 Good evening and welcome to this webinar in association with Tick Meal, myself Charlie Burton and I'm going to be talking to you over this next hour or so, or maybe a little bit less, about how I made 573% swing trading effects on a trading challenge that I've been doing over the last few years. If you don't know me, I'm Charlie Burton, I've been trading 27 years now, I'm a professional money manager as well as I manage my own money, but I'm also regulated here under the FCA to manage funds and so I manage a few different funds here in the UK and like I said I've been trading for quite a long time, I don't day trade anymore, I used to, back to back five years undefeated at the London Forex show, live trade off at the London Forex show, so I've done quite a lot of stuff like that, I've even been on the BBC, some of you will, you like the TikToks, I've been on the BBC in a documentary called Traders Millions by the Minute, that was a few years ago and I've been interviewed for the likes of the Financial Times and all the usual broadsheets and the likes over the years, I think that's probably enough on me, so I've been doing this for a while. Now this challenge, in fact before I go any further, I'll just read off the disclaimer in the association with TickMeal here, because this webinar is put on by TickMeal and I would highly recommend them to you, if you don't currently have an account with them I would recommend that you do, they're very good broker, they've got great spreads, great execution, great range of products and services, so I highly recommend using TickMeal as a preferred broker, but by all means as I would always say yeah, if you don't currently have an account with them, do your own research, but they are very good, I've had very good experience of dealing with TickMeal over this last couple of years that I've been dealing with TickMeal myself, okay so the risk disclaimer is the material provided is for information and purposes only and should not be considered as investment advice, the views, information and opinions expressed in the text belong solely to the author, that's me, and not to the author's employer, organisation, committee or other group or individual in the company, I'm not, they're not my employer, but this is a standard statement there, high risk warning CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage, 75% and 74% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with TickMeal UK, you should consider whether you understand your house CFDs work and whether you can afford to take high risk, the high risk of losing your money, okay so we have to go through the risk disclaimers there before going through anything more in the webinar, so do check out TickMeal if you don't currently use them, they are well worthwhile doing that with right, so the story then, the story of this trading challenge is that I started the trading challenge, I've just got a chart up of the euro dollar here because a lot of my trading during this challenge has been on the euro dollar, the challenge started in June of, oops that's way too thick isn't it, so let's change that, okay, June of 2020, okay, so that's when this challenge started, I like doing these trading challenges, I've been doing them on and off for the last decade now, my very first trading challenge I did was a 10K to 100K challenge, that took me two and a half years to do that, this current challenge was slightly different, so what I wanted to do was start with a slightly larger account, now I appreciate that people are based all around the world and trading with all sorts of size of capital, but just a little bit bigger, the 10K that was $10,000 so around about 8,000 pounds, so the $10,000 to $100,000 challenge was one, this challenge I thought well I'd start it a little bit higher, 20,000, and really with the goal to try and turn it into 70,000 which would then clear a 50,000 profit, that was the idea, that was the original goal for this challenge, so I'm going to go through the statements in a bit, but I'm just going to go through how I've approached this challenge first and foremost, the overall methods that I've been employing, the markets as I've already just alluded to a little bit here, the markets and why those markets, all the reasons and rationale for the trading activity and the style of trading that I'm using as well, so that's what I'm going to go through first and then I'll then we'll go through the statements itself, but this was the challenge that I set myself, just to see if I could turn 20,000, no time limit on it, on this one, no time limit, just 20,000, see if I can turn into 50,000 to clear a 50,000 profit, which here and 200% return, could I do that, okay, the thing is when you do these challenges, I do them in real time, I'm still involved, I'm still doing this challenge to this day, you'll be pleased to know, and it will continue, so that was where the original challenge, and now once I've got it up to the account up to 70,000, I thought well, I might as well carry on doing this challenge and let's just see how it goes, and so I'm still doing this challenge to this date, I last did this update that I'm going to be showing you here this evening in December, so just a couple of months ago, it was when I last updated to the wider audience out there, so I'll next be doing an update for 2024 in December of this year, so what I'm showing you this evening is what I actually showed in December, so right away up till December, when I did a webinar in December, so, but I'm doing this specifically for Pertick Mill here, okay, I think I've answered the questions of where did the challenge come from, so that was the reasons and the rationale for doing a challenge, just to show traders what can be achieved, all right, now like I said in the past, I've done a lot of day trading in years gone by, but that's not really what I do now, as you get older, sometimes you think well actually I don't want to be in front of the screen with the same level of intensity as I used to, so this challenge and the returns are all from swing trading, okay, all from swing trading, so that's holding positions from anything from a few days, so let's just say from three days through to anything up to really three months is the time frames that I'm generally and everything in the middle is what I'm trading over, so that's the sort of time frames I'm trading over, so the current return as you know as of December of last year was about was 570 odd percent, I'll show you the statements in a bit, and so how have I generated that 570 percent over those, what's that, over three years there, three and a half years, is that three and a half years, so in my book it's a decent return, it's a solid return, and so I'm going to show you, you know, what I've done there, but first before I go through the chart, I'm actually going to bring up a Word document before I go on to the chart, and I'm just going to list out just a few of the main concepts, the core concepts that I use in order to trade and approach the market, so the first one is multiple time frame analysis, okay, so that's the first thing that I use is top-down approach, multiple time frame analysis, it's one of the first things that I do before I take any trade, it was always the same when I was a day trade years ago, I'd want to look at the higher time frames first and then drill down to the time frames that I might be executing off, so it's exactly the same sort of principle, but when I'm swing trading I will go out to weeklies, monthlies, and quarterly time frames, so I'll go right away out to the quarterly chart, usually I start at the quarterly and I work my way down, so top-down, multiple time frame analysis, another big one is sentiment analysis, now there's not, so what I'm looking for when I'm looking at sentiment is extremes in sentiment, now sentiment can be measured in many, many ways and I'm going to give you some examples during tonight's webinar of where I was trading and using sentiment, so sentiment is another important part of my trading, but it's not there all of the time, there's not always extremes in sentiment just all of the time, so but at certain times then there are and it can be really useful, so I'll show you some of those examples as well, so sentiment analysis is really important, but on a day-to-day basis we can use sentiment, we can look at what retail traders are doing, we can look at what the large speculators and hedge funds are doing as well in the futures market, so we can get a gauge of short-term sentiment, but also we can look at big picture sentiment, what's going on in the big major publications like the likes of your Economist magazine, Reuters, Bloomberg, all of that stuff, all of those reported articles that do come out from those news sources are really useful as well, so I'll go through some of that here tonight as well. Of course there's the macro, so the macro environment is important, what news releases are coming out especially with trading forex, highly sensitive to economic data releases from the likes of the US, Europe and the likes, so that's something which is used as well within all of that, I can use sometimes short-term sentiment actually along with macro, so that's important. One of the biggest things that I use is this, adding to winning trades, this webinar is being recorded, yes it is Aidan, yes, adding to winning trades, so that's one of the big factors of my overall profitability is adding to winning trades, I'll tell you a brief story, I was talking with a boutique broker well over 15 years ago, maybe 20 years ago, maybe not quite, I think it was probably about 18 or 19 years ago and at the time I was considering using them, they were a boutique broker who dealt with really small hedge funds and money managers, so anything up to sort of 20 million really that was being managed, so they wanted me to manage some of the money that I was trading with them and anyway I was having this conversation with the owner of this small brokerage at the time one day and I said you know who is the most successful traders you've ever come across or I didn't want to know individually but what are their traits, what are the traits of the best most successful traders that you've seen in your experience over the years because they've been around for a long time and he said the best traders he said that I've ever seen are those who when they get into a trade they will milk it for all its worth for all they can, so they will try and hold on to the trade for as long as they can and they will add into it as it goes in their favor, now at that time that wasn't something that I was doing and I didn't immediately leave that conversation and think oh I must do this, it was actually several years later that I actually started to do it myself, so it's funny how these things happen but I still nevertheless remember that conversation and so coming back to my point here about adding to winning trades a large part of my profitability is the fact that I will add to the winning trades as they move along so that they can exponentially grow, if the trend continues then I will make way more than just taking a standard trade and then just running it to a target because I will be adding to that position my positions along the way, I will go through adding to positions this evening I'll come back to it but yeah we will go through that and then lastly of course let's call it entry yeah now only you may have noticed something here so I've just put and then we've got the strategies that I use or slash entry techniques that I use now one thing you may have noticed is that these have come last on my list, what I find in my years now of decades of experience is most traders spend an inordinate amount of time trying you know trying to perfect or find the holy grail of strategies entry techniques as you've seen this actually comes what fifth on my list so and isn't it funny we all know that statistically something like 80 percent of all traders will fail yeah and yet what is it that probably 80 percent of those traders are doing chasing the holy grail of trading strategies okay so for me of course I still have to have entry techniques and strategies to get me into the market but that comes after all of this stuff that I'm really looking at the multiple time frame analysis sentiment macro at least anyway adding to the winners obviously comes after I'm into a trade but what I'm trying to say here is that doesn't come first most people are looking at this stuff first and that comes further down the list for me okay so these are the main concepts that I'm using within my trading okay so what I'll now do is come over to the charts and I'm going to talk through this this period before I go to the well I have a look at the the statements itself but I'm going to talk through this this whole period of trading since I started in due this challenge in June so it would have been around about here of somewhere around about here of 2020 that's when I started this challenge so just a bit after the the complete the world went crazy with with COVID of course and just a couple of months or so before that and so it was right in the middle of you know many of us being locked down or whatever so let's talk through this okay most of my trading but the majority of my trading is not all of it but the majority of my trading is undertaken on the euro dollar currency pair it's the largest currency pair in the world and most liquid of course for that reason essentially what you're doing if you're trading the euro dollar is you're essentially trading the dollar index the euro makes up you know nion 60 percent close to 60 percent of the basket of currencies that are traded against the dollar index if I inverted a euro dollar chart then it would look like a normal the dollar index itself very often the euro dollar just looks like an inverted dollar index so essentially what I'm doing is I'm trading the dollar index essentially don't get me wrong I will trade other major currency pairs I will trade the S&P the Nasdaq I will trade other markets but 90 plus of my trading is the euro dollar so I've got this on a weekly time frame here just so not really for so now I can squeeze all this data in a in a nice enough format onto this chart so all I've got on this chart is just a 50 period moving average my black line here and in the lower window I have an MACD so I do like the MACD indicator I use the MACD indicator for things like divergences okay in the main that's what I will use a the MACD indicator for so starting in this period of coming into 2020 what was quite interesting actually I do need to squeeze this back a little bit because what hopefully you can see through 2019 going into all that volatility as as COVID all kicked off was that overall looking at my MACD lines down here there was a huge divergence huge divergence on this weekly time frame so that was the first thing that I've been tracking over that prior period coming into 2020 then we broke up here in this was in the spring so about April May I was here so a little bit earlier because I'm on a weekly time frame so it was we had a break up here the challenge didn't start until the June but I had personally already been trading the up the long side prior to that but the challenge account didn't start until the June so I wanted to be on the long side of the euro dollar following those huge divergences as I've shown there that was so I was looking for more upside here so I started you know in the challenge buying the euro dollar now one thing I must emphasize is that yeah okay no problem Mohammed is that my win rate my actual win rate is relatively low okay so it tends to be it depends on the time of year and what's been happening but it I would always put it between you know 30 and 40 percent so I'm not you know and yet still making over that time frame 570 a z so I'm not interested in high win rates I'm just interested in ultra high risk reward ratio trades that's what I'm that's all I'm looking for that's what I'm putting it all together all that data all that analysis together for is to get me the ultra high risk reward ratio trades whether where I get to add into it as well and those are what deliver the returns I'm not trying to be right all of the time I could do it by just banking my profits a lot sooner but I wouldn't be as profitable so I'm looking for the most profitable way of approaching the market for me and using the style I have if I banked the profits too regularly too soon I wouldn't be as profitable I wouldn't generate that return so as a result the longer you as you know the longer you hold on to a trade for the lower the win rate because the the more likelihood is that it will roll back over okay the longer you hold it'll only be the few that just keep going and going and going and going okay so coming into 2020 here I wanted to be on the long side so I was buying but of course I'm not always right as I've just said so I'm still going to have you know quite tight stop losses at times because I'm using multiple time frames I will still take trades off of four hourly charts even hourly time frames but I'm always using those to then get me in on a trade that might hopefully develop into a swing trade so I like I've just said with the win rate you know there's plenty of trades that I will get stopped out of in fact when I started challenge I went straight into a drawdown immediately the 20 000 dropped immediately to sort of 19 000 and something like that so but that's just Murphy's law that's all things always going to happen you start challenge right okay let's see how we get on oh no it's almost immediately into drawdown but then it came up and so as the the euro went up and I managed to get more more positions in the direction of travel here so I rode the euro dollar going into right away into the December of that year I was lucky that year it was one of those years where I couldn't didn't put many feet wrong you know you know where I got in roughly speaking was all right I was still having some stopouts but I managed to capture that move there this consolidation here I used to so I banked profits in the July here used this pullback consolidation to start accumulating more positions in and to take me into the end of the year so I had a target at 123 which was right up here that was based on the multiple time frame analysis what was interesting what was fascinating as we came into the end of that year was that from a sentiment perspective you know the the big news financial news outlets were all calling for more dollar weakness so that and so when you get the likes of Reuters and Bloomberg and elsewhere and you're seeing articles talking about oh that's it you know it's the demise of the dollar and that was what we were seeing article headline articles I haven't got any saved I didn't save any of that time but I've got others to show you but there was a lot of articles coming out in the into the sort of November December of 2020 talking about the demise of the dollar for 2021 now when you start seeing lots of headline articles like that you have to look the other way you've got to then start to think ah maybe we're at the end of this trend so there was other reasons there for me to from a sentiment perspective to want to get out and not only get out but actually also to short now what was interesting up here so yes I started shorting into that first quarter of 2021 right away down to my 50 period moving average down here was my my target so again I couldn't put a foot wrong for a while and we had this divergence here you can see these these lower peaks see my blue lines here that's the MACD line itself between that peak there so we'll call that one and this is number two over here there's one and there's two there so not only do we the euro had got up into that technical zone that I was looking for anyway around the 123 I think went to 12350 we had all of that uber bullish sentiment which raises a warning flag when everyone's saying the same thing you've got to think ah maybe we're near in the end of this trend plus we had divergence here on the weekly time frame so I shorted into that first quarter of 2021 so you're thinking right okay Charlie's on a roll here and I was I had a really good 2020 and a really good start to 2021 but I'm always very open and honest about you know where I make my money and where I lose money as well because that's the realities of trading if people tell you they make money all the time you have to sort of take it a little bit of a pinch of salt because everybody loses money as well as making it so that's where I got to into there then down at this point this was you know I use moving averages quite a lot in my trading so when the euro dollar came down to this uh 50 week moving average fun enough on the daily chart there was a divergence going the other way I think off the back of my mind off the back of my head and so I bought I started buying down here might have been on the four hour chart actually so you're thinking wow now so I was buying here doing my usual adding to the winner as it started coming up then I started adding to the winner here like I add to my shorts as they were coming down and the previous longs as they were going up so I'm doing the same thing and I had a target up here just that little bit higher I think it was about 120 23 again was my first target then I had another target beyond that and it got to really close to 123 didn't quite get there and then it just rolled over and so and the thing with one of the downsides to adding to winning trades because they're whatever style of trading you have there's going to be you know the good elements of your style and there's going to be the the drawbacks of your style whatever your style is okay so if I'm adding as it's coming up I'm having to trail my stop up in order to justify the add-ins and then of course that brings up my average price as I'm adding in so that's all fine all the time it carries on trending up but if it pulls back and does a deep pullback I'm going to get stopped out and so that's what happens so I've been in a trade for a good couple of months there and I need to get nothing from it okay bear it up so made no money there in fact you know gave you know wherever the open profits were they all came back and what are stewart what are the nine other indicators not shown oh he's talking about over here they're moving averages stewart I've just taken them all off just to clean keep the chart nice and clean for you so it's just moving averages so I use a multiple of moving averages right so then the euro started to roll over I was looking for it to come up that a little bit more it never quite did it like I said then it started to roll over so I let it roll over and really I didn't start meaningfully shorting it until the September of 2021 but then between September of 2021 and the lows of 2022 I had about in total seven major say major but yeah major profitable trades now what did I say earlier on you know I'm only looking for I'm looking for those those bigger winners where no I get in have a have a really nice run build the position a bit add to the winners and then hit targets trade done so in that entire period from the September of 2021 down to about a year later I had about seven major profitable trades everything else was losing trades you know getting nicked out of trades some trades would be just small very small wins where you travel just stop and then you just get training stopped out so but I'm just I'm underlying it was only about seven major trades the point I'm trying to make is you don't need to have lots and lots and lots of winning trades if you get into trades and you don't just bank your profits too soon you get those ultra high risk reward ratios then you can do very very well thanks very much so for me the where did I make the bulk of my profits yes it was in the September time when we first broke down through here and I had a run there then we had a consolidation through for about two months or so here where I just lost money and then in when I say lost money of course there's risk management going on you know you stop losses and risk a certain amount per trade but wasn't making any money through that period is what I'm saying so then we had this drop here so I would have I caught most of the down drops the majority of the down drafts I caught through 2022 there was one that I missed because I was on holiday and that was this down draft here so I missed that one and then I caught that one there and then that one there so well saying six but I think it was probably about seven trades overall through that so just going with the trends and using a breakdowns in price so my overall analysis my top down analysis was looking for more downside and then I was using in conjunction with the top down analysis of the higher time frames the quarterly charts and monthly time frames then looking right away down to the daily charts and four hour charts for entering positions and that's all I was doing is looking for breakdowns in on the lights of the four hour charts and daily charts once price would consolidate and then start rolling over then that would give me my next entries and I can go through the specifics of some of the entry techniques that I use in a bit but that's what I was using through there I'm just doing this top this high level approach first of all before we go any further just talking about where you know what I did and where I've made the money on the account over this period then we got down to this was a fascinating period as the euro-dollar got down to these lows in the late September early October of Aden no no this is not a monthly chart this is a weekly chart so no I use multiple time frame analysis Aden maybe you come to it late or maybe you come to the presentation late but I've already yeah I use the top down multiple time frame analysis so I don't use a singular time frame most of the trades I'm actually executing off the lower time frames dailies for hourly charts even down to the hour these are times as well so what was interesting down here is we just had you know a 15 month fall in the euro-dollar and as the euro came down the euro-dollar contract got down to parity first of all so got down to one then came all the way down to like 95 or so now that 95 level was kind of an interesting level because if I go back to the early 2000s the euro launched in 2002 and the high it's not showing it on this chart but of when it launched I think it was 2000 yeah two era time matched in nicely with this low here so in fact why don't I just take you to the monthly chart and make it a bit easier on myself there we go right now you'll you'll see see it maybe it was 2000 sorry yeah there we go so we got that high there coming in with this low here okay so but not just that also going way back before that on the composite chart um there was uh this low here as well which came in the same level okay about 95 or so 95 96 now of course or 1989 sorry that was now of course that would that's a composite price the euro didn't exist back then but it was a um but that 95 96 zone was a really important level there so if I take us back to the weekly charts and as we came down into that zone what was fascinating if I bring up from a sentiment perspective what were the articles looking like at that time well and Bloomberg Business Week we had this article saying can't stop won't stop the Fed has turned the US dollar into a wrecking ball and there's no end in sight to the carnage if I zoom in a little bit more you'll see that that article was dated the 3rd of October the 3rd of October of 2022 well um the euro had already bottled on the 28th of September there you go sometimes the timing of these articles is uncanny um so the euro had bottomed on the 28th and we were seeing a lot of articles like that and so again from a sentiment perspective really uh fascinating so um so I started trying to get long because I knew we had this massively negative sentiment now we had big reversals uh we had a key reversal if I go to the daily chart and if I can zoom us back or scroll us back here uh there we go um sorry for the movement here big key reversal bar on on that 28th of September itself um and the euro although it chopped around for a bit ultimately it never went lower and so we had that combination of multiple tiered support down at that that price zone down there massively bearish sentiment and then big reversals like this um this key reversal bar there as well just going to take us back to the weekly chart chart now there we go so then road um the the upside taking you know realistic only realistically it was the bulk of the gains were from the about November through into I can't remember into the December actually well I rode to other trades into the early part of 2023 now what was it a fascinating coming into 2023 then was the euro dollar um started to chop a bit so it did this pullback here uh I rode then got long um I was trying to get long through here so had a nice run through uh into the April time I think it was and then it rolled over of course I've been adding to my positions like I always do if it hasn't quite got to my targets which it didn't um it rolled over I got stopped out make no money through that period got long again through here did hit some targets up around the 112 mark so yeah okay banked some profit but again been adding to the position um and as it rolled over just got stopped out on the rest okay so then um what actually happened was that we we'd diverged again so that same divergence pattern that I showed earlier was going on between this point here and this point here so as it once it starts rolling over um we I know we've got the divergence pattern in place plus what was going on from a sentiment perspective at that point well yet again we now have sentiment in the other way strong dollar remains the only game in town 5th of October 2023 oh sorry that's not there that's not at that point that's down at this low take that back so we had that divergence I ended up um shorting off of that and having a you know a couple of months of downside um again adding to the trade um and then and then taking the profits down in this zone down here um and like I've just said and it was fascinating because we had this three three month pull back only to then have see this sort of sentiment so it's just showing right into the 5th of October of last year strong dollar remains the only game in town where did the euro bottom somewhere around there I think it was um I can't remember the actual date if I go to the daily chart but where was the the low the 3rd of October there we go so again I'm looking when I start seeing those sorts of articles and we had divergences again down in down in this zone um I'm going to start looking the other way again so then I got long um in that right around that October lows area um because we had technical reasons to be buying um divergences into technical um levels and um and then we had all that sentiment there as well why things been interesting now fun enough then the euros had this great run into December and then just pulled back into into 2024 just over this past what six six weeks or so so um again my trade I've built the trade up and then it's just um just rolled over okay say la vie so um but like I've shown um I don't need lots and lots and lots of winning trades don't need that doesn't matter um the I only need a few and that's all I need most of the time through this three three years or so um the the win rate as I said overall will be you know is in that 30% to 40% range but I will be more profitable looking for my style here looking for those trades adding to the positions and putting up with the times when they just roll over I've got I've been doing this for 27 years now I have a thick skin towards losing trades I know and I appreciate many traders don't you don't have to and uh you certainly don't have to trade this way um but what I'm here to show you is just to give you some um thoughts um about holding on to trades more if more traders held on to their trades just a bit more they would be more profitable yes they might have to sacrifice win rates but they would be more profitable I'm a I'm a I'm an extreme really because of the way that I um will want to hold my trades for you know significant periods when they when they work they they make me you know significant profits but I have to put up with all those other ones that just roll over and stop me out so you may say do you know what I don't want to trade the way that you do Charlie and and and hold on for as long as you do but I'll I'll add in a bit so let's go to adding in to uh winning trades so before I come to the statements here now the if a very very simple way of approaching adding into winners is whatever your technique is so if you've got an entry at this at this point here here's your entry and your stop loss because of course you should all be using stop losses um unless you're trading unleveraged it's a bit different um and your stop loss is down here so price starts moving up in your direction for you so it's only once you're in a position to move the stop loss up on your first entry so this is entry one here it's only once you can move the stop up on your first entry that you can you're then in a position to say right okay um I'll now use a consolidation pullback whatever to add a second entry entry to but only once to stop on the original entry has been moved up so this is a nice uh begin a way of looking at adding to uh your winners so you don't have to have loads of of add-ins but if you've got a target let's say is up here so let's say this is your target your target price is up here rather than just having your entry here and then just sitting on the trade until it gets to the target at least entertain the uh the thought of ah well once it's got maybe halfway to my target and my stops at entry at breakeven at entry now I can if I want to look at adding another entry so rather than maybe having a rather than say um a 3R trade which is a lovely trade as it is instead of it being a 3R trade it could end up being a you know let's say a 5R trade or maybe a 6 so and you only need to put one add-in in and what and that's just a begin a way of of looking at it so only once you'll stop on your original entries moved up can you then say right I'll I'll use another entry technique if I get one to get me into another position and I'll add another position here now the problem that a lot of traders have is that they don't want to once psychologically once they've moved their stop to breakeven they don't want to now put more risk or risk back into the trade because they've they it's like a relief that they their stops at breakeven now and they don't want to take a new new trade I get that but that's the road less traveled that's where the more profitable trades come from is being able to to actually say oh I know my stops at breakeven but actually I'm going to have to now put another entry on and obviously this one will have an expose you know a stop loss on it um itself but if you can get your head around the psychological point of okay stops a breakeven but now I'm just going to put another position on then overall you may well find this is um uh makes you more profitable overall it'll bring your win rate down why because there'll be times whereby let's use this as an example let's say at this point you've got your second entry in okay um if you if you hadn't have put if you're okay and let's say it rolls over so you're now going to end up with a breakeven entry of your first and a minus one are on your on this second entry if you had have just had stuck with your original entry then you wouldn't have had a minus one you'd have just had a breakeven trade yeah and people are like yeah yeah I just have the breakeven trade yeah I'm only interested in an overall profitability I don't care about win rate so I will put up with those ones that roll over knowing full well that in the bigger picture I'm going to be more profitable having a few of those that that roll over and end up not even having a break a breakeven trade it'll actually be a loss I'll take those losses because I know that those those trades that do go all the way will pay for the losses and and be more profitable so that's my attitude towards those so there you go just from third for thought for people who have not looked or considered adding into winning trades I do not advocate adding into losing trades that is not what we're talking about here we're talking about adding into trades as they go in your favor not adding into trades as they go against you that's something else entirely okay so at this point I'll just bear with me no no I'm still okay here right so at this point okay let's bring up the the account so we can have a look at the equity now I started this trading challenge three and a half years ago I didn't have a relationship with Tick Mill at that point so this challenge account is actually with a different broker just don't you're aware okay it's actually with a different broker so I'm just clicking stuff around here so let me bring that up where's that gone that's not it it's the zoom meeting just getting it all ready to drag it all across here so just for the purposes of this exercise the broker is Saxo Bank and I've just put my these are my this is the screenshot of the of the report I'm about to show you I've just had to take off my dress off there so this is me my first name actually is Kevin but everybody calls me Charlie that's what I like being called and that's what everyone calls me and and but uh my I was christened as as that so let's go over to the account summary so five don't know why I thought it was 573% it wasn't it's 571% over that time frame so let's go and have a look at the chart here of this so this is the just showing you the equity curve of the account from june of 2020 through to the end of december of last year and you'll see that yeah plenty of drawdowns plenty of drawdowns really nice you know winning phases here and here but you know some drawdowns here um some spikes there whenever it was a nice runs up and then then pull back and then then carrying on to new equity eyes so that's when when you get these spikes up in the equity is when I've been in a lovely profitable position and then the then the market just reverses against me so you'll see it a little bit clearer here is another chart equity here which shows you as I said when I started the challenge in the june of 2020 immediately went into drawdown there so um but then from then onwards so this is just where I am above zero or below zero so it never went back below zero and ultimately ended up with that return there and so yeah so I mean this is at a this is what I call this is aggressive this isn't I don't trade with this amount of aggression on my my main account so Kamal good point Kamal has asked what risk per trade are you using um on this now I have to emphasize this is a trading challenge it's a speculative trading challenge so I will risk up to two percent of the account balance on a trade okay so I don't a lot of the time but I allow myself to do it if I want to so up to two percent a lot of the trades actually start off at half a percent or one percent risk then I might then add to them so I might still then add to them but then I'm trading the stops up as well but um but yes I I can do two percent at risk per trade I wouldn't trade at two percent risk per trade on my main account I trade substantially lower than that I think that as you get older or if you're trading on larger capital you don't want the volatility of of you know in your returns so I don't want the higher volatility potential that comes with trading you know one two percent risk per trade um so on my main accounts so this is a speculative challenge okay so that's really the the main stats there the rest is just going through and just showing the costs and the overnight fees and stuff like that so that's in the main the the performance there on the challenge um and where I've got to to date so what the the continued goal of this challenge is I will continue it I'm going to carry on with this so the account had got to by the end of last year I think about 128,000 pounds so it started on 20,000 and as of when I did as I said when I did the that update webinar um it was on 128,000 that's taken three and a half years to get to that I'm going to carry on trading this like I've said at the beginning of tonight's webinar so I'll carry on trading this until uh well I don't know until I get bored I guess or um but we'll just see how it goes and that's what I said at the beginning when I started it on 20,000 we'll see how it goes can I get it to 70,000 once I've got it to 70 I thought well might as well carry on um and then we'll just see from there onwards and that's exactly where I'm at at the moment so every year at the end of the year in December I do an update on it I'll do an update December for TickMeal um as well and I do it on my YouTube channel but um but I will do that then as well okay um yes I'm just having a quick look at the questions here do negative overnight charges swap account for any part of your long-term trades yes yes of course for instance would you normally stick to positive swap trades right good question from Paul there um the short answer is no I don't only trade positive swap trades it's lovely when they come along so during 2022 21 and 22 when I was shorting the year overall um then of course I was receiving the swaps there um but you can have some lovely trades trade setups where you're paying swaps I'm not going to I don't begrudge paying swap fees they're pretty small relative to the profits that you're going to that you generate Paul so I don't worry about them too much of course would I get into a long and try to hold on to a long for a year in the euro dollar probably not because the swaps are going to build but um up to three months it's okay it's all right yeah they're going to they are still going to build to an extent but um I'm comfortable with that so now bearing in mind Paul I'm trading euro dollar would I do something like that and go against the uh the swaps on something like the dollar yen probably not because if you were shorting the dollar against the yen because of the the interest rate differential being that much bigger then your swaps are going to be that much wider so of course it does depend on the currency pair that you're trading I'm trading euro dollar the um the interest rate differential isn't too bad and so um yeah I just put up with paying the swaps I'm not too fast hopefully that answers your question there good yep okay uh Ricardo sorry coming back to Ricardo said the problem is the survival rate of the position is added this is in talking about adding into positions yes uh it's a valid point um when you're adding into positions then as price rolls back over you're the most recent positions you may have added into added may well get uh stopped out absolutely but that's what I was saying with adding into trades um you know you have to put up with the stopouts as well right uh Jose is talking about can you go deeper into multi-time frame analysis yes um okay I will I'm I can see your questions coming through I will answer your questions if people have got questions by all means uh yeah now's a good time to be asking so if I come out to a quarterly chart first of all what I'm I'm just doing the basics here Jose of technical analysis so what I'll do is if you if I put my trend lines on now which I've had off all night you'll see that uh this is going way back here on the euro dollar you can see that I've got this major channel major trend channel here I've got also on this a major trend line from the highs of 2008 coming through the highs of 20 21 there so that dotted trend line I also got some more localized uh uh small time frame uh trend lines at the moment and some horizontal levels on the chart as well one at 114 one down um at 110 as well so what I'll do is I'll take uh a high time frame first of all quarterly chart and then just look for no horizontal support resistance and trend trend lines or or channels if they are there so then what I'll do is I'll then take a read on all of that okay now and I'll look at things like diversities as well so the euro for example on the quarterly chart has been diverging since 2000 since it made its lows here in 2017 um it made that low down to the low of sorry the divergence only emerged uh in 2022 uh down the low of uh late september of 2022 we got this divergence down here as well so um guess what have I been doing since late 2022 in the main been mostly on the long side of the euro dollar we had we keep that major major level as I talked about earlier on we're diverging down here we had all that negative sentiment down there and um so in the main ends why since late 2022 I've been um generally taking more long side trades than short side trades and so I'll start off with that that template there that that gives me my overall template then I'll come down to the monthly chart and see if there's anything um because when you zoom in you sometimes see a little bit more on the monthly chart so again I'm looking for where price may gravitate towards this sloping trend line I think is a really interesting level this long-term sloping trend trend line the that started commenced back in 2008 simple stuff but I'll get a read of where price is relative to trend lines support resistance and key moving averages as well so key moving averages like the 50 period moving average 200 period moving average I'll use in the analysis as well and so hopefully I'm just giving you a bit of a taster on just what I'm doing so I'm starting out on the higher time frames then working my way down all the way down to the weeklies and the daily so let me give you an example of the moment is a lovely pattern that I love this pattern on the weekly charts at the moment so if I zoom in a little bit here 110 okay this this level here price came up in to the beginning or early 2023 hit 110 reacted no one was surprised there big psychological round number level 110 um fact I was probably shorting there or a bit after I definitely bank profits on my longs cut that I was in at that time anyway then it comes back up to 110 again and it attacks it the bear in mind this is a weekly chart so on the daily chart lots of chop around that 110 backs off comes up to it again backs off then breaks through which ultimately becomes that's last July that became a what a effectively a false breakout we then had this three-month pullback took out the last lows in the in the prior sequence moving up back down here then did what came back up to 110 did a pullback back up to 110 again got through it a little bit little mini false break and then pull back again well the way that I'm looking at this chart this is just the way that I'll interpret this is that we've had multiple tests of 110 we've taken out these last rising higher higher lows here the successful retake uh or taking out of those higher lows only to then come back up again then we've pulled back again at the moment but it's relatively small at the moment so if we get back up to 110 again I'll be highly bullish for a breakout of 110 I see this is all just building towards ultimately if price comes back up to it a breakout so there you go answering that question there you know what do I do and then it's just a case of then just coming down I won't be waiting for a breakout on the weekly time frame this is all part of the analysis then I'll be using you know whatever I'll be using at the time if the euro was to go up to you know 110 then I'll be using entry techniques at that time to get me in around that area so still got a bit of work to do up there but but yeah absolutely is but you can start to get an idea of oh okay he's using that big time frame analysis is saying divergence on the quarterly chart so he's still looking for more upside then we got the patterns there on the weekly chart all around this you know false breaks of multiple tests of 110 are okay so this is how he's putting it all together every chart's different but I'm just these are all the techniques that I use and so I use a lot you know a lot of analysis techniques to get me in okay hopefully I've answered a little bit of that question there from Jose Sanam sorry Thanyani has asked are you strictly technical fundamental or both no as I said at the beginning of the presentation I'm using the fundamentals as well so as an example where I might use the fundamentals is if I take this now down to a daily chart a classic example of using the fundamentals is um classic example is this day here okay that's what I was looking for this day here so this was back in early October of last year um it was a volatile day that was non-farm payrolls day non-farm payrolls came out really high on that day you can go back and look and see what the numbers were the non-farm payroll headline number came out really high came out like 300 000 jobs created or something like that so the the the euro dollar should have gone down on the day and it did intraday by the end of the day though it came all the way back up so that's a classic example of when I'll take something from a macro perspective like i.e. just on this occasion just a piece of news and if the market doesn't want to go where one might think it should go based on that news you've got to read the price action so that's um something that I'll use as well but overall do I use the fundamentals um yes and no so right now I know like most of you know that if you look at Europe versus the USA which is the stronger economy well the USA okay where would that how would you have gone with that if that you know since October of last year if you would have been you know selling the euro dollar back down here because the you know the euro is you know the euro zone is is underperforming the US well it wouldn't really have worked for you because the euro has actually been appreciating or certainly into December then we've had this pullback since then admittedly but we're not at new lows or anything like that so I think it's important to be very familiar with the fundamentals especially the news the news releases that are coming out on a weekly basis really important at interpreting how the market price action is moving in in relation to that news but I have to take with a pinch of salt uh the overall fundamentals for example when um I've now zoomed out to that October of 2022 do you think the fundamentals at that time supported being long the euro dollar no they did not so sentiment was pessimistic you know the fundamentals favored the dollar against the euro um but there always can be times when there's going to be not just reversals but big reversals I'm not looking for reversal all the time you know that whole period I was you know taking lots of shorts and riding this trend but there are times when price gets into key levels like I went through earlier when you have to take notice of it so fundamentals yes but not all of the time is my point okay uh do you look at technical levels as targets like previous highs and lows uh or certain price levels uh kamal um well yes to all of that in the main I am my the targets I'm I'm using are usually prior highs or prior lows yes but they may well be like I just hinted I just went through when I was doing the top down analysis bit it may be a trend line or something like that as well so I will use trend lines or channels as targets at times or a key moving average as well so I use a variety of levels what I'm then looking for is overlaps overlaps between you know technical price prior price level which may be overlapping with a historical trend line or horizontal support resistance as well or even a moving average so then I'm looking to overlap yes initial equity on it was 20 000 um yes on the challenge there up to how many pairs you tend to trade at once uh one Aidan actually um that's a slight fear um I will trade up to four up to four pairs but the reason I said one is because the majority of the time I'm not I'm in one trade at a time uh one market should I say at a time sometimes you know there are times during 2023 where I'd be in you know two different pairs uh and I think there was a point where I was in three different markets but maximum usually of four for me um but most of the time I'm just in the euro by itself sometimes I might be in the euro plus I might be trading the s and p at the same time and sometimes I might trade trading being an antipodean as well like the Aussie dollar or the New Zealand dollar so I do do it but it's I'm not in a lot at any one time most of the time I mean one maybe two but more often than not 80 plus of the time I'm only in one pair and then looking to add to it and build to it uh uh well I've got another question here where do you start and use outlets index movement I always find this start talking uh trying to think what the other question was there oh okay um where do you start start with the charts I always start with the charts uh Fannyani um so always start with the top-down uh approach to give myself a chart that I actually even like you know I like the euro-dollar I've been analyzing this thing for years and years and years so but most like most of the major currencies I look at them all it's really important to do inter-market analysis as well it's not just looking at the euro I do want to see where the Aussie's what the Aussie's doing what the the pound dollar's doing what the uh the Kiwi dollar's doing dollar yet you know I put trying to put it all together but yeah the top-down approach technical approach first and then you'll just start to get better at the sentiment side of things I look at cop reports I look at retail traders are doing um and I do scour around for you know when they're we're getting to extremes as I've shown some articles there tonight but usually there's not going to be extremes in sentiment when there's not been what a trend so if there's been a bit of a trend for over you know several months that's when you start having a look so right now there won't be any extremes in the euro-dollar at the moment or as far as sentiment is concerned at the moment because it's not really doing been doing that much in relative terms so um you'll get better at that you'll get better at that that's what I do uh do I have youtube videos teaching my analysis uh I do have a youtube channel yes uh most of the youtube channel uh access uh videos are mindset related um but by all means check them out yeah uh what are your exit strategies are William I think I've already sort of covered that off I'm looking at prior highs prior lows trend lines all that sort of stuff is basic stuff I'm just looking for overlaps with them yeah so like I went through when I just pulled my trend lines on if I come back out if the euro breaks through that 110 I've got some this is onto a monthly chart maybe I take this back to bear with me a second if I take this back to a weekly chart there we go so if the euro breaks through the 110 and then I'm you know I'm I know I'm in long positions what am I going to be targeting I already know what I'm going to be targeting is this overlap here between this long-term trend line this declining dotted trend line which I've already shown you goes back to those highs of 2008 and this 114 zone because this 114 zone is a nice historical level there against these highs but it goes way back look high of 20 early 2020 the COVID high then we had all of this price action for it back here and I can keep going back all the way back in 2015 16 so that that 114 now if I bring us back again you can now see oh right significant level overlaying with a declining trend line right well that's going to be a target zone yeah what do I think about prop trading accounts I think you mean the funded account type stuff I'm not really a fan most of them they're great businesses for them have a normal broker and make your money the traditional way you know they're great they're brilliant marketeers but in the main your your the amount of people I've come across who have said yeah do you know what I did it I spent a load of money on challenges I you know even when I passed then I found that they were moving this you know widen the spreads on me after a period once I was making a bit of money even the people that do make money which is very few you know all of these sorts of shenanigans are going on so so in the main I'd say no have a brokerage account trader am I do use fibs yes I do David Suarez yeah at times I will put the fibs on I'm not using fibs every day or every week but when I've got when I see identifier really nice run in a market I will put fibs on to see where the retracement levels may come in as well as far as Fibonacci is concerned yes do you have any live trading days it would be quite boring Ollie because I don't intraday trade anymore but but but I'm always in the market I'm very rarely in the 365 days of the year I'm very rarely flat I spend most of the year in positions so yes I'm always either at looking to add to positions that I'm already in or initiate a new entries so yes I am in I'm still I'm pretty active yeah where do I think the best information for for learning check me out just Aiden just google me and you're you you can you can get in touch and just google me yeah how would I advise a beginner scalper don't do it lebo is would be my advice there simple the reason I say that is because for very short-term trading like that if you're a beginner trader then you haven't built the the the emotional resilience to the markets you're going to be way too emotional towards it you'll just end up losing money doesn't matter what your strategy is even if you find something you think is good the market will get you anyway emotionally so you're not ready for it so I wouldn't recommend it there you go that's a real direct advice and use EMAs in your trading use SMAs what's the difference and why is gelita yeah exponential moving averages wait the more recent data so if you had a for example a a 50 day moving average and it was an EMA then it's exponentially weighted to I don't know to what let's say the the last 10 periods within that 50 period moving average is a bit more the higher weighting to the more recent periods so what that means is the moving averages will will move more aggressively along with price a simple moving average doesn't do that it's simple that's the difference between the two there are reasons why I use a simple moving average over and above a an exponential one such reason is I'll tell you sometimes you get a situation whereby price has done a pullback so prices maybe is in a move in an oval trend and it and it does a bit of a pullback and it slices through something like I use a 20 period moving average you could use a 21 on a lot people use a fifth number use a fifth use 21 and but it's coming to a nice support zone down here whoops it's coming to a really nice support level here and I often say the moving averages leave clues the 20 if it's still facing upwards it's a clue that yeah there's a good high likelihood the price will will will bounce back up to the moving to the moving average itself so it gives me a really nice heads up at times oh we've come down into support and the 20 still facing up I'll use it with a 50 as well but it doesn't happen as much from the 50 but it does happen with it so I want to use an SMA if I had a 20 exponential moving average it would have just moved over and I never would have seen that pattern so for me I prefer SMAs raw account or standard account for trading yeah Iqbal if you are intraday trading then probably a raw account you would give you an edge it's a raw account isn't worth it I don't think if you are swing trading so if you are sort of scalpy you know very short and short-term intraday trading then probably a raw account otherwise just a standard account would be I would say yeah no need to pay the extra costs. Fannyani I did answer your question you'll have to get hold of the the recording yeah just get in touch with tickmill or tickmill will be getting in touch with you anyway and so but otherwise if you don't want to wait get in touch with them and ask them for tonight's recording please explain the major key level support resistance don't so I've already done that so I might come back to it I've probably supply and demand so you're talking about there but yes form resistance I'll come back to that because I've already just gone through a bit an element of that on this chart anyway Cecilia hello Charlie do you use VWAP and would and would and Angkor VWAP no I don't that may be more appropriate for very short-term trading Cecilia but as I'm swing trading then no I don't but maybe you can still use it for the for my trading but there's only so much you can use and so if I put too many overlays on there'd be times when VWAP might be useful to me and there'll be other times when it's no use whatsoever so you have to I've looked at most methods in trading over my 27 years and had to decide what I like what I don't like trading is a very personal thing so I could add and I do use a lot of techniques kept things fairly high level here this evening but something like VWAP or many other techniques are absolutely fine but what they would probably do for me is sometimes they might be useful then other times they might keep me out of a trade that actually ends up being a brilliant trade so I'd rather not bother so hopefully that answers your question but nothing wrong with it it's just personal you know as a trader you can't use everything you have to just use what you like yep loads of questions coming through still here at the moment I'm happy to keep going what do you think about grid trading and trade analysis I mean the direction of the trend with dollar stop loss and dollar take profit I don't know anything about that at least I can't really help you there that never heard of it so obviously it is something but it's not something I've ever looked at or come across so yeah sorry can't help you there how long did it take you to get your mindset comfortable with drawdown periods a really good question Kamal I think what probably a more important one is you know how long did it take my mindset to get used to just trading and I would say about two and a half years the first two and a half years it took that long to get me used to the ups and downs and trying to get on top of my discipline in that two and a half years there so I would say that was the case but as far as getting comfortable with drawdown periods it would have probably no doubt it would have taken longer than that because although you can get to a point where you're successful and profitable as a trader but to get truly comfortable with drawdown periods takes years and years and years and it's constant work in getting used to that as an example I had my biggest drawdown ever in 2018 I was 20 years or more into my trade over 20 years into my trading at that point and then I've just had my biggest ever drawdown now psychologically I'm at that point fine for it you know but it's still to someone who might only be five years into their trading that might be a real challenge you know so it it does take years and years of you know just working on your mindset to to get more comfortable with it one of the best things that you have is experience the more times you have a drawdown and then you trade out the drawdown adds to the experience of okay I've been here before when the next drawdown comes and then the next one you've been there before and so yeah instead of the ATR being to determine the stop loss can the MACD be used to determine the stop loss in any way I don't know I don't use an ATR anyway to determine stop losses but that's fine to use but I don't personally but could you use the MACD to determine not that I know of and not really thought of that I've never come across that sorry I've probably not pronounced your name very well so I've never come across it so I don't think so though no I would rather you you base your stop loss based on the price itself not on an indicator how many instruments do you trade the question your next question what's the best when is the best time to enter a trade I've skipped that because there is no best single time to enter a trade that's why I'm not not bothering to answer that because any time can be a reasonable time to enter a trade it is what's important is the setup is what the setup you're using not anything about the time how many instruments you trade Tony you've obviously come in a bit late over 90% of the time I'm trading the euro dollar Tony so over 90% of the time I do trade stock indices S&P Nasdaq Dow at times and I do trade other major currency pairs as well but no 90% plus of my trading is euro dollar just personal choice it's the biggest currency bear and I'm quite happy trading it I'm in positions a lot of the time through the year so okay I think we are about there and I'm very conscious that it's now we're an hour and a half into this webinar here tonight so if anyone's got any more questions by all means do quickly write them down I can carry on but but otherwise we're we're getting close to the end here um again um very thankful to Tick Mill for organizing the webinar here tonight and I'll be back to do another one I'm sure fairly soon um I've done a few for Tick Mail now over through last year so by all means if you want some more technical ones I've done some previous technical ones with Tick Mill in 2023 so do if you are in touch them ask them for some of the other webinars I've done as well but otherwise I will certainly be back at some point in the next couple of months to do another one but let's just see do if any other questions before we wrap this up properly do you think trading will be more regulated rule more regulated in the UK yes I do Kamal yeah I do I think that not just in the UK I think in Europe and Australasia or Australia and New Zealand so I think the trading in 10 years time will look will be different to what it is right now and so across the board the regulators it will become more regulated why do I think that this is a you know I could take spend a half an hour on that subject but the bottom line is we live in a world whereby governments don't want people going out gambling uh whether they're betting on the horses or races or sports or whatever they know they're it's allowed but they try to regulate it and it's the same with financial trading what they don't want is loads of people out there a government doesn't want its citizen and too many of its citizens going out there and losing loads of money in sports betting or or financial trading even so they know I know have no doubt that they will impose more regulations you'll still be out of trade but there there'll be more regulations in the future to to stop newer traders in 10 years time whether a new trader will be out of you know if they're based in the UK or Europe in 10 years time whether they'll even be out of trade or not I don't know I don't know I'm just speculating there but it wouldn't surprise me either regulations to an extent get to some degree or another anyway get tighter in 10 years time thanks David for a beginner which is better between an EMA and an SMA well LIBO I'm going to be biased and I'm going to say an SMA because that's what I use as I went through there do you think regulators will ban automated bots on mt4 and mt5 in the coming years or platform that allow AI trading maybe maybe on that one will they ban automated bots I don't know if it's something you've created yourself I don't know there would there's plenty I guess there must be so many automated bots that just go and massively over trade and just blow people's accounts up I think that's what you're probably referring to so yes I'm sure they'll want to come down on that sort of stuff as much as they can yes I'm sure but there's lots of automated bots that are good in it so as well so but yes trying to reduce the leverage the exposure then yes I'm sure they're probably trying to do that yeah that's something is there any ECN broker you know well just use tick mill tick mill still an ECN broker are they not so I'd say tick mill thank you for your time thank you if I missed anyone here strategic asset allocation or technical asset allocation or I don't know the answer to that one because I don't quite understand the question so on that one so sorry I don't quite understand your question there bear in mind I mean you're talking about asset allocation so you're now talking about pork having a portfolio I'm talking about trading here trading financial instruments using the likes of futures contracts or CFDs for FX so asset allocation per se isn't important when it comes to those you know using risk management is important so if you've got $10,000 in a trading account you should only risk a very small percentage on any one given trade so it's a bit different to asset allocation because that's when really we're talking about having a portfolio yeah right okay I think we're about there I've seen lots of thank you so that's really very kind of you thank you for coming along and spending your time with me the year this evening and hopefully it's giving you some food for thought right from the beginning and I know you so quickly will forget stuff so do I do encourage you to get the recording they won't have the recording until probably tomorrow but I would encourage you to get the recording because there's bits in this that you may forget so yes but thank you so much for coming along tonight and hopefully I'll see you again soon