Always manage your risk, or else the market will do. Be humble with your profits.

What did you do before trading and why did you choose it.

I have always been interested in investing and finance. I knew what trading was but never pursued it seriously. Before I got into trading I was at the beginning of my industrial engineering studies, which I am still doing today. Besides that, I was working part-time jobs. The first time I got in touch with trading was during the summer of 21. I just heard of crypto and spent a lot of time researching crypto projects and gaining knowledge about the market. In the beginning, I was only investing in specific projects, but never actually traded short-term price movements.

A couple of weeks passed by and I discovered CT (crypto Twitter) during my summer vacation. I decided to give trading a shot as I had lots of free time and was following crypto closely anyways. The idea of being able to capitalize on short-term price movements was my main interest. On the same day, I signed up on a crypto trading exchange and deposited a couple of hundred bucks. Back then the whole crypto market experienced the final stages of its bull market, so it was not that hard to make some profits. I leverage longed all kinds of altcoin dips and surprisingly made some profits. In hindsight, I obviously had no clue what I was doing and was basically just gambling.

What from your engineering background helps you in trading?

I was always very good in maths and statistics, basically anything with numbers. I'm about to start my final year in my engineering degree, so analytical thinking, but also game theory interest me a lot. All of that combined with the psychological aspects of trading fascinated me. You are the only person responsible for the outcome of your decisions, which is also one of the main reasons I decided to commit to it. Improving yourself day by day and seeing that reflected in your results motivates me to keep going. All of those things compound over time and offer lots of scalabilities.

Do you remember the moment when you realised that trading was your thing, what it was like?

It was not one specific moment, more like a slow process. It was in January 2022 when I first got into price action trading. I learned a lot from other traders on Twitter and Youtube. Every losing trade made me work harder and dedicate more time to improving. I spent 12-16 hours per day, 7 days a week in front of the charts and collected tons of material, got hundreds of pages of notes, and annotated charts. Did lots of backtesting and live-testing, then put it all together and created my own style, which I keep improving until today.

Knowing that I was capable of becoming a profitable trader removed all uncertainty from submitting to the process. During spring 22, a handful of like-minded aspiring traders from all over the world created a discord group (shoutout to galactic), committed to improving and helping each other out. Today we count about 30 members, including some of the best traders on Twitter. Most of us trade forex and crypto, but also indices and commodities. I mainly focus on $EURUSD, $GBPUSD, and $USDCHF for intraday trades. But I also trade $BTC on higher timeframes such as the H12 and H1 chart.

It’s not a secret that the path to a steady income from trading is very difficult. What psychological problems you had at the beginning and how you managed to deal with them.

In the beginning, I dealt with a lot of fear of missing out on price moves but also tried to recover losses instantly by hopping into another position, although there was no reason to take on a trade. Those problems resolved over time the more experienced I became.

Later on, I struggled more with execution, although my setup was presented. Also accepting losses was a struggle for me. I would consider myself a perfectionist, so it’s pretty hard for me to accept losses, although I know it’s part of the game. Gaining trust in my own system by backtesting a lot and also live trading helped mitigate those problems.

What’s your biggest trading failure? The period when you got a lose strick, or a trade that burnt your deposit the most.

I remember this day exactly, it was the 4th of December 2021 when Bitcoin and the whole crypto market crashed overnight. When I woke up on that day and checked my phone, I was notified by several liquidations. Back then I had different sub-accounts for every open position, I think in total it was like five open positions. Two of them got liquidated completely and the rest was about to receive a margin call as well. All in all, I lost about 60% of my entire portfolio. Back then I thought I knew what risk management was, but I didn’t. It forced me to overthink my trading approach and risk management. Today I’m grateful for this experience, as I wouldn’t be where I’m at today without it.

What you learned and how you got out of it?

Always manage your risk, or else the market will do. Be humble with your profits. I started spending more time learning to trade, and actually knowing what I was doing. Moving away from the classical retail concepts, recreating my view on the markets from the beginning.

What’s your routine? Describe your trading day.

My main priority nowadays is the FX market, mainly focussing on intraday setups during the London session. I usually get up at 7:30 am, take a shower, and make a cup of green tea with a protein shake. I don’t eat breakfast, as it slows down my mind and prevents me from thinking clearly.

London session starts at 8 am for me, so 10 minutes before, I start checking the overnight price action and mark out my points of interest. I also check the calendar for news events, so I know when to expect volatility in the markets or when not to trade at all. From 8 am until 11 am I try to eliminate all distractions and solely focus on the markets and my execution. Listening to music helps me to focus and get into the „zone“ easier.

At 11 am I finish my trading session and start to fill out my journals. I start out with my technical journal, where I note my trades and their results. Once I’m finished, I fill out my physical paper journal, where I write down my emotions and learnings during the session. Journaling my sessions is essential for me, as it helps me a lot to conclude the session and especially free my mind. Also for analyzing my own mistakes and improving my strategy, journaling is necessary to collect data over time.

I’m usually done by 11:30 am to grab some food, check my phone or read some pages in a book. Most of the time I try to be done with my trading day after the London session, but depending on the results or when news events are scheduled I also trade the New York session at 1 pm. In the case of trading the New York session, I simply repeat all steps from the London session over again. Once the New York session is finished at 4 pm, I eat my pre-workout meal and head to the gym around 6-7 pm.

The rest of the day I either take off or try to learn something new. Before going to bed at around 1 am I usually update my chart markups and plan my to-do list for the next day.

What does your day off look like?

It varies, but I really like going out with friends and eating some good food. Also hitting the gym or going on weekend trips across Europe together. Obviously also reviewing my trading week, analyzing my mistakes, and planning the week ahead are on my list. The time left I usually spend listening to podcasts, watching sports, or reading trading-related books.

What do you do apart from trading? A question about a hobby.

My biggest passion besides trading is probably the gym. Not only necessary to free my mind, but also getting to move my body. Similar to trading I always track my weights to monitor my progress. I think in general, improving myself and being able to quantify that in numbers is something I enjoy doing.

A question about technique. Every trader has to evolve all the time so the charts change along with it. Can you show the archive chart from when you started and what it looks like now?

Charts from October 2021:

Recent chart examples:

What tools you used then and what you use now? Describe briefly your entry model.

Back then I used indicators such as volume, stochastic RSI, and other oscillators. I also used support/resistance, trendlines, and other retail concepts, such as triangle breakout patterns. Today I purely trade based on price action and game theory. 0 indicators, just logic based on time and price. If I find lots of confluence toward one direction, I take an educated bet and manage my risk accordingly. I switched to FX trading because it allows me to allocate all my attention towards a certain time window, where volatility offers lots of opportunities. My trading style incorporates higher and lower timeframe charts, trying to get in sync with both. Identifying where liquidity is stored and combining that with price action elements such as market structure, liquidity gaps, and so on. It’s like one big puzzle you have to solve in order to create a thesis. I also have a notion where I go more in-depth about my trading style, later this year I'm also planning on publishing an updated version.

If you could go back to the very start of your journey, what would you advise to yourself to do or not to do.

First of all, submit to time. Have patience with studying, waiting for setups, and the whole journey in general. Enjoy the process and consider the time put in as an investment. You might not be able to capitalize on it yet, but lower your expectations and increase your time horizon. Don’t compare yourself with other traders, use them as motivation. Analyze your own weaknesses and try to eliminate, or at least mitigate them day by day, week by week, and so on.

When you first start out with trading, look for like-minded people with similar goals as you. You can help each other and grow together as traders, which will also make the whole process more enjoyable. There are many trading discords out there where you can find other traders, also sharing your journey on Twitter offers many advantages. I personally never paid a mentor or for a discord group, not saying it’s a bad thing, but nowadays all the information you need is available for free. You just have to put in the work.

For the technical part of trading, I would recommend trying out lots of different markets, as every market offers different trading times and other characteristics. Depending on where you live and other circumstances, some markets are more suitable than others. Same with trading systems, take a look at all of them, but then chose one and try to master it. Many people always change systems and hop from one market to the other, but it will get you nowhere. Failure is your best friend, so don’t reject it, they are necessary to grow as a trader.

Learn to understand price action via backtesting, but learn to execute by live trading. It also will show you flaws in your mind and trading system. Become comfortable with the grey area, you can’t predict the market, but you can react. When it comes to your trading system, it is very important to create your own style. Never try to copy your favorite Twitter trader, rather use them as inspiration. Eventually, your goal is to find your own trading style and be able to think and trade independently.

One of the most important aspects of success is the implementation of routines, not only for trading but for your life in general. Create simple routines that help you to get into a positive momentum at the beginning of your day and then try to keep it. Simply by implementing to-do lists and finishing a task successfully, you will trigger your brain with dopamine every time you can check it off your list.

If you want to be a professional trader then act accordingly, stick to your rules and stay consistent.

Blitz. (Short questions. Answers can be short too, but if there is more to write, do it)

Name your top three traders.

Tough question, many good traders out there, but some of the ones who inspired me from the beginning are @sardarfx, @RektProof, and @I_Am_The_ICT (in no order).

Buy a course or learn on your own?

Learning on your own, 100%. Simply the process of trial and error and digging into the world wide web to find the information you need is very important in my opinion. Figuring out what works for you and what does not might take you more effort, but it will pay out in the long term.

Have you achieved your goals for 2022?

In trading goal was to develop a reliable system, which I have achieved to a big part. Of course, I keep improving it via the knowledge I gain from journaling and experience, but all in all, I’m happy with the progress so far.

Name your most profitable trade.

I think it was back in August of 2021 when I longed $step and my position did 10x within a couple of days.

What's the secret of a successful trader?

Routines in and out of trading, patience, dedication, self-awareness, discipline