 Yeah, and when you do real money, but even like that, even like that my account I started with 24 euros. I had 30 euros initially. I traded like 200 trades just playing about you know, what I was learning on technicals. I lost about six euros and I started with you with 24 euros and I was following your insights every week What trades are you taking and why? It makes sense for me. So I remember I had like 18 successful trades in a row, no losses. And then I lost a few, then I won another 15. That was what made me take the leap because in about three months or so when I was following you from that 24 euros I had my account in euros. I had not one account to I went up. Instead of blowing it, I went up to 70. Hi, my name is Liam Rowe, Covenancy Trader and Trading Coach at Trading180.com and I have an interview with a Trading180 member, Daniel who has agreed to do an interview and a review I guess of Trading180, the mentoring group and his experience and he's been doing really well recently and yeah, welcome Daniel and thank you for doing this. Hello, I'm very honored to be here. I've been with Trading180 since April last year. I'm in my first year, I'm still a beginner I think, compared to the other guys in your group. And I was still covering some of the basics when I was still learning the basics when I started with you. Oh, really? Yeah. I didn't even know some of the things you guys were talking about, including in the technical side, but you know, that journey led to me going there. And so I would say from the very beginning, whatever I'm saying is not financial advice. I'm not considering myself an experienced trader. I'm somewhere between, you know, beginner and intermediate. I started learning about trading about a year and a half, two years ago, okay, covering the basics. And so I would say, let's consider how would I, how did I think about trading? How did I go into getting to trading? How did you get into trading? Yeah, yeah, I guess. So I was, I discovered that, you know, I can have access as a retail trader on the market. See, you know, around 2014, okay, I was back in my home country. Now I'm in UK. I was in Romania. And, you know, I was thinking, how do I get out of this rat race? Because I did everything the society told me to, you know, being a good student at school, you know, getting all those extracurricular activities, you know, go to a sports club, go to educational competitions, I had a scholarship outside my university, I went to university, I went to the army service, you know, I worked for the state, I worked in private, I had my own business. I really, at that point, I couldn't really show for the amount of effort I put in everything I was doing, something that was making me proud. And I was thinking, am I supposed to struggle like this all my life? So what, what is the solution to that? So I've been in contact with successful people, you know, people from the elite in my country, at that time, to my father, and I've seen the difference between how these guys were making a lot of money and how the majority of people, you know, working with the nine to five, it's a huge difference. If you have money, you don't make working just a normal job. You have to think outside the box. So I was thinking about it, and it was an open question. And then what happened? Something, something happened, and it was that light bulb for me that said, okay, this, this is, I like this, I'm interesting. You know, that movie, The Wolf of Wall Street, appeared in 2014. Yeah. And everyone was excited about it. It was everywhere and people were talking. And that movie, I think, is, there are lots of movies regarding trading from Hollywood, quite a lot of good ones. But this one really just put me to the floor. I still, I still, I was, is that real? You know, then, yeah, I found out that, you know, Jordan Belford actually is a real trader, a real person, based on real facts. Yes, some of it. And from that movie, you know, I said, okay, I want to find out more. And then I looked for other movies, you know, I saw Boiler Room, it was in 2000. I remember Boiler Room, yeah, remember that. Giovanni Ribisi in Vin Diesel. Vin Diesel, yes, yes. Well, I was, you know, stunned to see Vin Diesel in that movie. I was thinking, is she going to take a pen or a cup of coffee and destroy someone with the machine? And then in that movie I saw a reference to another movie, another classical Wall Street in 1987 with Michael Douglas, Charlie Sheen, Martin Sheen. And then they made a sequel in 2010, Wall Street Money Never Sleeps. And then the big short, the margin call. Yeah, margin call, yeah. So I started, you know, getting into that vibe of what is trading, how these guys are living, you know, the lifestyle and wow, I was. And, but anyway, the Wall Street just had a huge impact on me. And then there was another one, older one in 1983, if you remember, trading places, which is the Eddie Murphy. Eddie Murphy. He plays a homeless person who is mentored. You see, he's mentored. You know, that mentored thing is also a big, big point in my life. Because they make a bet, don't they? Oh, yeah, they make a dollar bet. They teach him how to trade and he turns out to be a greater success than his mentors. Yeah. So, okay, we could say, you know, are these, these are just movies, you know, imagination, fantasy, but are these things really happening only in movies? Because these two movies, I can, I will give you, I will give you some parallels with real life traders. Okay. Putting aside that Jordan Belford actually is a real person who is involved in trading was involved and he did some quite interesting things there, you know. But, you know, I noticed and probably most people who listened to us, they observed and that's the most interesting thing. There are the most successful traders, businessmen, you know, whatever, they have most of the times, they have humble beginnings. And sometimes even more interesting, they managed to lose everything. And then they make it back even more. And also, there are people who can even make a challenge out of it. And I've seen that too, they repeatedly start from like a very modest amount of money, and they multiply it and they can repeat the process. And I know that's crazy. It's something about it. Something about it. And it made me, made me think, you know, so, you know, Warren Buffett, another inspirational figure for me, he said at one point, that also helped me in my journey, if your salary is your only source of income, you're one step, you're one step away from poverty. Absolutely. And why, why did I go into trading? Because this, this skill for me is, is an amazing thing to have. So, who said that wealth is what you have left over after you have lost all your money. I learned it from Joe Vitaly. But that's the thing. Yeah. So after you lose everything, you still, what is your wealth? Is, so what is your what is the skill? That's the word. So whatever you have in your head, this skill, you can take it with you everywhere on the plant. If you have a computer connection, a laptop or phone or whatever, and you have this skill, you can make money all over again, you can start all over again. 100%. Nobody, nobody can take it from you. And that's, that's what made me think about trading, you know, and around that time also, trading kind of become a thing too, in my country, I was opening internet, you know, browsing and ads coming up for Oh, yeah. Broker. Yeah. Brokers. Yeah. Companies, you know, after this morning, looking, looking at the demo account, looking at the webinars, looking at sources of education. So, regarding this movie that I was mentioning, Wolf of Allstate, you know, there is this scene where one of his friends and his partners, Donny, he was also one of his neighbors, he noticed this guy, you know, Jordan Belfort with his lifestyle, his car, his clothes and everything. And Donny was working for a furniture business. And he is intrigued. And he approached Jordan and he asked him to teach him and to hire him and to let him be a part of his circle. Yeah. And that changed his life. That changed his life. And now the thing is, later, I was, I was a talk, you know, I was reading, I think the Daily Mail and I saved that article, I just ripped it from the newspaper because I was amazed. I was amazed. I was, this is another Wolf of Allstate, but this time it's from UK. And it's so, it's so, so similar. It's just blowing my mind. And I'm going to tell you exactly. In 2020, you know, there was a very big fall in oil. Okay. Yeah. So what happened in 2020, around March, March, April, nine traders operating from home, communicating on WhatsApp. And they were led by their own mentor, he's an elite old school trader. His name is Paul Commings. Yeah. And he was one of the top traders in gas and oil commodities. And he learned his skills in the pits of London International Petroleum Exchange. And these guys managed to push oil prices in the negative when Brentwood went down to, I think, 17. Anyway, it was crazy. Yeah. That was during COVID, right? Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I heard it. I read about it. Yeah. It's the story of the Essex boys. Yeah. The Essex boys. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wolf and the outskirts of East London. Yeah. Essex. Yeah. Yeah. They were part of a smaller company, limited company, Vega, something Vega. And they managed to push the prices down and they make about half a billion dollars in less than a day. Crazy, isn't it? This guy saw nine private traders, no bank, no hedge fund, no institution. These were guys like us, like all group, you know. And not all of them were experienced. Some of them were experienced. Some of them were in their 20s. So, but the best part about this story that I found for me particularly was it was interesting. And it kind of ties ties in the whole whole story. One of these traders before this thing happened had a Greek name. I think Ari, it is such he was working in a supermarket parking lot, you know, pushing shopping toys back into place. Really? Yeah. Yeah. And this guy spots one of these more advanced traders who was already part of the group in his fancy car. He approached this guy and he said, what are you, how are you affording this car and what are you doing? You know, the same thing that happened with Donnie and Jordan Belfort. Yeah, Jordan Belfort, yeah. Like the movie was made in 2014 and this thing happened in 2020. So it's crazy. It's so similar. It's so similar. So it changed his life. That guy who was working in the supermarket, Ari, he made like I think 75 million. The guy who was driving the car, the fancy car now he's racing sports cars. So he's living his dream. Yeah. So you see, it's not just in the movies. It's in real life. In real life. Absolutely. I have a similar story. I didn't make, you know, hundreds of millions or anything like that, but just in the perspective of reaching out to somebody. And he's the only person I ever reached out to personally on my trading journey, which was Mark Chapman. You know, I sent him an email, right? And it's not necessarily in person, but he was the first person that because I traded, you know, maybe about a year or two before him saw a couple of his videos. He just, you know, when you, when you hear something and it's just totally different from what you see online. And then I reached out to him, I emailed him and just said, same thing. Pretty much just, can you help me? And he did. You know what I mean? And, you know, I'm here now. So, yeah, I definitely can relate to the story. I definitely relate to that. And yeah, we, both of us, we are part of Mark's group. And I remember I'm not going into details about this story, but I remember Mark in one of his teaching videos. He speaks about one trader that he met in a pub and he had a similar story. This guy was so successful and he made, he was in his twenties and he had millions and he lost everything. And then he made it back again. Yeah. Even more. And that's crazy, but that is so, so inspiring. And then I'll go to the next story that I have regarding another success story. Another guy who started relatively humbly. But this guy also became even, in my opinion, even bigger than his mentor because this guy's mentor is none other than George Soros. So, you know, George Soros and... But who I'm speaking to about is a trader called actually one of the best money managers in the world is worth currently about 6.8 billion dollars. Wow. His name is Stanley Druckenmiller. Yes, I have heard of him. Yes. So, Stanley was already a very, very good student at this. He had his own, I think, small hedge fund. He was noticed and maybe headhunted by George Soros because he saw the value in this guy and he got him in his own team and him and George Soros. They are behind the Black Wednesday in 1992 where they bet 10 billion. 10 billion against the sterling Bank of England was thinking to devalue the pound and they made one billion in one day. Now, it is arguably George Soros idea is Stanley's is both of them, but this guy, he had his own thing on the side. He had his own company. It's called the Duquesne Capital Management and responsible for several billions in assets. And he was earning about 30% annual return, which is very good for anything you can imagine. In 1999, so this guy was already accomplished. He was a legend. But in 1999, he shorted 200 million tech stocks and he lost 600 million and he ended the year down 18%. So, it can happen, you know, to anyone. Exactly. It happens to everyone, right? What was inspiring, this guy, you know, he was already like in his older years and he reached out to two young talented stock pickers. He reached out for fresh new talent. He told them, look, this tech stock for me is hard to understand. Help me understand it. Help me devise a new strategy and guess what happened? Next year, they end up 35% profit. So, what is that saying to me? It's saying mental flexibility. No matter how good you think you are, you always have to learn from younger people. Even from people you think they are maybe beneath you. No, they have their own version. So, this guy, that's his rate of success. I don't know if anybody could equal that. But there was an interview with him and that was the most inspiring part of it. There are a lot of successful traders, but this guy, the reporter asked him, do you think you are a genius? How do you do it? What is your secret? And that's the inspiring part. That's the part that I can even maybe is a bit similar to the trading places movie. He said, when I was young, I was no genius. I was a mediocre student. I was not in the 10% of my high school class. My sats were so mediocre that I went to Bowdown school because it was the only good school that didn't require SATs. And it turned out to be a very good unfortunate event for me. And regarding why I am so successful when I am trading because he said I had an incredible passion for the business and the thought that every event in the world affects some security price somewhere. I just find it incredibly intellectually fascinating to try and figure out how and what is the next puzzle and where it is going and what is going to move what. So remember when we talked first time, you asked me what I find about trading. Why do I want to trade? And I told you, for me, trading is kind of like the art of war is trying to see to the fog of war and see your opponent's movement and gather the information and deploy your forces, your money in this example in the most efficient way to get the biggest bang for your back. Stanley also said, and that's interesting regarding to mentorship. He said the first thing I heard from my own mentor when I got in the business was that this bulls make money, bears make money and pigs get slaughtered. If you are early in your career, as I am, and you have a choice between making fast money, higher pay, but short term and choosing a great mentor, take the mentor every time. So that's the thing. We have our own success stories in our group too. We have lots of good traders. I know we have one of our own who is like a partner in a hedge fund already. So that's unbelievable. And when he came to you, he said in one of his webinars, he said that he was kind of a beginner himself when he came to you, he wasn't really advanced, but he learned and a couple of years improved and he's doing what he loves. I'm pretty sure he's doing quite well. It's an amazing story as well. Excellent story. Yeah, amazing story from him. So for me, when you are trading, especially when you are learning how to trade is that learning curve and it can be overwhelming and you face losses no matter what. And it's so much to learn and like a year ago or more than a year ago, I was looking, you know, just like everybody at the trading forums and I was hearing or reading about traders speaking about their technical strategies. Yeah, you get lost in the sea of all that, right? That technical jargon, man, I was feeling, oh my God, I can't understand most of what these guys are. What language is that? They must be so smart because they are using these words that I can't understand. I was with a dictionary next to me and then sometimes they were speaking about their return rate and they were happy with 6% or 13% or 10%. But it's good. I mean, it's good. It's not a negative, but it's a bit more than the bank. For me, trading is a lot more than 6%. If I wouldn't be trading to make just 6%, really. I'm not making 6%, I'm making a lot more, but okay, we could put it to beginner's luck for me. No, it's not beginner's luck. You've been doing it consistently. In my first year of real trading, starting with you, I made back the money I paid for the lifetime subscription several times. And I never blew my account, but I will go back to that later in the story. But I want to end up, the question is, how do you become a good trader? Because I said, I don't think, I think I'm about 10% or what I need to be, just to be a decent trader. I'm not a decent trader. I'm just starting to feel it on my fingertips. I get some good moves, but I'm not here there. But at least I'm not losing more than I'm making, but I'm not making what I hope I need to be making yet. But I am getting there slowly, but I am. So I think I would say the step one is education, understanding the concepts, understanding what you are reading, what you are exposed to. Because once you have understanding, that leads to your own creative trade ideas. And then you apply them in your trades and you turn them into something profitable. And it is not necessary to over-complicate and overthink and get lost in dozens of details and having to resort to many indicators, either technical or fundamental. Because when you over-complicate things, and I see that including in our group sometimes, and I've seen everywhere, you over-complicate things, you look at too many things. You end up on analysis paralysis. Analysis paralysis 100%. Or burnout. Or burnout. Yeah, you're right. Because mentally you're thinking too much about this and that and all the pairs and all the different combinations and possibilities that could possibly happen. Yeah, you get burnout. Yeah, I've been there. I happen to know quite a few traders myself. Some are less successful and some are really, really good. And I had a chance a few times, it's very difficult to do that. But sometimes a few times I got the chance to look at really, I mean top traders, millionaires. Look over their shoulder. Look over their shoulder and see a few seconds what is on the screen, how these guys are trading. And you will see that they don't waste too much time looking at a ton of indicators and they move fluidly and they seem to have a sixth sense of where the prices are heading. They don't spend 15 minutes or I don't know 15 hours to look at 100 indicators or 100. They know they feel it. So that comes with practice. Do you know the first time I heard that, right? Mark told me he worked with a trader. I'm not going to mention his name but he is a definitely very high net worth individual and he worked quite closely with him. He was headhunting by him. Anyways, quite a big hedge fund manager in the UK. Anyways, he, again, as you say, looking over someone's shoulder and seeing what they do technically and you wouldn't believe at the time when Mark, you know, when he told me that the trader doesn't trade candlesticks. He looks at a line chart. Do you know what I mean? He looks at a line chart. It's crazy. He doesn't waste time looking at pin bars and doggies. It's a different, you know what I mean? It's a different thing, right? What I find, so about trading, there is good news and bad news. The bad news is no single indicator really will make you rich. Some of them work better than others. The good news is no single way to make money. There are multiple strategies that work. 100%. It's not the only one. There are multiple ways to make it. If you are getting good at it and you get good at managing your risk and understanding it and developing that success, then yeah, it goes. So anyway, from here, how did I get to find trading 180? I think that would be like our next step. Yeah, how did you find trading 180, yeah. So until this point, okay, I got the motivation, you know, I start okay. I'm in the right direction. I started to look for sources of education. So first I said, okay, I need to, I'm considering, I'm a beginner. I started from zero. So I found this site is called babypips.com. Yes. So I like about you that is organized so much as a school. It takes you to grades. You have like smaller quizzes and it basically takes you from zero and explains in a simple way. So after I was learning a lesson on baby pips, I was looking on YouTube to expand that lesson. I was looking for the videos or channels that were explaining and demonstrating how to use and how to understand the concept that I was just learning on that site. So taking from the simple to, and this led from one thing to another. So what I learned and I learned that in order to have the best chances to open and initiate a successful trade with probabilities on your side, you have to do market analysis, which was compared with a chair with three legs. You have technical sentiment and fundamental analysis. You remove any of the legs of that chair, it becomes unstable. It's not a proper chair anymore. So I would like to each of them and how that led to you. Regarding technical analysis, a trader looks at candlesticks, chart patterns, Fibonacci, support and resistance levels, trend lines. Everybody looks at that. And if everybody looks at the same things, then of course very few people get proper results. Then you get these various indicators and there are hundreds and thousands of indicators. Some better than others. They were tested them. You can test them. They are similar, some of them. But in my opinion, before I even met you, my opinion was that when devising a technical based strategy, only technical, you have the best chances if you understand that technical indicators, they measure and look at different sides of price action. So what I'm saying, we have trend indicators, we have momentum or oscillating indicators, we have volume indicators, we have volatility. So I was thinking to myself, a good technical strategy should employ Ivanovich. And if there is a strategy, yeah, you do take into account that. And I love that, the T80 strategy. I don't think you ever mention it directly, but understanding some of your strategy now, at least the technical part, you look at an indicator regarding each of these things. You don't dismiss it because there is this war between the fundamental school of thought and technical school of thought and they dismiss each other. Oh, that is not working. No, actually, both of them are working. Exactly, they work together. They're not diametrically opposed. It's that they work together. And this is how we, but you'll find that a lot of, for some reason, retail traders seem to think fundamental analysis doesn't work. And I can understand why there's a lot of miseducation on there. But as you say, there are three legs to the table. There's sentiment, fundamental and technical. So we do use technical. Some of them, we look at them to exploit them because we know other traders will be looking at them and they will move around there. What I like about your technical part of your strategy is that you put a lot of wheels into it. I know you tested a lot of those indicators and you tweaked them. You put certain settings on them. And you integrated it in a larger strategy. And I was thinking about the same thing before I met you. Of course, it would take me 10, 15 years from now if I didn't make it. But that helped getting a good confirmation, a good entry level with higher chances. And those things are part of the group lessons and it saved me a lot of time with that. And then we have sentiment analysis. So technical analysis information you find on YouTube plenty. Sentiment analysis a bit less. Do we look at that? We look at market sentiment. We discuss the economic news. We try to understand if the market sentiment today will create a new trend or influence in our fundamental bias or not. So basically is the buying the rumor and selling the fact. That is the... That's proper sentiment analysis. I would put it in those few words. If the data is not supporting the narrative, then what trader will see a technical trader? You will see fake outs. You will see traders squeezed out of their positions. That's what's happening. So if you only use technical and you don't use proper sentiment analysis, this is what happens. But those are the first two legs and now we go to the third one, the fundamental analysis. And that is what led me to your channel. Brilliant, brilliant. Wow, what a journey. What a journey you've been on. And that's amazing. And yeah, a lot to kind of digest there. But as you say, I came to, you know, it's, I guess a similar conclusion when it came to fundamental analysis. And again, one of the first lessons I actually learned from being very heavily technical based. Before again, I met Mark was one of the first lessons he taught me was it was the euro dollar. And he actually told me about interest rate divergences, right? He didn't say it as a divergence, but pretty much one, you know, it was when the euro and 2014 of 2013. It started introducing quantitative easing for the first time, which we know now is designed to depreciate and devalue a currency at the time. I had no idea, you know, you spoke to me about it, but I was so focused on technicals because of, you know, my history. I'll kind of dismiss fundamentals until it must have been about a year afterwards. And if you want to look at a euro dollar chart, yeah, just look at what happened from 2013 all the way to 20 like end of 2014, 2015. And you'll see it dropped like it dropped like maybe 2000 pips, something like that. It was massive, massive drop. It was the first time that it, you know, I guess essential bank, I think the first time anyway, or in recent history had introduced quantitative easing. And so that made me really, it really opened up my eyes to the fact that there are things going on beyond the price chart that are actually moving price that is actually moving price and it's not the technicals. You know, and so you were saying that you discovered, say discovered fundamentals and, you know, in a similar way, right on your interpretation. Well, I exactly, I was at a point where I had the three question marks. I heard, you know, bits and pieces you find on YouTube. People mentioned these things, but they don't go into details and maybe made me curious. So I had, I had three concepts at that time that I was really wondering what is this about. So I was looking about to find out about how to do proper fundamental analysis. And a very interesting is that I was hearing about this concept of smart money trading and how that is tied up and so central to fundamental analysis that was one. So I wanted to learn trading techniques using fundamental analysis. And also I, there was this concept that was called the stophands. And I've seen this guy who before he was going to work, he was waking up three hours before he was going to work in the morning. He was specialized in stophands and he was making somewhere between $500 to $1800 every day when he was trading and he was then going to work. And I was thinking, how is this guy facing his colleagues? I mean, I want to have this skill. I want to pop up that phone, you know, and everyone pisses me off. Let me show you how much money I made today. Don't make me angry. I can go without this job you can. So I had this, every day it was crazy, but he wasn't explaining how he was, he was saying stophands, but he wasn't explaining how they are functioning. I couldn't understand exactly how they are. So I was looking for these things, smart money trading, stophands, fundamental analysis. And on your channel, on YouTube channel, you speak about all this and you speak about even more. I had no clue about what CPR is. I never even heard about it, what the CPR is, not to mention other things. So I found even more than I was expecting. So I started watching your videos, you know, and I see, okay, this content, so I'm watching one hour of your videos. And sometimes, you know, on other channels, you watch one hour of YouTube videos about some trading thing. And you realize that out of that hour you are left with something that you could say in two phrases in less than a minute. So when I'm watching your videos, either YouTube or on our own group is a high, high consistency, rich content. You take everything you simplified, but you get left with a lot, you know. And I remember this was legendary. I remember I was standing on my feet in the middle of the room. I put the lights off just to concentrate on the screen and I was watching one of your webinars. One hour long it was called Forex Fundamental Analysis Full Course. One of the older ones like three years ago. I know the one, yeah. You were explaining everything around how things time to each other or why we should look around GDP inflation rate, inflation interest rates. And also you gave advice about good sources of information like Bloomberg, Reuters, what bank reports where are they? I didn't know that banks they are into trades and they publish the trades and why they do it. I had no clue. Trading economics calendar. Another thing that I'm looking every morning when I'm waking up the first thing I'm looking at is trading economics calendar. And I was flawed and I watched that thing two times and I start writing things on a piece of paper. It's the first time to devise this trading strategy. I still have that paper. Really? It's crazy. I look at it now and oh my God. So I subscribe to your channel and I had a trading account already opened with Wanda because it allows me to trade with small amounts of money. If you want to trade 1 euro and you want to trade 10 cents, you can open a trade and you can risk 5 cents, 10 cents, 30 cents. Brilliant. That's the best way to start. They do have a demo but they want to have some money in it. You want to have skin in the game. I wanted and man I imagine like that's not so long ago. It's like a year and a bit more than a year, not less than two years. I was trading 5 euros and it was going against me 20 cents and I was sweating and I was looking at the phone for three hours. I said this is not healthy but it was that adrenaline that I wanted to get used to because on a demo you don't get that feeling of rushing. Not real money. When I traded on a demo I made like 6,000 euros in 5 minutes and when you do real money. But even like that my account I started with 24 euros. I had 30 euros initially. I traded like 200 trades just playing about what I was learning on technicals. I lost about 6 euros and I started with you with 24 euros and I was following your insights every week. What trades are you taking and why? It made sense for me. I remember I had like 18 successful trades in a row. No losses. I lost a few then I won another 15. That was what made me take the leap because in about three months or so when I was following you from that 24 euros I had my account in euros. I had now 100 pounds too. I went up instead of blowing it I went up to 70. 24 to 70? Yeah and I was a subscriber to your channel and I was trading according to what you were saying and I know on YouTube you don't give all your ideas. You give some of them. Of course yeah you can't give everything on YouTube. But you know that was what made me know it's okay. I'm taking more profits than losses. I had some small losses. It is true that you know I wasn't trading properly and that I had like very large stop losses or even no stop losses because if you trade 5 euros you cannot afford the price to go against you. You know 2-300 pips you know and then it goes around you know you can do that now with proper money but then it was another thing. But still it helped me a bit psychologically to do so and that made me think okay I should join because this is good stuff this is working. So content also very good quality I was finding in one place all the stuff that I was initially going all over the YouTube to find and I wasn't satisfied. You made me understand you know you made me understand those concepts and I was discovering new things that I wanted to learn about. So also at that time I had some issues some small issues at work you know I have a good job but it's a bit stressful and it can be dangerous. And I know this feeling that maybe some of our listeners have you are terrified that if something happens and you lose your job you don't know what you'll do. And with you I got in that place where I wanted to be and Warren Buffett sums it very well. He says if you don't make money while you are sleeping you will probably be working until you die. So since I started with you I am making money while I'm sleeping. I am making money while I'm not living. It's a good feeling isn't it? I stopped all my colleagues most of them they do overtime to make ends meet. I'm not doing overtime anymore just today I closed some oil positions that I have like some of the worst ones that I have on top. Just a few of them I made the money I doubled the money for today I made the money I would make working today I just made it from closing a few positions. Just the worst ones you know. So you know what was I going to how fundamentals analysis would help with technicals because that's the point of it you know. If you're trading if your technical analysis is online with the fundamentals ideas you tend to get the best results that was one thing that really helped me since I am employing your strategy. And also I am very grateful that I was saved a lot of time in learning and testing a whole lot of indicators that they were there for me to study. You have some really good indicators used on your technical part because as I said they cover every side of the market. And they are they are already tested they are quick and I looked at I looked at them they are tested by other traders to see how how they do how efficient they are. And they have quite high scores you can even employ them on their own and you can get some good results. I am also so I don't have to go to every one of them to many of them some of them they showed the same thing. I am I am inquisitive by nature so I do play a bit on paper money or demo counted other type of indicators or similar just to see if I can come up with something or so you know another type of strategy just technical. If I have some interesting results on something but I have to test it more if I have something interesting I will bring it to you. We know we can discuss it we can look at it you know. Yeah it's always good to do research you know. One of the things I would caution against though is is sometimes if it's if it's working don't you know if it ain't broke don't fix it as they say you know. You know and so one of the things that I know for example is that a lot of traders do tend to once they have something that you know they they always we always want to improve things right you know see if we can get the best best best. You know tweak tweak tweak tweak tweak. I am not saying improving T80 T1 80 strategy because we mostly concentrating on longer trims. I was thinking if I can mess about about with some indicators for scalping mostly. So yeah that's scalping is something that I do sometimes just for fun you know very very small amounts and strict strict risk management. It's just like a bit of fun you know just messing about you know but it's not my main strategy but you know about scalping scalping. I've seen people doing it very good but it involves you staying in front of the computer. Yeah yeah yeah so that's why you gotta watch watch press you know I mean like you know you're in a minute chart and yeah yeah scalping. I don't know I don't know I tried when I first you know started trading and you know you've got to have a certain mindset you've got to be a certain type of person a certain type of personality in order to really you know be a scalper I think. I don't like it but I would I would just do it for fun or when I have some free time you know just to have a little play just for the fun of it you know just for the fun but not as my main thing. Hmm yeah so so what was some of your light bulb trading moments. Oh that's good that's good actually two of them I they came quite recently they should have come earlier you know I started employing them and there is also like quite impressive and very fast. So one of them that I I have trades on them or right now and they work very nicely is how to enter a trade using fractional lot sizing. I would say is your name I think I have another name for it basically when you divide the trade in smaller parts and it hits a different level so you don't in order to minimize the risk and increase the chances of hitting break even faster and. Yeah you know that's one thing that I learned and I'm playing with it and I love it and I learned where fair value is and how to leave a trade to run because I wasn't doing that and then I was kicking myself oh why did I exit. Take profit early you know and leave some of the runners go and they usually get better results than what I was hoping for you know in most instances so. They even if it's a small win is still adds up and absolutely every penny counts you know I mean every penny. I mean last two days I've taken some small but still it adds up you know it covers and another one and that's a big one and I kind of. So before you go into the next one so just for the light bulb yeah yeah the light bulb moment is is you know what what you're explaining is is that you know when entering into a trade what I you know do and. What Daniel was talking about is basically is dividing your position let's say for example most traders will enter a position that you know maybe 1% at one price point with their stock loss below price whereas. What I you know teach traders is to if you're going to risk 1% in fact you know what while you learn and I always say risk less than that right but if you are going to risk 1% as an example why not break that 1% down into several trades or maybe you're entering at three. Positions right let's say for example you know each is a third. And then you're not entering at the market so you enter one position at market the market order right then what you've got is a 50% retracement by or sell pending order depending on which way you know if you're buying you got by pending order 50% retracement. And a lot of times you'll find that prices actually retrace back down to that 50% right Daniel and give you a better price and then also as well you've got a third price where it's right at the basically the 100% retracement where it's right at the bottom. If you are looking at the chart right in front of us US dollar Japanese and you see a stop on there you see so you see exactly what you are saying about and I am in that I am in that from the top and then from. So I got hit back in I am into positions on US dollar Japanese and I mean. Yeah, so I'll just illustrate this so what you do is for the for the watchers is your basically dividing the position up into three or even maybe four positions if you really want to. Let's just do this quickly so one second where am I here we go so three positions, three entries, so at the close of the candle right is your market order, then what you're going to do is place 150% and then 100% you know sell sell pending orders and what you'll find is that prices tend to come back to those at least 50% and what it does it gets you a better risk reward right and so you've got, you know that let's say for example your stop loss was you know I don't know somewhere like maybe half the ATR maybe about 40 pips above or something like that, and let's say, you know, that's one of your entries. Yeah, right now you'd be in some decent profit. That would be one of your entries and then you would also have that as one of your entries which now is a profit awaited with all profitable trades but you can see the risk reward. If it does pop back up to the absolute highs right and so yeah that's a technique that I've used for several years and yeah it served me well it's definitely served me well. Yeah I am in that one in the two positions I almost got hit in the one on the top but yeah you know what I did you know I got in on the stop hunt and on the Monday guess what it stopped me out by about maybe about seven eight pips because it kind of went higher on the Monday and then it rolled over right so I managed to that was actually a break even trade for me because the first stop on that happened I think it was the Friday I managed to get a two to one on that position and then I had two positions open but those two positions were stopped out on the Monday so it was a break even trade and then it rolled over so yeah. On pounding the same story but I'm on two positions the same exactly the same. Oh you got in on that I got in on that as well. Yeah I got in on that right. Yeah we we we think we think alike we yeah yeah because I was thinking today about about the pound and I was thinking strength came from nowhere right and you know in terms of the move and you know the parabolic move and so yeah we got I got in up here. I was also watching that pound Aussie but it didn't really do anything it kind of you know still faffing about but I was looking to buy the the yen anyway and so yeah the stop that happened. All about here so you got in on that as well brilliant. Excellent yeah excellent excellent so definitely trade there. Yes I am happy that I have seen the setup just the way you've seen it and it works so nicely so yeah it's money in the back. I look at my it's on the green. I love seeing that green. You love seeing the green but you do have some reds. You know I mean it is red. Weeks and is even is even red months right. Nobody makes money every month not even the banks right. So yeah but it's it's it's about mitigating the losses and capitalise on the on the profits right. That's amazing. Speaking of the red I would go to the next light bulb moment. I'm going to admit you know I had I made quite until recently I had this rookie bad habit of trading as I was saying earlier I was trading with small sums of money. So frequently I was having very large stop losses or no stop losses. So yeah so since I started you know being profitable I started putting more money in my account. And taking bigger trades and that changed the story a bit. So I'm going to admit you know my mistakes and I'm going to tell exactly how it affected me what what happened. So it led me to some painful losses not too big. I'm still profitable but I give some of the profits back to let's say 30 percent 40 percent. Still I would have kept them but now looking back at it it was so stupid. I got trapped in some positions for weeks or months and I refused to take the loss. So you got caught in your position CPR. I should know better isn't it. The problem with that is that you have your you have your trading capital locked in. You have to add more money not to be stopped out or to be able to take more trades you know. Another thing you have to pay daily unnecessary broker fees on your position sometimes. Almost all the times almost all the times those trades actually reversed in my favor after some time. And also I added more positions so I can mitigate those losses. But what the way you know those those losses that I previously taken you know those those were added losses. So even if I was mitigating it was eating from the profits even if that trade turned to be very good. I wasn't enjoying the fruits of the idea of the table because I was giving it back. So most of the times I was exiting on a small loss or even break even or you know very small profit. Because I was terrified you know I was going to be caught again. I was terrified I'm going that's typical you know stop. The version bias right. So OK I decided I decided I have I rather trade smaller positions enter like a fractional trade type of entries. And so I can what that meant it was allow me to have more acceptable stop losses. So now right now if a stop loss hits and I got hit lots of time lately with some stop losses very small you know very very small. So I am comfortable with that and I see it as an opportunity to get back in the same trade at the next best next best level. Exactly. So eventually the trade will turn where you want to turn if your idea is correct. And you avoid it. You avoided those losses to add up and it from your profit. And what happens to me now. Yeah I might take a few five six stop losses maybe sometimes in a week or even but one good trade only one good trade covers five to ten stop losses. And sometimes you I mean even today today I covered ten times the stop losses I took all week in one trade. Brilliant. And that is key. And this is what I say as well. And this is what helps with fundamental analysis or fundamental analysis helps with right because if you're a technical trader you pretty much a following price which then means that if prices are going down and against you know if you were buying a level. It's like where do you then start to go short. But by the time then you start figuring out all right I should go short then guess what happens the market reverses on you. Whereas whereas if you're fundamental trader fundamental trader and understand value. You know one of the things that nobody knows is where the price is going to turn you have to accept losses like you know night follows day yeah it's going to happen. And so sometimes you can have a trade idea where you might you know where you're thinking to yourself. I know this is a bargain area but it might take you maybe two or three trades in order for you to maybe four or five in order for you to really get the most out of that and then on top of that. You know fundamentals helps you to hold the trade because you know a lot of traders will you know maybe take a few losses and then when they're in a profitable trade that what they'll do is they'll they'll come out of the trade. Once they maybe make back their losses so that they're back back to break even not really knowing that fundamentally in fact that could that trade could go you know 100 200 300 400 pips you can make maybe 10 15 times. You know your trade and so traders kind of get out of the trade because of the recent you know pain of losing maybe 304 trade and then being down and it rather be you know maybe break even by the end of the week. You know I mean yeah that's what happens so since I changed my strategy and I employ this common sense things I'm seeing the results yeah and I will never take take a trade again especially on currencies without that. Now regarding commodities my approach is a bit less on the technicals and more about the fundamental because with commodities may I love trading commodities is about seeing the value seeing the range seeing the historical prices. Yeah and seeing the world so some of the some of the commodities you know like oil I'm on I'm on I usually train trade Brent oil not West Texas but yeah if you can go. Oil copper silver gold but let's say oil we are looking up oil you know there is human life needs oil you need it in every aspect of your life so when I was seeing prices starting going down quite recently. And going below 80. Yeah. So below 80. Yeah. Yeah. For me that was a light bulb because I know opaque is not going to be happy with that and I know China is reopening and not only China or the whole world economy. Yeah. Summer is coming. Tourism is growing. We need it. We need to learn. And you see what happened recently. So from from 80 down I started buying everyone was panicking and selling because oh fear of recession banker and all that me I said no I said oil might go down to 60 to 55 where everybody is going but I'm going to load up on it so I started exactly. I remember you saying this I remember you saying this in one of the in one of the calls that we have maybe a couple of weeks ago yeah I remember. So I am in oil or I had the positions on the way down from 80 all the way down all the way down every hundred pips or so I was putting a small position. So the thing when I'm trading commodities I'm not going full full with full ammo on on the first position. I'm putting I'm putting a very small trade initially if it goes back up okay is a small profit but it's profit. And the lower it goes I start increasing it slower because I don't know exactly what is going to stop. I need to know what exactly yeah yeah yeah I need to be able to afford keeping those positions open I don't want to close until it reaches like a very very critical level but I know even if it stays lower is not going to stay at 60 maybe more than two three weeks or so is impossible because the world doesn't function like this you know. And that's and that's the level of confidence that your fundamental analysis gives you right because you know what you would be describing some people might say for example it's a martingale right you know I mean you're martingale down etc and to a certain extent you know it is right yeah yeah you know I mean it is but you're doing it with confidence and I wouldn't and I wouldn't advise anyone else out there to do it right unless you are really confident in your fundamental analysis because otherwise if you're just using technicals it really you know. No that wasn't a technical I wasn't really looking for technical levels I knew I knew the value you know the value of something value and I know I know how much my account can afford so I know how to position I know I'm not. Overbuying you know I just if it can go down to 17 and I can still hold it yeah yeah I can afford so yeah brilliant so now you see it went up up and I started adding back on the way up because I know the new trend is forming we have signals that show us a new trending and I started adding back up so I even added up positions from 80 to 82 yeah and I sold them today and I got some nice money on them and all my positions that are left are around are below 80 so I'm going to hold on to these positions probably around 94. Yeah 94 95 I think a city bank in a golden sex are talking about you know about the 95 now to $100. No I don't care if it's the second half of the year I don't care I wait because it's money in the bank and it's the same with copper now copper starts to go down I am still on profit on every position on copper. I got in on this as well. I am down so when he started falling down I started buying and I have positions all the way down to the lowest possible part I added more. So I could sell everything now I would be on profit but I actually I'm looking for I'm hoping the price keeps going down because I want to add more. See I mean I mean only one position I took profit on one position here I wanted to get in on four positions but I'm getting in on two and so one of them is profitable I can't lose in fact if even if that position comes down like you said I'll just add in. No it might come down very little but in the long term this on this trade I'm going to wait no matter what I'm going to sell at the somewhere close at the high I'm not sure of four point towards something what is on the days you can if you go on a higher time frame it can give us a bit more insight on. Okay. So yeah around four point to four point three maybe could be a good place to as yeah around here. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe one more. I'm sure it will go even more than that. Yeah. I mean yeah long term copper is you know there's there's copper supply issues etc. And a lot of demand for copper. Yeah I'm sure it will go probably to even five if you if I'm willing to wait it out enough I don't know. But definitely I'm not sitting below four point to definitely not exceeding. Yeah. And again, I think, you know that again, the fundamentals and understanding why really fundamentals. Let's you, I guess, understand value, right which is the value of a commodity the value of an exchange rate the value of a stock. I know that there are traders out there who, you know, believe that price will tell you everything you need to know and that's just not true. Yeah. I mean, it's like it sounds good. Right. It's a nice meme. It sounds good but it's not true. Price. Price tends to be cyclical if you if you go to higher time frames like weekly or monthly. You'll you'll see that sometimes you have this huge drops that are caused by fears and they never stay too much on that. And usually they go higher than they used to be after that crisis is the typical cycle of, you know, boom, bust and recession. And usually that's what happens. And I had the same idea like few weeks ago on silver, it had a huge drop. And you see you see you see the lower gone days. You see it went really here you see the lows you see those lows. Oh, I was buying this. I was buying I was buying from I don't know from 22 down all the way all the way down and then then with the money I made on that silver trade that it was the trade of the March month for me. Two weeks of holiday. Brilliant. Brilliant. You can see the stop on right. Very, very nice. Oh yeah. I caught that one. I caught the next one too. I knew that and you see. I learned how to I learned from you. I learned from Mark. I learned how to see the value. Yeah. And I learned not to panic. I learned to hold hold and not to get greedy. You know, I knew my account can take you. I was hoping to get even lower. I was okay. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Brilliant. And so to wrap this up. Brilliant. Thank you very much. But how would you describe the difference between learning from videos on YouTube to actually learning from a mentor. Well, that's very interesting. You know, you could you could watch the videos and you will get a very good insight of proper proper trading and comprehensive trading. But you know, it's about what the mentoring is actually is for for a trader and me in my life. I applied mentoring in other areas of my life and every time the results change my life 180 degrees because I came from from being. Broke from being depressed from having failed relationships. All that I changed through through mentoring. Incredibly, everybody's telling me Daniel, you're not the same. What happened to you? What happened? That's great. So I was, I thought I was aware of other traders with more experience, like more money, better skills in technicals than me way better, you know, and they were losing vast amounts of money. And they had no satisfaction or optimism regarding their trade and their future. And they were putting me down too. They were saying if I can't do it, you can't do it either. Really? Yeah. This type of people, you know, they are in all our lives sometimes. For me, for me, a mentor is someone who is successful in their field, someone who has something to show for it, you know, something who encourages you and sees the potential in you. So that's, you know, that's the difference between trading from what you learn from videos and being part of a group and having a mentor, you know, because a mentor is someone who will be there for you and encourage you and give you answers for your questions. So for me, actually a mentor is not actually someone who is necessarily physically present in your life. Sometimes he is someone who is teaching you something through a book, through a video, even that, even that is even better than maybe a friend who has no ambition and he tries to pull you down. When you try to rise up and they get suspicious and jealous. Yeah. And, you know, because you're trying to overcome, you know, in my life, I try to keep people who are only better than me in somewhere else. People that I admire, people that can teach me, people that can show results and people who genuinely care about me, you know, people that encourage me and they believe in me. For coming to T 180 trading to be more specific about it, you know, I came to you as a beginner. And I was still learning as some of the basics, some of the basics I knew some I didn't know. And now I'm making study gains. Now I'm understanding what I'm looking at when I'm seeing price action, I know why is doing what is doing and where is it going in the long term. I am enjoying trading. I find it satisfying. I never blew up my account. I have increased it. I can prove it. As I told you, I covered the lifestyle subscription plenty of times, three, four times in my first year. I am withdrawing money now from my profits and once this oil and copper, especially the oil if it hits where I want to hit, I'm only trading from my profits. All my initial investment. I'm putting it back in my bank account. I'm very, very close to it. I'm working on it. I no longer fear what can happen to me if I lose my job. I don't long. I don't do overtime anymore. I can at least survive from from trading. I don't know if really properly leaving. I'm still learning. I have a ton of things to learn in front of me. I know that I still have problems with one commodity. That commodity is called time. I wish more. I wish more time to learn more and test more and practice more and be on the charts and hunt for trades, you know. I am more confident in my skills as I've shown. I no longer stress what happens to my trades. I don't look at the charts every five minutes. I look two times a day if I look at this enough. I know I'm winning more than I'm losing. I'm eager to learn more, to practice more. So that's what you did for me. And what the group did for me in T180. We have very good traders there. Way better than me. Traders who are willing to give sound advice. The best thing, the best thing. I can't emphasize that for me is only that makes all the money. It saved me a ton of time. A ton of time to do research. I don't have to go hunt for news all over the place. We have those T80 channels where the information of the news is posted daily. We have traders discussing those news, those ideas. We have charts posted, trade ideas. We have trade alerts ideas. We have access real time. You see, so we have like-minded traders putting in information and ideas. And I made a lot of money on trade ideas that me, I didn't have time to look for them. Because I'm working, I'm sleeping, I have to do other things. I'm not full-time. If I would be full-time, maybe I would be, but I'm not. So it's more heads working in the same direction. So anytime I have a doubt or anybody, I can ask a question and some of the traders will answer. You will answer, actually you will make a video about it. What can I ask for more, really? It's the best place you can be. That's how you would wrap it up, you know? Oh, brilliant. And thank you so much for your kind words. And yeah, you know, the guys in the group shout out to Ken and Spencer and Lawrence and Mark and many of the other guys in there, Igor as well, so many. And I just want to say, you know, Dr. Ninja is in there. You know, Popsin every now and then and things like that. And, you know, I want to say thank you for, you know, to you as well, contributing to the community. From a trader like me, I still, I don't consider myself to the level of the traders in that room. But, you know, I'm putting a lot of effort as much as I can and I love doing it. My advice to whoever is listening is that if you put in the work, you would see the results. You will see the results even way faster than you expect. It's crazy. It's crazy and I love it. I just love it. I'm so excited. I'm so excited. That's brilliant. Thank you so much. Much appreciated. I appreciate you too, Leon. Thank you very much. And very welcome. Everything you do. Everything you do. For me, you're like a brother, honestly. Thank you, man. Thank you very much. And thank you for doing this interview. It really means a lot. I hope in a year from now, we'll do another interview and I'll come with more motivational insights. Absolutely. Definitely. We've got a long way to go. We've got a long way to go. Absolutely. You're with me for life. Yes. You know what I mean? We're going. Yeah. We're going. A long way to go. Good journey. Anyway, to the listeners, I just wanted to say thank you for listening and making it this far. And if you do want to join Trading 180, go to the website. If there is an opening, you can join. If there's not, there will be an opening at some point in the future. I don't tend to have the doors open at all times. I like to keep the group quite small and focused and concentrated. And I think it works, you know, well better that way. So again, I want to say thank you to Daniel. We've had some technical issues this interview has taken. I think probably about maybe two hours, right? Going on, yeah, maybe about two hours or something like that. But yeah, thank you very much, Daniel. Thank you, Leon. Thank you so much. You're very welcome. And take care guys and speak to you all soon.