 Welcome back to the t-shirt. We've got the one and only Mark Walton with over 12,500 students and the owner of the Forex Mentor Pro page. How you doing? I'm very well thank you. Thank you for inviting me. How's your journey here? It was very nice. I flew EasyJet. Didn't go push the budget. Came from Portugal yesterday, so yeah, it's good to be here. The weather dressed it changed must be the year. We had originally lived in the Canary Islands for 20 years and the weather there is superb because in the winter it's 20 degrees, very rarely rains and 300 days of sunshine. I'm the only one that likes the winter. Go pale! Oh, I don't mind it. I like a bit of rain, a bit of snow, a bit of wind. I hate the cold. I mean, I always have loads of clothes. We come to England in the winter and my wife's not bothered. I have every photo. I have a hat on, I have a scarf on, I have the gloves on, I'm pathetic. I think at times like the damp weather, nothing that's cool but I think weather really impacts the mood. Oh, big time. I get happier. I was obviously using South Africa as well. It must have been great. It was 25 degrees, I struggled. Living less. But I guess the main thing for me with we're here to discuss obviously is trading and it's the trading that has enabled me to be able to choose to live where I want to live. And now my average client pre-Covid and it's almost nowadays is everything's pre-Covid or after COVID but was 50 plus thinking about retirement. My average client now, private, is your age and they all want freedom. And they're kind of saying COVID has taught us I don't want to do corporate work. I don't want to be tied to something for the rest of my life. And if you think about it, how old are you now? 23. You will quite probably live till you are 90 or 100. I hope so. Seriously. The average age in the UK has gone from 69 to 83 in one generation. There's more than 100,000 people in Japan who are older than 100. So the point is why get involved in something if you're not passionate about it? You know, why would you want to go do a job? You know what the acronym J-O-B stands for? The job. Just over broke. Just over broke. That's most people. My daughter when she left the university didn't know what she wanted to do. And I said the last thing you want to do is get a job because if you get a job, you will get on the wheel and you will be working to pay rent and to pay transport by phone and you'll get to the fourth week of the month. Like most other people, kids in the UK, you won't have enough money. I mean, I always do say to that. I understand. But there is a place for someone as well that that's the life they want. They're happy in a life where they have their routine. They know what they're doing when the hours and they're working, they're working and the hours when they're not working, they're not working. So I do understand that side of it. But at the same time, they still need to be given the knowledge to make that decision. To make the choice. And they're not necessarily being given that. Do you know if you owe a thousand pounds, 3,000 pounds on a credit card and you only pay the minimum every month, have you any idea how many years it takes to pay that 3,000 dog? 25. 31. Oh, that was so close. 30. An 8,000 interest. Yeah, I know. I mean, my father was terrible in money and he had credit cards for years that when he died and had to go sort the mess out, it wasn't sort out what I'd inherited. It was sort the mess out. There was nothing left. But he'd had credit debt card debt for tens of years. Tens of years. It'd be damaging. John, that's why we're here. We want to try and educate people. And hopefully we can level up people's financial knowledge through these kind of scenarios. I talk to you all about your self experience and hopefully showing some wisdom yourself. Yeah, I'm not. I've noticed your mindset is very advanced, especially for, you know... Now what's on my mindset? Put an older per go on. Yeah, I can't say it. 23-year-old poker. No, four or four. 26, I like that. Four or four. Someone has lived on the earth for a while. Yeah. You know, and you respect... Stoke digging. Yeah, no, you respect, like, you know, just a simple get a job type of mindset. But I mean, when you're sending your biography, it makes sense because you lived 10 different lives. And in your lifetime, you know, I've seen musician on there, law re-driver, restaurateur, builder, property developer... Football coach. Yeah, it's... Trader. Yeah. It's some... The irony is that trading funded everything. And the other thing, I was a coach in the Spanish Second Division for Fort Sol. It sounds grander than it is because when you coach the Second Division, it's regional, so I just coached in the Canary Islands. But we were playing some of the team's ex-prouts. But the only reason I was able to do it, because I was making money from trading on a morning, I mean, I was working five nights a week, coaching kids, and then two nights a week, coaching adults, and I was getting on a plane every other weekend to another island with the adults to play a game and then get back Sunday and be ready for the market. Oh, that's good fun, isn't it? But we do have to ask, out of all of those jobs, is trading the best? Oh. Trading has been very good to me, and trading is very good in that if I suddenly need money, I can make money. But trading is not the be-all and end-all for me. Trading generates the money to give me the choice to do what I want to do. So my philosophy, I'm not addicted to it, but I also don't just trade Forex. I did very well out of crypto. 2022, then 21, I took on private clients again, and also the members of Forex meant to prowl, and I explained why I thought that crypto was going to really kick off. And we got in well. I mean, the first Bitcoin I bought wasn't a goodbye. I bought it in February 2020, just under 8,000. The following month, the COVID crash came, and it dropped to 4,000. But I, because I understood the blockchains and what was going on, I was convinced it was going to work. So I took people on at 8 grand, and then in the October week, we did a launch to the general membership. And the gains that we made were insane in nine months. I made more money personally in nine months than I did in the previous 20 years. Wow. Now, Bitcoin has started again in recent days, and I was showing at Poco and I, before we started, was sharing tips, and this is a trade I've done. But two weeks ago, I explained to people, crypto is a no word in a lot of cases, and the banks, you can't talk about it. But I showed them how using stock, an American stock, which is a blue chip stock, you can actually invest in Bitcoin, and it's more tax efficient because you don't pay, you could buy the stock within an ISO, and you don't pay tax. But the stock went up 35% in 10 days, but it's linked to Bitcoin. But the reason I knew how to do it was I used exactly the same technique I use for my trading for Forex, for crypto, and for stocks, and for gold. So the beauty is, if you can learn it, and it's really simple what I do. I've looked at all the interviews you guys have done, and it's really strange because you had Jason Senon, and Jason was one of these traders in the pit when they're shouting and screaming at each other, and I say, I started as billionaire mates in the basement, and yet we both, at the end, do virtually the same thing. And it's all keep it simple. You don't need fancy indicators. To me, it's just all repeatable patterns. You don't when things shoot up, dive in, you wait for it to come back. And there's a saying in trading is you make the profit, we're paid to wait. And so the Bitcoin, I'd waited six months for Bitcoin. This week I had a trade, this week three trades, one on the euro pound, and I am known for being spookily accurate for the entries. I picked them from hundreds of pips where it's not rocket science. I look at Fibonacci, I look at trend lines, I look at the trend, I look at the daily range, and I look where did it bounce last time. And Bitcoin, when Bitcoin went to 67,000 and then it dropped, it came back down around 30, which is where it struggled on the way up. So it was obvious. If it was going to stop anywhere, it was probably going to stop there. And that's what trading is. You don't need to make it over complicated. You don't need super sophisticated computer systems. I bought them all and I regularly get offered things. Will you promote this? I hardly ever promote anything because most of it is not needed. You just need to understand the basics of it. You said this, there's a, keep it simple, is a philosophy that's worked for you. Yes. That you think and that you see working. I see it working in other aspects of my life, especially in finance as well, when I speak general finance, personal finance. Yep. Keep it simple. You can go and start learning the more complicated stuff, leveling it up, but for the majority of people, the simple is enough. Yes. But on the flip side of that, like you've taught a lot of people, you've got a massive audience of people that listen to you. I'm sure you've seen a number of people do well, but a number of people not do well. What are the biggest pitfalls you're seeing in trading? The ones who do the worst often are the ones that start off the best, because I've had people come to me, I had one particular guy, I was, we have a weekly life training session and I was talking in this training session, explaining about a guy that came to me, started to do really well, doubled his account in three months, did it again in three months, quit his job, started trading for family money and you know where it's going to end. He then, he'd been on the biggest winning streak ever and he blew the lot and then he'd got family that he owned, run it or not, never trade for family. And then while I was doing this live training session, there was an Australian guy in the room and he said, I took 2,500 to 75,000 in three months and I was reading the chat and I thought it was a misprint, I thought it was 2.5 to 75, but I spoke to him afterwards, it was true and he'd been on the biggest winning streak everywhere and he'd been financially struggling, suddenly he thinks that he's now going to be a multimillionaire, he's looking at brochures for Porsches and everything and he lost it all in one night and again, he'd just been on the biggest lucky streak ever. It's difficult to tone people down and unfortunately, a lot of people don't listen. So we have a guy at the moment, we've just done a case study from him, he joined us eight years ago, I mean a lot of our students joined a long time ago, we started in 2008, so a lot of them, they're not necessarily active anymore, but this gentleman is 63 now, he started in, when he was 53 and he said, when he came in, there's a bit at the beginning, right at the beginning of the course, that says right, the first most important thing you need to do is create a business plan and it's a business stroke life plan. What are you trying to achieve? What period of time? And let's be realistic, you will not get rich quicker at this. And I talk about all the different things that you need to do to put the foundations in properly, to be able to do this and most people kind of go, oof that's boring, right let's get on to the technical, let's go on to the charts, this is the sexy stuff, so this guy David's just written a thing where he came back in July, no June, and he said, right, I realize now, I should have listened to Mark in the first place and I even had a guy last year from Sunderland, he's been with us 10 years and he attends the weekly live sessions regularly and he sent me an email last year, he said, you know what, I finally thought, oof sod it, I'm going to do what he's been banging on about for 10 years and you know what, it actually works. But the problem is, is that people come in and they think, well okay, what he's doing works, but he's on, I only risk 0.5% per trade, but I'm looking for two or three percent return, I don't need to win more than 50% of the time, I can actually be profitable at 40% and being from a sports background, that's difficult, because we're brought up, we want to win and losing is bad, well actually it's not, it's just math and as long as you're taking trades that would give you at least three, four times the risk, you only need one in three to be profitable, which is a real mind shift and difficult for a lot of people. But this general thing is, everybody wants to get rich quick, the crypto actually spoiled young people, because I had a good friend of mine, his son was at university, I said just ask him, how many of his mates are in crypto, the whole university is in crypto and as we know, it's gone up, it's up another 50% this morning, this is easy, life's going to be, and now suddenly it's not, but I was trading stocks in the 90s, the dot-com boom, in those days you used to have to ring the broker up to press a trade and I stayed in too long, because I got caught up in all of it, we're all going to get rich quick, this is easy, but it's 20 years later before we had really another brilliant occasion and that was crypto and it might be another 10 before it comes again. The other thing is, don't just learn to trade, have another skill, because you don't need to spend more than an hour a day doing this and therefore if you can learn another skill, so the main investment you should make is to learn something that preferably online that you can do, whereby you can generate some income and even if you only make £200 a week from this and £200 for that and £50 from this, it doesn't matter, so if you have a bad month from trading, you're still going to be okay, because the worst case in trading, I was doing it only trading for five years and if you go into a slump and we're all going to a slump, no matter what they say, we will all go to dig your way out, it's like digging your way out of debt. It's twice as hard when you're in debt to get back to naught than it is to go forwards. So, realistic expectations, create a business plan, a life plan, work out the trading rules and stick to them. Yeah, definitely. I think especially with trading, I always like to tell people, always be doing something else, because I think once you're relying on trading to live on, that's when your psychology is all over the place, you're trading as if this has to work and I think give yourself time to breathe and learn and maneuver the markets. It's so much easier on my mind especially. Yeah. Do you have an approach to turn people away when they come in trade and do you encourage a lot of people to trade or do you really think there needs to be a specific person when it comes to this? Anybody can do it in theory. Anybody with a reasonable level of intelligence can do it. There are certain industries that accountants generally struggle and I think it's because 2 plus 2 always equals 4 for an accountant. Whereas in trading, I can do the best analysis going and this is the spot and it doesn't work but I will still take the same thing next time because it will probably work. So, they struggle. Sports people struggle as I said earlier. We want to win. We want to win. We want to win. You know you don't need to win. You just need to be calm and wait for them to come to you and when you win, win decent amount. So then in terms of strategies that you may teach beginners or those as your students, how do you go about and what type of strategies do you like to implement? I have one strategy I've used for 20 years and all I've done over the years is take more and more things off. So I now start with a very simple chart. I have, I used 200 EMA and the 55 EMA. I use trend lines and I use Fibonacci which Gabriel's probably like, well, but the thing is to a technical trader, then that you understand where I've got to use. So it's not complicated but I look at structure first and what I say to people is, look at a weekly chart to start with and look to see is it going up? Is it going down or is it going sideways? Because if it's going up we want to buy. If it's going sideways, we have a different bet we will look to buy on the puller. If it's going down we want to sell. It's that simple. So you're looking at the structure. Then I go to the daily and I am then looking for multiple reasons to support the theory that if this thing drops, it will probably bounce here for multiple reasons and I look for five reasons. So that could be the trend. It can be a Fibonacci level. It can be previous major support and resistance. It can be a whole number as silly as it is with a lot of pairs. So you look for four, well, five reasons I teach people to look for and is it going up down sideways? And then the only difference would be is if there's some big news out, so the Australian news usually comes out in the middle of the night for us, wait until the news has come out. But other than that, I will place the order at the market open. So it's not complicated. The other part of the equation is when you're looking for a trade, it must have the possibility to make it minimum twice what you risk. Yeah. And ideally three or four times. So on that basis, you can win one in three and still be profitable. You don't have to win all the time. You don't have to take many trades. You just need to wait. And so I was telling you earlier, I did a trade last week in a live training session with my students. I'd seen that Bitcoin had broken out of the triangle, which technically, as you know, is an important area. So what I said to my students, if you're not interested in crypto and it scares you and you can't put money in because the banks won't let you, you don't want all the hassle with the wallets. One of the ways that you can do this is to use a US stock called MicroStrategy and MicroStrategy had broken a trend line and a 55-year mag and it was following Bitcoin. Why is MicroStrategy important? Do you know why MicroStrategy is important when it comes to Bitcoin? No, I don't. MicroStrategy own 158,000 Bitcoin worth $5 billion. So if Bitcoin goes up and they've got 158,000 that an average buying cost of 29,000, their price will shoot up. So from my telling my clients and students, it shot up, it nearly went up 40% in the end, in 10 days. But that was just structure. As it being going up down or sideways, has it consolidated in an area? Is it breaking an area? And fundamentally, well, Bitcoin's gone up. They've got 158,000 of them. It's not going to go down. So again, start in the big picture. Look at structure and just all everything to do trading is probability. If it drops, where's it probably going to bounce for as many reasons as possible? And that's all you need to do. You make it sound simple. It is simple, but it's this that screws everybody because they get greedy and emotion and silly. I was telling a tale yesterday, I have a guy I'm just teaching now. He is a deep sea diver in the North Sea and it's one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. There's three of them go down in a capsule for a week at a time. It's pitch black and it's terrifying. But it's the kind of job, it's one of the most dangerous in the world and he and his two other guys down there have to follow every health and safety protocol to the letter or somebody could die. I'm teaching him forex two weekends ago. He'd been with me a fortnight. He spotted a really good trade and when the market opened the spread was 15 times wider than it should be and he took the trade. And I said, you're running around like it. There used to be a character in the Muppets that used to run around with his hair on fire. And I said, how can a man who's in such a structured disciplined environment when it comes to trading run around like a lunatic? I've always been, when it comes to the UK I've always told my friends, I would rather focus on conquering the UK so in terms of maybe selling up a business here make a struggle on my network and then branching out. Well, what do you think about? What do you think? That's the UK and there's- No, but you're 23. You've got your whole life in front of you. It's like pensions. I mean, I briefly sold pensions for a UK bank and I am not a big fan of pensions for young people. I think it's nonsense. You know, if you're 23, I disagree. You would bank. You can have that one in a minute. You at your age could quite probably live till you're 100. But seriously and healthily to 100 because the life expectancy is going up all the time. The downside is the pension scheme for the government pension is going higher and higher. So whether there is still a government pension when you retire, at the moment it's now you've got to be 67, used to be 65. The governments are not getting enough money and we have an ageing population so they're going to keep pushing it. So when you retire, it will be 80. So do you want to start putting money away now for 60 years time and do you want to follow the mantra of always put money in stocks because you always make money? That's not true. I think there are other ways of putting money away. So even if it is in property, for example, that's still money for your future. The reason why I do believe in pensions is because time is one of the biggest assets for money. Yeah, it is. It really is. So I do encourage people at a young age that, okay, you might not think that 50 pounds a week will do anything for you because it sounds like nothing. But the truth is if you're putting that away from the age of 20 or 18, all the way up to the age of 60, 70, 18, it's just a little bit just to give you that security because so many people are hitting retirement age not able to retire, having to continue working, nothing in savings. I think the average mean savings at retirement age is probably around 50,000 pounds in the UK. Now, don't quote me on that number. It's about 75. 75,000 pounds. Can you live off 75,000 pounds in your bank account for the next, now you said 30 years of your life? That's why I do encourage people to think long term. Maybe it doesn't have to be labeled as a pension but just something put away towards an age in your life where you're hoping to not have to rely on bringing in an income. The point I'm making is I'm not saying don't buy stocks but it's the timing. So for example, if in 2008 you'd been saving for 40 years and you have a million pounds in your pension fund, when the stock market crashed in 2008 it dropped 58%. So your million, you're going to retire next week, your million's just gone down to 480,000. And people say, yeah, but it always comes back. It took five years for the S&P to recover. But gold tripled within those five years. So just like I had mentioned earlier about crypto, if you catch the right time you can make a lot of money. Somebody said to me recently, if you had to start again, what would you do? I would buy property. And the reason I would buy property is I looked at an exercise this morning. If you put 8,000 pounds into the S&P in 1970 you could buy two houses at that time or you could put it in the S&P. Now it would be worth one and a half million pounds and those two houses would only be worth half a million because the average house price nowadays is 250,000. But the second house would have been, if you did a conventional mortgage would have been paid off by 1995. So it would have been giving you income for 23, 28 years now. And this year it might be giving you 2,000 a month. And the point of that then is instead of putting money away for 60 years time you could draw that money on a regular basis. It also gives you the freedom to say okay if you really wanted to do something you could sell one of the properties and as you get older tax wise there are advantages as you can put larger amounts in. So I'm not saying I disagree with it per se but the timing. So for me I don't think for a 20 year old it's the best advice. Yeah stocks always make money but stocks are cyclical. What I'm hoping what someone takes out of this really is there are options and don't just take things because someone tells you. Exactly. Do your own research and there's a number of right decisions. This is what I like to people. Everyone's scared of making the wrong decision. I say there's a number of right decisions you can make. One of the most important one is to actually make a decision. Yes do something. Do something. Be active and be conscious and educate yourself on that topic. And on that line of looking at the future the young generations and pensions the world is going to look very different financially in 20 years from now very very different. It may not even be the same as it is now. I think it's going to be a full 180. Yeah you look at AI you had the conversation with Jason saying about the AI for trading that's a different conversation but the thing is now when I was a kid there used to be a program in the 70s called Tomorrow's World and they were trying to interpret what was going to happen by the year 2000 and they thought they'd be flying cars and nobody could even imagine the concept of the internet. And things did change I mean there was a lots of things happened but the last 10 years things are moving so quickly. I think one of the Amazon factories now that used to employ hundreds of people is employing like 10 because there's robots flying everywhere. The only thing they need people for at the minute is to take stuff off the conveyor belt and put it onto the robot. Now they announced last week that they're testing robots to pick things off the conveyor belt. But so you've got that level of work's gone you've got the supermarket now a Tesco near where my daughter lives in Middlesbrough used to have 27 checkouts there's four now. Everything else is self-checkout. So that those jobs have gone and then you look at train drivers I think it's Saudi Arabia the whole network the whole metro system is no drivers. So if all those jobs are going to go and anything I talked to a lawyer recently and he said there's a lot of jobs going to go in the legal world because a lot of the admin work is done for people searching for the documents and case examples you just have to do you pick now and again accountancy most of it can be done automatically. So then if you're going to end up with millions and millions of people around the world for whom there is no work there's no realistic possibility of work they tested in Switzerland last year the testing in the UK now is what's called universe Lincoln and what that will mean is everybody they're going to get rid of all the social security system and the tears of government and everybody will be given £2,000 a month whether you're working or not if you work then you can earn more but the thing is if you have tens of millions of people with no jobs and no prospect of a job you're going to end up with rioting and revolutions and the rest of it so the rich need to keep a lid on it by spreading the welfare out give the money to people so it may be as you've started the conversation quite right I think so I think within 20 years the current financial system will not be the same because everything at the minute is geared to growth every country has to increase its GDP every country has to make more stuff every year to sell to more people but there is a drop in the birth rate in the western world so there might be fewer people and there are minerals and things that we'll run out of so you can't keep making stuff to get to make more so I think the world will change and again that's why I wouldn't be in a rush to commit to something 60 years ahead now property gives you flexibility there are not enough houses in the UK and everybody needs somewhere to live so as they flip side to this conversation is this idea of with new technology brings new possibilities and new opportunities so we know it's a fact that there are going to be millions of jobs disappearing but maybe the same way that the internet was created millions of opportunities are going to be coming so what's your approach what's your ideas to young people today how do you prepare yourself for this new world coming so that you will put yourself in good stead even if it's to do with trading specifically to take on teach yourself a skill learn a skill learn trading learn I mean I bought my kids one Christmas you know they're unwrapping presents and one of which is a course on how to build a website and it's like oh god now what's he doing but all my kids could build websites my youngest daughter the one that went to Australia is still touring the world she's a photographer as well but she is able to build websites that will probably go with AI but she's made a good living for the last seven eight years so learn a skill a practical skill that people need and ideally that you can use online or if you're more physical get a trade learn to be a plumber you know still people are going to have to crawl under floors to put pipes in and things that AI won't be able to do and electricians and things and if you if you learn that kind of skill you could do that anywhere in the world so just learn more of a skill do not depend on your job to be there in 20 years time and don't start devoting yourself to a career for something you know think the implications so could a machine do what I'm doing could he do it better quicker and smarter than me and cheaper and won't go on strike well if that's the case you need to start thinking now about another way for what to do in the future with AI is entering the trading space have you ever thought you know that AI is trading for people making money for people there's bots out there do you think that will ever affect our retail traders trading manually or you always see that as another side of the market which if someone was entering we've always had the last 10-15 years we've had a level of automation the banks have all got automated software a lot of which appears to be influenced by Fibonacci which is why I think Fibonacci works so often you will see price will hit the 78.6 Fib and bounce straight off it well if all the banks and the funds are using technology with that in built then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy so we've already got a level of automation I talked to a programmer last weekend and I said to me what would be a concern is if everything was perfect because it's learned from its mistakes would we end up with a situation where price doesn't move because and then then we've got a problem because nobody can make any money but then again because the funds and the banks make so much money from it they're not going to play that game so he said exactly the opposite he said because each piece of AI is going to be programmed slightly differently and he thinks there will actually be more extreme moves but at the end of the day I have no idea nobody has any idea and to answer your question about kids for the future nobody know the internet nobody dreamed of the internet when the internet started there was a famous Nobel Prize-winning economist called Paul Krugman who said that it'll never catch on it'll be like the fax machine it'll be gone in five years and this guy is still writing in the New York Post and he said the other week if you take food, housing and heating out of the inflation figures we're back at two percent hang on a minute if food inflation is still at 15 percent and house you think of the rents in London and how much they've gone up 10, 20, 30 percent how can you turn around and say well we'll take food and housing and heating out of the this guy's a Nobel Prize-winning economist we take the three most important core elements of our life about of our life everything's great yeah it's insane it's insane so and again you need to be able to read things if a survey I said to a kid years ago if a survey comes out and it says listen eating beef burgers is really good for you just think who paid for the survey and so if somebody from a bank says to you oh we're buying the euro today at 106 with a target 108 a bank to my knowledge is not a charitable institution the only reason they're telling you is because they've got a load of it at 108 they want to sell then they want you to pile in and buy it so they can sell it so you've got to learn to cut you talked earlier about there's so much information you really need to peel it all back and just be very cynical and just say okay I have a few people I recommend and I'll send you the links later on and another thing I would give you you had Richard was on last week and he kept pulling presents out behind the plant I will give you a $60,000 present if you want to understand what really happens with Bitcoin and blockchain there is an MIT course on YouTube completely free it's a 20 hour session so it's a slog but if you want to understand blockchains which is why crypto is so important you can watch that course and the students on that course have paid $60,000 for that course on that note thank you very much for our present um I just want to say thank you so much for thank you for inviting me for this that was that was brilliant I think so many insights Poku yeah no I definitely learned a lot definitely going forward and we'll definitely play that especially that course I think more older people should be willing to share experience but not in a negative way the world is a beautiful place still there's more good people than bad and you really need to get out there and enjoy it while you can you know I like that always end on a note of positivity there are opportunities if you're willing to work hard search and educate yourself on them must educate yourself which we have done for ourselves today selfishly by taking all of your knowledge from you so thank you for that you're welcome nice to meet you both thank you