet so many different people and I think having done the internship on the program and just generally the community online as well you really connect with people that are that have diverse perspectives and thoughts and approaches to their work and so Amplify really provides those routes to grow and you know improve your career development so I think that's something I've been really very grateful for so thank you.