 Hi, my name is Leon Rowe, currency trader and trading coach at Trading180.com and welcome to another mentoring interview with a Trading180 trader. This episode I have Roger with me. Welcome Roger. How are you doing today? Yeah, doing really well. How are you doing? Doing good. Brilliant. Brilliant. So I just wanted to get your, I guess any of you, your experience and just your opinion and how you found your time at Trading180 and what it's done with your trading and the process and where you are now, as well as maybe just, I guess, a trade that you've taken recently that was profitable when, again, like I said, just generally your overall experience with being in the Trading180 group in the mentoring. So just a quick, I guess, background check with you as far as how did you get into trading forex and how long have you been trading forex before maybe meeting me and joining Trading180? Yeah. So, I mean, I've been trading for as long as I can remember, you know, I got into trading really when I was working scrap yard security in the middle of the night. I had nothing else to do, right? And you know, I really got involved in everything, you know, stocks, options, ETFs, forex, I mean, you name the product, I've probably messed with it at some point, you know, just devouring every book I could devour, you know, devouring hours and hours of YouTube video, just jumping it out of everything. And you know, throughout that entire time, you know, I definitely had losing periods, I break even periods, maybe a profitable period, you know, just kind of all over the board. And you know, then at some point, I don't even know how, I'm sure it was through a YouTube video I found trading 180, I think at the time, you know, I was really starting my mindset was really shifting out of technicals. And I was starting to understand that technicals were, you know, an important part, but they couldn't be the driving factor behind my trades. You know, I was also starting to wrap around my mind, you know, that for me at least a better way to trade would be to be in a trade longer and not necessarily a bunch of little micro trades, you know, so I was starting to wrap my brain around all that. I think I was searching YouTube for fundamentals of forex, ran into trading 180, decided to kind of give that a go because I was really starting to think, you know, fundamentals have to be a large part of this, got involved in trading 180 and it really helped me to kind of take a step back and understand everything that I've consumed. It wasn't really necessarily wrong. You know, it all has truth to it, but, you know, each little piece of knowledge I had collected kind of was teaching its own lesson about how to operate in the markets and trading 180 kind of really helped me kind of step back and look at that bigger picture and understand why those things matter and how those different things like fundamentals and even the technicals help drive the market in a way and, you know, what each part has to play in trading and just really step back and stop getting bogged down in all those little details and just look at the bigger picture. Ah, it's brilliant. And, you know, we all work, I've spoken to so many traders over the years and our journeys are all very similar, right, in a sense that we tend to consume so much. I've traded gold, silver, I've tried, you know, bonds and everything, right, when you're first beginning. And then there is, I guess, if you do get, you know, you're lucky enough to kind of maybe discover just the focus, right? It's more about trying to eliminate the noise, as you said. And even though it does have, I guess, it's not necessarily wrong, you definitely have to try to focus on a process, right? And eliminate all of that other stuff that's going on and really kind of maybe just develop a plan of some sort, right? Which is actually matter of fact very hard if you're just looking at YouTube videos and, you know, TikTok videos all day. You know, so we talked about fundamental analysis. And so you were a technical trader that thought to yourself, look, I need to, there's something more than technical analysis, right, at play here. So what, before we guess, maybe get into the fundamental side, what strategies were you kind of trading or technical strategies were you trading? Do you remember? Yeah, I mean, when I first got into it, I think I did what everyone does, you know, oh, we'll pick up the RSI and this MACD and get ready to go, right? This little risk analysis and you're good, you know, definitely started off there. I got big into, that was a mess, but eventually got pulled into the options market, which actually was probably an important step along my journey. I think I sat around with Tasty Trade for a while. And, you know, I think why that was maybe an important step in my journey is because it really taught me that, you know, trading is a probabilities game. Yes, you know, nothing is for sure ever. You know, it's all about what are the probabilities and how does that play out and how does that fit into your, you know, portfolio or risk management strategy. So I think that was a really big step along my way. You know, ultimately though, you know, I was still being much more technically driven in my decision making. It was just teaching me the probabilities game side of it, you know. So, you know, I kind of, you know, moved on from there. And then I started thinking, okay, you know, this idea of I'm going to make, you know, a thousand dollars in a day and just sit down, you know, with a smaller account or something and, you know, have like 80 trades in a day or something is ridiculous too. I need to start thinking more long term, you know, just to fit with my lifestyle, if nothing else, you know. And I was doing that off of a technical basis still, you know, purely technical. And like I said, that's kind of when I started to realize that fundamentals have to play a role in this as well, because there's a reason that things are doing what they're doing. There's a reason that, you know, why one technical setup might play out and not another, you know, there's probabilities there, but there's something behind all this has got to be driving it. Big money is not sitting there thinking, oh, look, we have this doji. You know, they're just not, you know, there's a big decision at play and those are the guys that are moving the market, you know, not you and me. And that's kind of, you know, how that was kind of the broad picture of my progression. Oh, brilliant, brilliant. And I came to that same conclusion at some point, I said, you know, they can't, the big banks can't be looking at, you know, pinbars on, you know, getting support and resistance and indicators to make their financial decisions, right? It's just there's something more than that. And, you know, when I when I learned fundamentals through, you know, my friend, Mark Chapman, he, you know, we were talking about this is maybe back in 2013, 2014, and he was the first person to really kind of spell out, I guess, the rules to the game, right? Interest rates, inflation and gross domestic products is what we generally tend to look at. So with that, there are people out there probably might be listening to this and thinking, well, you know, what's the benefit of learning fundamental analysis? Why can't I, isn't it just best to just learn the technical analysis? And I'm sure it will, you know, work out in some way shape or form, which it might, of course. But from, you know, if you were looking to kind of tell somebody as to what the benefits of learning the fundamentals of forex or anything that they're trading in general, what would, what would, would you say the benefits probably were of, or say probably, but what are the benefits of fundamental analysis or adding fundamental analysis to your trading? Yeah, I mean, so the way I've kind of internalized it to myself, right, is, I mean, really, it's kind of like, if you listen to the market, the market will talk to you, you know, that's really the way I kind of internalize it a little bit, you know, by getting out there and, you know, watching the fundamentals, reading, you know, about the narratives that are going on, you know, reading where the evaluations put things where, you know, projected inflation rates and projected GDP and projected interest rates and understanding how those are really the primary drivers and understanding the narratives that are behind those primary drivers, you know, when you start to take all that in and you kind of let yourself focus a little bit, you know, like we were saying earlier into that inflation interest rates, GDP, those are your primary drivers, there's plenty of other metrics out there that you could watch, but they all eventually work themselves up to those primary drivers. So by watching those and by watching the narratives that are driving those, it's really almost like it's written out there for everyone to see like the market saying, hey, most likely this is where I'm going. Now that's always subject to change, things can change in a moment's notice like anything in life, but it's really is once you start to really, truly listen and focus and to me at least it sounds like it seems like the market's almost telling you like, hey, this is what we're going to do, you know? Yeah, and you're absolutely right. I came to that conclusion as well. And I guess it was for me, it was, you know, maybe a bit of a longer journey than you guys in a sense that I think with me, I really ignored fundamental analysis, even though Mark told me, yeah, the way to kind of trade the euro dollar and he, but he didn't emphasize it, he didn't really kind of say to me, you know, you've got to do this because obviously it's not financial advice, but he kind of laid it out on a table. But I think my bias was so still so fundamentally, I'm sorry, technically driven, I was buying, right? I was buying, if you go to 2014, 2013, 2014, 2015, right? And you look at a chart of the euro dollar and the drop, I think it must have been about the thousand, maybe 2000 pips, I was still continuing to try to buy in that drop because I was totally unaware of what the market was actually saying, right? What the narrative was. And when I look back on all the news articles from back then, it was literally as clear as day. It was a no brain, right? It's a no brainer that you know, I should have been going short and never taking any long trades, right? Never in a month of Sunday should I've been doing that, right? And that's what blew me away is just how really crystal clear it can be when you start to listen, you know? Exactly, exactly. And I guess, as well, I asked this question to Joe Brett because there's a general conspiracy, I think, or there's this narrative that the banks are out to mislead you and send and make you trade in the wrong direction, etc. But we, the way that we read the news and the things that we focus on and the narratives that we focus on, and I guess where we get our information from, you know, from bank analysis, it's in fact, quite clear. And they actually tell you which way they're trading, right? So from that perspective, would you say that, you know, making up your own, say making up your own, but coming to your own fundamental analysis, right? When you basically look at GDP interest rates and inflation, and then you come up with your own trade idea, how helpful has, I guess, the forecasts being from the banks, as well as even the fundamental analysis spreadsheet in giving you the confidence to hold trades and just have confidence in your overall trade idea? Oh yeah, no, I mean, that's huge because, you know, yeah, you're exactly right. You know, it's looking at all the information that's out there and, you know, kind of coming up with that idea. But if that was all that was, you know, all I had to go on was, you know, reading articles and the narratives and looking at the interest rates, inflation rates and GDP. If something was kind of going against my idea, you know, I'm almost sure I would get that little bit of, you know, nick to my confidence in it, you know, after a while, you know, especially if I get stopped out one or two times trying to get into a position, you know, I would definitely have my confidence knocked. But, you know, by seeing that, you know, by seeing those bank forecasts and what the banks are doing and what, you know, I mean, they literally put out their, what their trades are sometimes, you know, this is what we're doing, you know, you know, by seeing that, like, okay, they're literally risking, like, millions and billions of dollars on this position and they're holding true, you know, that kind of gives you a lot of confidence to say, hey, my views that hundred dollars that I got out there is fine. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And also is I guess it's a bit of a feedback loop, right? Because the more ideas you come up with when it comes to, you know, understanding, you know, monetary policy and what the central banks are doing and attempting to do, before you read the bank analysis and forecast and then going to read the bank forecast and analysis and then they agree actually with your idea or your idea agrees with their idea, you know, it creates that feedback loop that you're actually developing the idea before you even see the banks, you know, right? And the banks are on the same, you're on the same page with the banks, right? So how good of a feeling has that been that you're actually, you're generally trading in the same direction as the banks? Oh, yeah, no, I mean, that's kind of been mind opening to me too. And that that's kind of what's given me the confidence to say, like, listen, I mean, the market really is telling me what it's doing because once you understand those primary drivers and how they play in, and, you know, yeah, it doesn't take a lot to start to understand what's going on behind the scenes. And then, you know, yeah, it's really confidence boosting to say, like, hey, I had this, you know, I'm on the same page as, you know, these big banks with these huge analysts, you know, just by collecting the little information I was able to collect, you know. Yeah, yeah, brilliant. So when it comes to the fundamental analysis spreadsheet that we that we use in Trading 180, how helpful have you found that in, I guess, simplifying the fundamental process? Because the fundamentals, I guess, when you're first coming into learning about fundamental analysis in the way that we do, can be very overwhelming, right? There's lots of things to look at, so much state of points here and there, you know, you go into forex factory, and it's all these different things to kind of look at. But from a simplification, as well as, I guess, the effectiveness of the fundamental analysis spreadsheet, have you found it? The biggest thing I've got out of the fundamental analysis spreadsheet, I think, is probably just its ability to just keep me grounded, and keep me focused. You know, it's not that I'm looking at it every single day or anything like that. But, you know, you have the weekly meetings and this fundamental analysis spreadsheet comes up in those weekly meetings every time. And, you know, on one end, it kind of feels like, okay, this is on repeat. But on the other end, the fact that it's on repeat is really helpful, at least when you're starting to get into this, because it really helps you to stay, like, remember, Roger, this is what we're focusing on. This is what you need to focus on. Stop, you know, letting yourself get distracted about how, you know, there's this number coming out, or this number coming out, or this like, these are the fundamental drivers. All that other stuff is fine. It's not that it's not useful or whatever. But it all comes down to this, you know, everything filters into this. So it's been huge to me from that perspective to kind of just keep me grounded and keep me focused. Yeah, brilliant, brilliant. That's a really good, I guess, an eye-opener, like you say. I haven't heard that before. Like you said, keeping you grounded, keeping you focused on really the divergent pairs, right? Trying to trade the best pairs we can, the one versus the eights. And, you know, and again, like you said, just focusing on what we really need to focus on, eliminating a lot of the other things that aren't necessarily, you know, necessary to our trading, although it does add, and all roads kind of lead to GDP, interest rates and inflation, right? But if you focus on those main three things, we should know what the banks want to do with, you know, interest rates and monetary policy. Therefore, we're just, you know, we can kind of predict these medium to longer term trends, right? We see them play iron market. So, yeah, just shifting gears a little bit. So mentoring in the Trading 180 group, would you say that you may have figured this stuff out without mentoring and Trading 180 possibly? You know, I probably would have, but it would have probably been another 20 years down the road. You know, like, because of all because of how easily distracted I was being through my learning process, I'm sure it would have been much, much further down the road. You know, I'm sure I would have got there. You know, I was starting to think in the right direction, which is how I found Trading 180, but I'm sure it would have taken me much, much longer. I've been with Trading 180, and I just checked a few minutes ago for almost a year, about 10 days. And then that, you know, so the way I look at it is, you know, I've been able to get dense maybe 10, 20 years of, you know, paying into, you know, a year and end up in the same place. Brilliant. That is fantastic, man. That's a great way to kind of look at it and you're right. You know, mentoring. I was mentored, as I mentioned before, and I had, you know, I remember having a conversation with Mark and it was pretty much like, it was that light bulb moment where you realize you're just cutting out so much time searching. And once you have somebody who is showing you the path, you know, the, I guess the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, right? So if you're, if I want to be, you know, profitable, what's the shortest way I can get to be, you know, profitable. And if a mentor is showing you, look, this is the way, right? You don't have to go off that path or go look that direction or do this strategy. Just do this, follow this process and the shortest distance between A to Z is going to be, you know, just following the process, right? Right. And I have to, you know, I have to take a minute to say a thank you to you too, you know, personally because, you know, when I, when I initially came on board, you know, I think I sent you a lot of questions like, you know, well, what about, you know, money supply? And what about this? And, you know, you really kind of helped show me that, yes, all that stuff, you know, does play its part. But, you know, you really helped me to understand how that all comes down to, you know, inflation, GDP and interest rates. And, you know, for me, understanding is a huge, huge thing. You know, I am not the type of person that just follows someone's instructions blindly. You know, I always want to know the why of everything. And so it was very, very helpful, you know, with how responsive you were to answering some of those questions. And that kind of helped me be able to answer some of my own questions that I have later on myself, because I'm thinking like, well, this is the way, you know, this is the way it was explained to me for this and this. So, you know, if I had gone to Leon, you know, this is what it's, you know, I know what he's going to say. So it kind of really helped accelerate, you know, that thinking process for me about understanding why it is that we're doing what we're doing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Brilliant. So one of your aha moments while being, I guess, in trading 180, what would you say that probably was, whether it was a fundamental thing, a technical thing, what would you say when you kind of learned it, or maybe it was said, or you heard it, or you read it in maybe the Discord group that you were like, ah, and it really kind of, you know, enlightened you in that sense? Well, I'll go with my gut reaction to that question. I'm not trying to dig too much because I'm sure I would get myself crazy. But so my gut reaction, I think, would be the marriage of technicals to fundamentals. Yeah. I think one of the things I struggle with is even when I did start to realize that fundamentals had a big part to play in it, part of me felt like it was just like, well, if fundamentally it's supposed to go up, just buy it. Forget about it. Well, I mean, that leaves you open to a lot of risk. So that's not really a great way to go. And I'd already learned from experience that going purely technically driven and probabilities driven from a math probability driven wasn't really the way to go either because you were completely ignoring what the market was doing under the hood. So it was really the marriage of those two and like, okay, yes. Fundamentally, we can have an idea of what's going on under the hood and we can have an idea of market direction on certain pairs. But we can't just say, okay, we know it's going south. So we're going to sell. That leaves you open to a lot of risk. You have a lot of risk management issues then, huge stops. It's not really going great. So then learning that that's where some of that technical information comes in. Like, well, where is a good place from a risk reward perspective to enter a trade that's going to fit the fundamental information that I have? And then just the technicality of how to enter that position and exit that position, I think was huge for me too. Understanding when I should be taking some profits and when I should be holding. Essentially, the way I feel, at least, that if you do a trade right, you know, it doesn't have to immediately the very next day, zoom to your final target zone, right? And you get all this profit. You know, you can kind of take some profits off the way, maybe a little bit early to get yourself in a nice position, which I almost call just financing my trade, right? It gets me into a risk-free position on that trade. And I have the banks backing me up saying, yes, this is where this pair is probably ultimately going in XYZ timeframe. And I can leave the rest of it run. And then, you know what, if it pulls back a little bit, I'm not going to panic feeling like I have to take that little bit I have running off the table because, hey, this is just another opportunity for me to finance yet another trade and add a little bit more to that longer-running trade that I have going on and just kind of slowly build into those positions as you get a chance. So I really have to say, I guess, it was really that marriage of the technicals and the fundamentals and how to put the two of them together and how to actually manage a trade. Those, I think, were the pieces that may have taken me a lot longer to put together had I joined trade 180. Brilliant, mate. That is fantastic. And again, I had that, I guess, same kind of epiphany where it occurred to me that after that long drop on that euro-dollar that I should have been going short and I looked back on it and I thought to myself, oh my days, if only I had just gone short rather than trying to pick every single bottom with the fundamentals. I mean, like you say, you come to that realization that if you can marry the two, the two go hand in hand and just understanding the two and what they really mean to your trading as well as obviously the trading psychology side of things and understanding probabilities, the law of large numbers and just really the behavioral side of trading. So we were talking about, for example, earlier, the New Zealand dollar Swiss as one of the last trades, last profitable trades, I guess, that you've taken and talk us through, if anyone's listening, talk us through the, I guess, the fundamentals as to why you decided to take positions on this currency pair and a bit of technicals as to where you were getting in, maybe getting out and taking maybe some profits here and there. Yeah, I mean, so if you look over the past while, New Zealand has been championing the pandemic. They've really been doing well with handling the pandemic. They're continuing to get people, which is basically let them stay open for a lot more than some other countries, and that's being reflected in their GDP and in their inflations and in their interest rates, which has really kept, I think, New Zealand a strong contender with some of the other currencies over the last little while. You know, in stark contrast, the Swiss franc, it's really been struggling. I don't remember everything that I've been reading about Swiss franc, but they've had kind of a myriad of troubles. I think they've been having some troubles with Europe and the fact that I'm saying, I think and I recall a little bit, I think just goes to show that the narrative helps you understand what's going on with the inflation, GDP and interest rates, and that's really what I'm focusing on. I'm not trying to remember every last detail that I read in an article, but that's helping create in the back of your mind what's going on with the inflation rate, interest rates and GDP, why that stuff's happening. So it gives you that general idea of how those two countries now are really ones running up the ladder and the other ones falling down the ladder, and that creates that divergence. Fundamentally, to me, that's saying, hey, the New Zealand Swiss franc here is a buy, and then you look at your bank forecasts, and I think they're calling for it to get up to that 65, 62 area. 65, 62, somewhere around here? Yeah, I think it's somewhere up in there. And you can look at that on the technical chart too, and you can say, I can see how that would play out. So now you can look at this chart now from a technical perspective a little bit, now since you have that fundamental background, and you can say, okay, we seem to be forming a little bit of a bottom here, consolidating in here. Now, where can I find those deep discounts? Trading 180, we would talk about stop hunts and CPRs and look for those, but really, I'm just looking for, give me some discounts in here, give me some dips at the bottom of this range, give me a chance to build into a position, and I can kind of take some profits on the way. So I'm still making a little bit money while I wait for this position to really take off. And I have the confidence that it will take off because of those bank forecasts, because of inflation, race interest, race and GDP, because of the narrative. I have a pretty strong confidence that this will take off. And even if it doesn't, honestly, that's fine too. I'm not going to make as much money on this, but I am still taking profits along the way and go by little as I continue to add to a larger, longer term position, waiting for that move up to finally happen. So this has been a very interesting, fun trade for me, and I look forward to see how it ultimately plays out. But regardless, I've made money off this trade no matter what happens at this point. And that is brilliant, because fundamentally, you know which direction you do want to trade. You're literally, like you say, looking to buy in just going one direction. You're not worried about prices coming down and trying to get in on that move. You're looking at saying the New Zealand dollar is seen as a bargain at this point here. Now if prices ever come back down to somewhere around where this is, and this was provably a bargain, you just want to look for potential buy trades, right? This is a bargain, ended up being a buy. Prices come back down again, prices ended up being a buy. And it makes, I guess, the trading process a lot easier, right? Right. And you know what? I probably not the 100% best technician in the world. You know, there was a dip there between like the 15th and the 20th that didn't quite come down to the bottom of the range. 15th, 20th, what was that, last year, 15th, 20th yet? Just over to your right a little bit more. Okay, to the right. The next dip to your right. Oh, here. Yeah, right there, that little one right there. I got stopped out on that one. Really, it's fine because I made a little bit of profits on the trade before while I'm building this big position. Even on that position right there, I think I took a little bit of profit, even though it didn't go the way I expected it to. I didn't get to keep my longer term build on the position on there, but that was fine. I still made some profit on it. And it came down and gave me even a bigger discount to be set up for the bigger move later on. So it's a win, win, win. Yes, and it is because a lot of trades, and I used to do this myself, right? You're looking at if prices are going higher, you want to sell its resistance. If prices are going lower, you want to buy at support or demand, for example, or supply. Although that sounds great and there's loads of YouTubers and social media people telling you to do this, if it was that simple, I mean, I would say I'm not the smartest person in the world, but I know how to trade support and resistance. So why hasn't this been a successful strategy? There's got to be something more to it, right? There's got to be filters involved in this. And like you say, and as we've been saying, it's more to do with the fundamental bias, right? It's to understand which direction we're looking at, but also as well understanding when certain price is actually now a bit of a bargain, right? If we lose this trade, it's okay, don't worry, because has the narrative changed? Maybe it's risk off coming more into the market. Yes or no, if it's not and prices are going down, that's it. That's just an even better bargain for a nicer trade. Same thing here, right? That's all it is. And it's coming down again. And people can probably, they're watching this on YouTube or anything like that. I've got an alert here waiting for a bit of a stop hunt. So I'm on the same, I'm literally looking at the same trade as Roger. And you know, we've got our fundamental bias and we just patient, well, I'm a bit more patient than Roger, but I should say Roger is a bit more patient than me, in a sense. I don't know. I think I'd be jumping on a little bit sooner. But nevertheless, we've got our fundamental bias, right? We're not going to always enter into the same trades and the exact entries and stop losses. That's not the point in this, right? The point is, for Roger, for myself, to come to the same conclusions and how we enter is how we enter. But we're independent in a sense that we've, we're not taking the same trades, but we understand where prices should eventually want to go in the future. And as long as we both profit from this, in the way that we do, this is what we're trying to do at Trading 180. We're not trying to create robots, right? We're trying to create independently profitable traders. And if I was to suddenly, for example, just leave or God forbid something happened to me, I guess I'll pose the question. Roger, you would pretty much be okay, right? You wouldn't necessarily be relying on myself. Oh, yeah. No, I think you've definitely succeeded in that. And I'm sure I would be okay. I mean, you'd be sorely missed and I would miss the community. And like I said, the community definitely helps keep me grounded. But the longer, the longer I'm with the group and the more and more grounded I become for sure. Yeah, brilliant. And so I guess to wrap the interview up is if anyone is listening out there who is undecided about joining Trading 180 and what they're potentially going to get out of it, if anything, right? Because some traders may not. It's not for everybody. But what message would you say to those people who are maybe undecided about joining Trading 180? I think I would say, I guess that's a hard one to answer, but I would say that this is a good place, especially if you've been building a knowledge base prior to really start to bring everything that you've learned in prior. It's not useless. It wasn't a waste of time. It was needed experience and needed knowledge. But this is a good place where it's time to say, okay, I'm going to take all that. I'm going to kind of organize it in my mind and learn how to really focus it on the things that are really driving those markets. And take that into success from there. I mean, like you said, you and I aren't going to take the exact same trades. This isn't a system like you would find on YouTube that says, wait for this and see this and then do that. It's not that. It's learning how to take our individual styles but set a framework up around them and understanding how the fundamentals are driving those things so that we're trading the same directions. We're trading the same kind of things. Maybe a little bit different from each other, but this kind of just helps bring everything that we've learned in the past together in a good package. Brilliant. Brilliant. Thank you so much, Roger. I really appreciate the interview and your time. Really heartfelt thank you for it and just for your experience and your opinion on Trading 180, the mentorship and where you are and how you look at the markets. Thank you so much. I'm glad to have given the time. Thank you for having me. All right, take care, mate.