Transcription
Honestly, I was lying in bed because I traded 25, 30 lots, but my account wasn't seven figures, it was high six figures, but not enough to trade 25 contracts. And that was just the situation, I was new in Dubai and I met a trader who traded with 40 lots and you wanted to go with the flow, and it somehow worked, but I would say there was more luck than brains involved, you have to say that clearly. Okay, because if you're not willing to trade such a size, you can't possibly maximize the quality to enter at a desired entry area and exit at the planned exit. Today I have the opportunity to speak with Kan, a trader whose charts seem totally confusing to me at first glance because he deals with topics that I have never dealt with myself. Funnily enough, I met Kan in the elevator because he is my neighbor. So it's even more exciting for me today to learn more about his trading approach, his mindset, and his strategies. A warm welcome, Kan. Thanks for being here. I find it super interesting to be able to talk to you today because, in my opinion, you trade completely differently than most people you see or know in the trading world. With you, when I look at the charts, I'm usually totally confused. I see something with volume and other things I've never seen before. Can you perhaps explain a bit what kind of trading you actually do? Yes, gladly. So, first of all, thank you for the invitation. I'm very happy too. My trading is a bit mixed. So, it's generally called volume trading, but I'm moving further and further away from volume because I go by the motto: where do institutions position themselves and where do they want to go? This means you can see where volume is accumulating even without a volume profile. Yes, of course, if the market is sideways for a long time, you know that accumulation is happening there, and accordingly, I try to always stick to where market participants logically want to go. Because institutions never think in price levels, they always think in price ranges, and the whole thing is built on that. I always call it the principle of accepted and unaccepted price ranges. This means the balance sideways, the imbalance, the price discovery. Exactly. What kind of data sets do you use for the strategy? So, volume profile. Of course. I think it was with you that I then see some kind of bubbles on the chart. Is that also with you? Exactly. So, one is the candlestick chart, there's a volume profile, vertical volume, horizontal volume, and the VWAP. I don't use anything else. The VWAP is the Volume Weighted Average Price. This means the volume-weighted average price, which more or less divides the volume of the current day into two halves. This means where the VWAP is, the market is on average or the price is on average accepted. That's one thing. The other is Bookmap. Bookmap is nothing more than a visualized order book. This means I can see when an order is placed, how large that order is in proportion, I see that from the color coding. And these bubbles you see there are market buy orders or market sell orders. This means you also see, for example, if you see a lot of colors, meaning the order book is thick and you see large bubbles that don't move the market, the market is too liquid, too dense, for it to move through anywhere. Ergo, it's more of a range, and we don't expect a breakout. That's an example. The whole time, supply and demand are meeting in this zone, and no one is gaining the upper hand, and thus no direction is emerging. Exactly. When the limits are stronger than the markets. Mhm. Okay. Interesting. Yes, because at first glance it looked super confusing to me, but yes, when you explain it a bit now, it helps me a little. You mentioned the topic of Bookmap. Is that the same as Footprint Chart? No, it's actually something different, let's put it this way, you always have only one data source, okay? That is, for example, Level 2 data, Level 1 data in Forex, Level 2 data in futures. Can you briefly explain to the viewers what that is? Yes, exactly. So, Level 1 data is more or less Top of Book data. This means you only see the best bid and the best ask price. Level 2 data means you see the entire order book. This means, even if it's 100 pips away, as with you, with us it's called ticks. This means you see the entire order book, and just because, for example, there's a large limit order 1% further up, it doesn't mean you blindly trade long, but there are certain market characteristics, which we can also go into. That's the core essence of my trading, changes in characteristics. If I see, for example, okay, I have Level 2 data, I see the order book, then I look at how the order book changes. Then there's a decisive advantage, which, for example, a visualized heatmap Bookmap is just the brand, the corporation, the company. There are also heatmaps from Atas, there are heatmaps from Quantower, Ninja Trader, Sierra Chart, whatever. And it's simply about seeing the visualized past. With the order book, it's like this, if you start, for example, as an institution, then you have to look at the chart for an hour, for example, and then be able to draw a chart from what you saw in the last hour. That's how intensely you have to read the order book. We retailers usually don't have this focus. However, we can see on the heatmap, okay, this is where the order is placed. It's been there for this long. It was changed like this. There was, for example, spoofing and flipping. Spoofing is nothing more than a large fake order, usually two or three times higher than the other orders, that is quickly placed. The market gets scared, makes the flip movement, and what happens? The market is manipulated. So you can simply value the past much better than a naked order book. And for example, I mainly trade the NQ, so in the CFD area it's called NQ. You can't read that in the order book at all. For that, you need something like a heatmap, because it's much too fast. Okay, because it likes to skip ten prices quickly. Exactly. How does this order book or heatmap help you make trades? Because I understand it now, it just tells you where the orders are. Now, of course, we have millions of people in the market. How do you evaluate which orders are good or bad? How do you derive a direction from it? What do you do with it? Mhm. Now you have to stop me if I go too far, but I'll try to start step by step. So, first, I don't just see the orders, but I see the bid and ask lines. This means I see if the prices are being traded through step by step. That's good auction quality. If I see that the bid and ask skip prices, for example, you have a market buy of 100 contracts, but there are only 20 contracts in the book in the next 20 ticks, then you move the market much more than those 20 ticks because there isn't enough in the market. Exactly, so I'll interrupt briefly for the viewers to simplify. If you want to buy for 100, but only 20 are offered at a price, then you can't buy more than is available, and then you're automatically redirected to the next best price, and it's executed there, and thus you move the market because you're creating more demand than supply. Exactly. And now comes the important point. It's poor auction quality because the exchange is nothing more than a big auction. And an auction follows logic. You don't want to buy expensively, you want to buy cheaply. You don't want to sell cheaply, you want to sell expensively. This means if you skip prices, skip prices, skip prices, a so-called vacuum is created. And the vacuum means, you don't just have buyers positioning themselves, but you also have buyers who become sellers, because every buyer has to sell at some point, so they sell. Every seller has to close their position at some point, so they buy. This means if the market rises, rises, rises without corrections, without prices being traded through cleanly, you not only have the sellers who might try a reversal, but you also have the buyers who are taking profits. This means it's not just about the liquidity in the heatmap, but about the unclean quality, which is why the correction is not proportional, but disproportionately large. Okay, so that means you can see with the heatmap whether we have a clean or unclean auction. And an unclean auction means it's automatically redirected. There is, for example, I'll just say too much demand for too little supply. It just jumps up all the time. What sign does that give you when you have that? Mhm. It gives me a sign that, a, if I go into a long trade, positioning myself with the momentum, that I manage my stop loss more aggressively, because the market could correct disproportionately. For me, clean price action, meaning structure, is when it builds up 100% and breaks down up to 60%. If it breaks down more than 60%, the trend is often broken. Meaning, you might have a break of structure if you have multiple structure points, etc. This means the profit expectation is lower, and on the other hand, I know that if the speed, auction velocity, meaning auction speed, then I manage my stop loss with poor auction quality. If the auction quality is good, I leave my stop loss where it belongs and let it run to my TP1 or TP2. Okay. Mhm. But that's not just one way I use it. The second way I use it is not with market dynamics, but purely with limit orders, specifically so-called liquidity blocks. Liquidity blocks. You have to imagine, this is specialized in futures, if now, let's say, you are at 4000 in the S&P, the 4000 point mark, and at the 410 point mark there are 300 limit orders, then 300 limit orders will never be executed, but a liquidity pull, a redistribution occurs there. This means you see that 300 limit orders are executed, but you can see, for example, in Bookmap, 600, 700, 800, 900 contracts were traded. Okay, this means you can also see there, is the market running there to get the liquidity, or is the market running there to redistribute, to possibly continue the overarching direction? How do I see that? So, these are two different things. How do you recognize that? Where is the difference? Exactly, let's say you enter at 4000 and 410 is here. Then it depends, first of all, where are you coming from? From the 4000, because 4000 is a round level, it's called a magic number because it's round. 4000, 4100. In the NQ, it's 11000, 11500, 12000, so it's always in 500 or 1000 increments. And if you're coming from a long bias, for example, from a long momentum, because you had three consecutive outside days. An outside day means opening above or below the previous day's range. That's an outside day. If you have that for three consecutive days, it's usually the case that the market then enters a range phase. This means the trendier and stronger the movement, the more I assume that this liquidity redistribution is an entry for me for further long buildup. And now it gets important, if the order is here, again, 4000 is here, 410 is here, if the market runs there and gets slower and slower, and you notice no new buyers are coming in, then I assume the market is making a very, very strong stop run. It likes to do that very, very much. Four, five ticks, so just before that, the market turns around again, has an extremely strong stop run, and now it's important, and I always look at where the movement started. Did the movement start at 4000? Did it start at 3990, wherever. And when this stop run comes, then I have my support levels, be it the beginning of this one-sided auction or the magic number. And when the market slows down again and consolidates, consolidation is nothing more than a redistribution after a strong move, and it must be dynamic. And if I see that the highs are faked in the consolidation, it's a distribution for me, and I tend to enter short. If I see that the lows are faked and the lows are quickly rejected and absorbed, that's an entry reason for me, for example, where I then target this liquidity that's been there all along. This is very complicated now. I'll try to translate it a bit for the, I'll call it, the retail traders. Faked highs and lows simply means you have a long wick upwards, for example, if we're talking about the long direction now, a wick upwards, then another wick comes that goes above the previous one and pulls back down again, and it has to be above. It has to go up. Exactly. And then, when you see that, others would say, you see, maybe selling pressure is coming in, or buying pressure is too weak, and then you say, okay, that's a signal for you to go short, but you still have an eye on the heatmap or Bookmap, right? Exactly. So, Bookmap, the picture there, there's no timeframe. It's a tick chart. This means you see every single trade as it goes up or down. But I don't look at it in such detail, but I always look at it on a 15-minute frame. This means, if I have my Bookmap chart on, which can perhaps be displayed here, it's then always at 15-minute intervals. Only when I want to validate something and the overarching picture isn't clear enough for me, do I go into the smaller frames. I'll give you a simpler example, a liquidity block. A liquidity block is when on at least three consecutive prices, so 4000, 4025, 4050, 4075, if there are, for example, three or four large orders, and they must be large orders. A large order is by definition 1.5 times the average of what's in the book. This means if there are an average of 100 contracts per price, it must be at least 150 contracts. But large orders or liquidity blocks are usually twice as big, two and a half times as big. This means if you have a very thick red bar in Bookmap, then you know, okay, you don't just have the displayed 450 contracts plus 150, 150, but 2000, 3000, 4000 contracts are being traded because it's a liquidity zone. So, this means if I look at the clock and it's 12 noon German time, it doesn't have the power to go through. Where should the power come from to trade 2, 3, 4000 contracts? Ergo, liquidity blocks are perfect reversals for me. Reversal is the opposite of continuation. Meaning, I try to trade in the opposite direction. This works extremely well, and there's also a very simple stop placement here. For example, you are in a long trend, okay? You are nicely in the long trend, and below the second structure point, where the trend might have broken, you have a liquidity block. Now, if the market runs to this liquidity block very quickly, and suddenly all the power is gone at the liquidity block, then I look very closely at whether the orders are being executed or not. If the order is executed, the color changes. If yes, then there's no iceberg order there. Iceberg order, should I explain? So, explain it gladly. So, exactly. So, an iceberg order is similar to a hidden order, in that it is reloaded. Ergo, there are 100 contracts at the price. You buy 100 contracts, but there are still 100 contracts there. It's constantly being replenished by an algo. You buy 500, and there are still 100 there. You buy 10,000, and there are still 100 there. It's a bit exaggerated, but it's reloaded in real-time, in milliseconds. And if I see that during slow trading hours, that's an extremely strong signal for a reversal for me, and the coolest thing is, with a liquidity block, you don't need a stop loss below the H4 wick or anything like that, but you just need to place your stop loss into the liquidity block, because that's also how I manage, and that's why my management is relatively good. I always place my stop loss where the idea is invalidated, and I always increase my position when a new setup arises. Mhm. And that works extremely well. Yes, wow. Yes, it sounds extremely extensive. I can already imagine a bit more about it now. That's good. I think it's helpful if we show some pictures and so on. Definitely. Yes, we will. And yes, so what is decisive for the direction of your trades? You probably have the typical process. You do an analysis, a direction comes out of it, then you find an entry point for yourself and go in. Is the direction defined by the heatmap and these liquidity zones? No, not at all. Exactly, that's why I said it's mixed. Two or three years ago, it was actually all heatmap because I was only scalping. I took segments, meaning I always had a risk of $300 and usually took $500, $600, $700. So, not an extremely good R:R. I had high win rates. Then I scaled up extremely. I told you earlier. I once scalped with 25 lots in the S&P, and at the end of the month, I had $30,000. For me, $30,000 was a record month, but for 25 S&P contracts, $30,000 was far too little, and a few months later, with three or four contracts, I made almost double that, and my edge changed, and that brings us to the question. Because what I did was this: my base bias, you might know it, and my entire edge is built on that. I look at how the market behaved last week. How did the market behave the last two days? Where did the market close? Where did the market open? And the most important directional event for me is the Asia session and the EU session. Okay, so from 0:00 to 1:00 is the Sydney session. Australia starts, then you see the first movements, and here there's, for example, VSOMEL. The trendier the market runs pre-market, the higher the probability for equalization in the Army session. Okay. And what I love there, for example, are setups that occur at least two or three times a week, and that is when the Americans enter the market, they either retest the EU high or Asia high, or if you're coming from short, the EU or Asia low, and at these points, I look closely at the order flow. This means my trading is extremely simple. I trade for 20 to 30 minutes a day at most. I get up in the morning, I determine my basis, which I also share with over 1300 trading members. I share it with them and say, "Friends, the basis is, so I work a lot with key levels, and a decisive factor that brought my trading to a new level was I no longer trade from level to level, but I trade at least from key level to key level, or if you have an A++ setup, from key level to key level." Now the question, what is a key level? I was just about to say, now you have to briefly explain what we do. Exactly. So, I always define key levels based on the trading history. So, I always say, you have to read the market like a picture book, like a children's story, because the market tells you a story. It tells you, am I in a range cycle, trend cycle, how strong is the trend cycle, are we perhaps close to earnings season, so a lot is accumulating, and so on and so forth. And what I try to do is a key level. So, you can imagine, if I have a two-week range low, a two-week range high, okay, something significant from the volume peaks. But I don't need a volume profile, because you can see that from the candles. Okay? All indicators, they are all just aids. Nothing is necessarily required. You have to understand the candles, and that's, for example, range high, range low are key levels for me. Consolidation high, consolidation low are key levels for me, but not intraday consolidations, but consolidations. You can imagine, we've seen a sell-off in a 3-week trending market, and now we're consolidating for two weeks. Mhm. The high or the low of the consolidation are key levels for me. So, a key level for me is always a key level when I know that a decision has to be made here. Nothing has to be done at the stock market, but a decision will very likely be made here. And if this key level breaks, then the market doesn't move 0.10%, but rather 0.5%, 0.6%, 0.8%. In the biggest tech stocks in the world, that's a lot. Mhm. Exactly. Wow. Okay. Yes, a bit much. Yes. Sel. Yes, I think, no, the thing with key levels is easy to understand. I find this whole process is more than one thinks, I would say, right? You look up here, and then over there, and we have 1700 lessons in our training, so it's not insignificant. How many hours is that? Several hundred. Oh God. Definitely several hundred. That's why we also have no time limit. Yes, that's why I call it the world, because it's difficult, because everyone has their own edge, you know? One is a scalper, another is a day trader, another is a swing trader, another only trades news. So, there's everything from A to Z, but I believe there isn't the scalper, the intraday trader. What we are, we are day traders, or we are traders. We trade the market in a way that suits our personality. You said you make one or two trades a month. That suits your personality. You make money from it, you're happy, and you don't have to look at your phone every 10 seconds like a crazy person. Yes, very relaxed trading, but you also make good money from it. So, and I used to invest two or three hours a day with scalping. You mean, but that was a very unhealthy year? It was unhealthy. It wasn't just unhealthy, it was... I was lying in bed at night, and my heart was pounding. Really, I was lying in bed because I traded 25, 30 lots, but my account wasn't seven figures. It was high six figures, but not enough to trade 25 contracts. And that was just the situation, I was new in Dubai and I met a trader who traded with 40 lots, and you wanted to go with the flow, and it somehow worked, but I would say there was more luck than brains involved, you have to say that clearly. Okay, because if you're not willing to trade such a size, you can't possibly maximize the quality to enter at a desired entry area and exit at the planned exit. You enter somewhere here and exit somewhere there, even though you should have entered here and here. Probably because when you go in with such a large position size, you see the amount of money, and then you think, "It's going to be bad if I lose this, or if it's gone again, or what is that feeling?" It's not just the amount of money, because money comes and goes. You have to respect money, but not be afraid of money. It was more the way I realized that the quality of my trades had plummeted. But why? Because you try to wait for even more confirmations, even more confirmation, even more confirmation, and then you enter. And the thing is, this might be a cool thing. I'm a huge fan of loss aversion, as it's called. Loss aversion is, you enter the trade already with the thought that you've lost it. Ah, yes, I know that from Larry Williams, he has that. Yes, exactly. Exactly. And this loss aversion has always helped me immensely. Now I'm trying to visualize my loss aversion when you're in with 25 lots. Yes, that wasn't possible. This means that from disciplined loss aversion, it became "please let it run and take profit, no matter what you do, please let it run," and that didn't happen because you capped it beforehand. This means I could trade profitably, but I wasn't trading like myself anymore, but I was trading like someone else. Mhm. And if you don't understand your own personality 100%, you will never make replicable money in the market. And that's the most important thing, replicability. If you trade every day, let's say, and at the end of the month your P&L is 3 cents, then you belong to the top 8% of traders in the world, because you are profitable at the end of the month and haven't lost. Yes, exactly. Mhm. Exactly, and that's how I try to build it for myself. So, we can also talk about my account allocation later, because I can't afford to lose anymore. I've... well, you can always, but we can definitely go into that, but we would have looked at how it's structured at the end or towards the end. So, to go back to the strategy you use, it's very extensive, many things. But I think one has a good understanding of it now. What does that look like in everyday life? So, what is my trading day like? I do swing trading. I looked at it this morning. I haven't looked at it for the last two days, I did something on Sunday. I'm very lazy, I'd say, but not in the sense that I miss things, but simply, if it's not there, then it's not there for me, and then I'm away from the chart and enjoy life. And what about you? Mhm. Okay. For me, it's a bit different. So, when you talk about my entrepreneurship too, or just trading? First, just trading. Okay, so in trading, it's actually the same every day. I mean, we live in the same building, as neighbors. Around 8:30 AM, the sun comes up on this side and wakes me up. I never set an alarm. I sleep as long as I want, because I'm not a fan of having to get up at 4 AM, run three laps around the block, take a cold shower. I think, well, I'm saying it, but it's nonsense. You can be successful in other ways. The sun shines in my face, and the first thing I do is look at the charts. And my entire analysis takes about half a minute, a minute at most. I adjust my locations, and the most important thing, my entire trading is built on this: I set alarms. Okay, I set alarms at my key levels, I only enter at key levels, and I set alarms where, for example, the market is too far from the key level, where I might have to rethink my analysis. So. Then, as usual, I brush my teeth, go to the gym, shower, go to the office. So, and when the alarm comes, I look at the situation, and then I add the heatmap. So, theoretically, your phone is over there, if an alarm comes now, you can't react now, but what would you do in such a situation if an alarm comes? Exactly, so I have a server set up on my phone. My Windows PC runs on that server. I have my heatmaps there. The thing is, I don't necessarily need a heatmap, but I need a heatmap when I'm not sure. How can I not be sure? By the level not being good enough, by, for example, in the next 3 hours, our best friend Jerome Powell speaks, something is happening. So, if I have market cycles or market environments that are not normal, meaning, for example, that we've already seen a 2% move in the Asia session, which I think happened yesterday or the day before. So, on Friday, I think it was, we had a huge move. Then I need the order book to see, okay, are we illiquid or are we liquid? That's the most important question for me, because the more illiquid the market is, the easier it is to manipulate. And we can also get to my main strategy. So, that's why my trading is so stress-free, 20 to 30 minutes a day, because I actually only trade consolidations. I almost only trade consolidations. Is that to be seen as a kind of breakout strategy, or what do I understand by that? No, much more complex. Okay, because I don't just trade successful consolidations, I also trade failed consolidations. Can a consolidation fail? Mhm. So, a consolidation, by definition, always has to have a strong move before it. That's very important. The messier the preceding move, the more significant the consolidation. So, if I'm building down continuously in a two-way auction, meaning a clean auction, and then I go sideways, this sideways movement doesn't necessarily have to be a consolidation. But if I see that many prices were skipped with few contracts and we're now forming the bottom, then the second thing is decisive, and that is how dynamic the consolidation is. Because what's the difference between a collection zone and a consolidation? Very simple, a collection zone, meaning a consolidation, is always a collection zone, but a collection zone is not always a consolidation. Why? Because a collection zone is controlled between two price areas. A consolidation is dynamic. Why is it dynamic? Because the more dynamic it is, the more my money goes to you, your money to him, his money to me. It's redistributed. And here it's important for me, where is the overarching structure? Are we in a long structure? Are we in a sideways structure, or is it already a trend? And the consolidation, if
If it fails, then this whole redistribution was not for the purpose of continuing the trend, but for reversing the trend, because with successful consolidation, you will see at least a short-term or medium-term reversal until the last bad auction is balanced, until the last structural point, until the Rewap, until the NakedP, whatever. And secondly, if the consolidation fails, then you know, okay, a floor is breaking. And when a floor breaks, that is usually a major support, then you expect the market to move into the next balance. And if the next balance is 300 ticks away, then I hold my trade for 300 ticks. If the next balance is, for example, only 70 ticks away and I have to stop out at 130 ticks, then I don't trade the consolidation. Okay, so I aim for at least a risk-reward ratio of 1.5 or 2 for my trades. Back then, I used to make between 10 and 12 trades a day. Now I make between one and two trades a day, and my performance has skyrocketed, and that's why less is more. No matter what tools you use, no matter what type of person you are, because everyone always says, I'm impatient, I'm the scalper type. Yes. Yes. No, everyone has to be patient. Yes, I know that one too, so you hear it the most. I start with very little and am very satisfied with it, and it's going quite well. So, that's the main strategy with consolidations, and the other thing with the whole heatmap and so on, you trade that on the side. Exactly. But always when I need it as confirmation. Okay. Exactly. Okay. Interesting. How long have you been doing this? I've been trading for almost 9 years. So, back then, when I was 18, I did mortgage financing, and when I was doing mortgage financing, I started to get involved with stocks. It was all more swing trading. Back then, I traded options, warrants. It was actually quite exciting, but when your total assets are €20,000, it's not that much fun, right? Yes. And I just kept going and kept going, and at some point it went from a hobby to a passion, and the passion grew stronger and stronger, and my main goal back then was to find a trading system that not only works today, because most people always want a bread-and-butter setup, when the line crosses the long, when the indicator signals short, and that doesn't exist in the stock market, and I'm sorry if it's now. No, I want to be honest too. I think the biggest garbage is static systems. Why? Because static systems can work well for a while, but the moment the market phase changes, they no longer work. Why? Because you have to adapt them. If you have a static system that is so flexibly adaptable to range cycles, trend cycles, seasons, whatever, then good. That's it. We had someone here who programmed algos or still does. And I think we also talked about how difficult it is for an algo to replace humans, because the market does have character traits, and such a simple system. Let's take the EMA cross or something like that, which many people think works, it doesn't work. So that doesn't work, because it's simply too static, as you say, and that's how I personally see it too. Why the entire market isn't automated yet is because there are people behind it everywhere, and for automation, they can't understand humans, only we humans can possibly understand ourselves. That's why I still consider it unlikely that the market will be automated in the next few years, because it will always remain human, and we humans are totally unpredictable in most cases because we act emotionally or whatever, and therefore I think you need a system that is adaptable to certain situations. Let me take the example of the NVIDIA crash from January. Nvidia crashed because Deepse released this Chinese AI, and it was a benchmark. Yes, that was one of my best trades. The market fell extremely, but in December there was already news, a report from this AI, that it was built with Nvidia chips. So, that, so it was already known, but still, humans just reacted and said, "Oh, now I'm scared, I'm getting rid of it." An AI would most likely have said, okay, great, it doesn't change the fact that the AI is good. It was still programmed with Nvidia chips, there was no damage to Nvidia at all. Nevertheless, total panic, sell-off. I entered at the bottom, and the next day it shot back up. And I don't think an automated, static system can pick that up, but for that, you need human logic and a human behind it who adapts to the situation and information. 100% because you also have millions of different market patterns every day. I can tell you something cool, I heard this recently in a podcast or something, and that's the chess computer paradox. Have you heard of it? The chess computer paradox. It was in the 80s or 90s, they wanted to build a supercomputer that could basically make every chess move, so that it always wins, but after every move, dozens of new possibilities arise. After every move again, after every move again. And the chess computer paradox states that a chip is about this big, the entire observable universe would not be enough to build the perfect chess computer, just in terms of size. You can Google it. It's not bullshit. So, that's really wild. And I told myself then, we also program algos ourselves, I also want to do asset management later. I already have a small one. But we work with a multi-agent system, and that is extremely cost-intensive. I have no external investor, I do all of this myself. We have two programmers and two traders who do this, so there are five of us, and the multi-agent system. So, we have a total of 25, 25 different algos, and the algos are set to the different market cycles. That means, in a market cycle with these parameters, with this volatility, with this ATR, with this volume, blah blah blah, agents 1, 3, 8, 12, and 22 are active, and they always switch against each other, and that's something that works. That's how the really big ones do it too, but for that, you need quants. You probably know quants. I only hear about them. So, quants are the craziest people on this planet. So, they need to have, like, a 1.0 Harvard, they probably even need a 0.9 with bonus points, bonus courses, and stuff. They need like 6 years of minimum professional experience at a bank, the sum X, so I don't know exactly. So, in any case, the requirements are extreme, and they also earn very, very well. So, they earn several million a year, and these are just analysts, and quants are, for example, Aladdin, you know Aladdin from BlackRock, the craziest AI in the world. I don't even know it yet. You don't know it, right? Aladdin can do the following. It's really crazy. Aladdin reads weather data, for example, from the Asian region, looks at which agricultural sector, agricultural company might have a production facility there, and if they know a storm is coming, blah blah blah, then they say, this stock is probably short. So, that's Aladdin. That's, you have to know that. Now I know it, but if I think, well, if BlackRock has that, then there are always people who think, yes, I'll do that too, I'll automate some system. Exactly, I was just about to say, that becomes difficult, and as far as I know, BlackRock doesn't rely solely on that either, but still has manual traders, definitely 100%. But even so, you have to consider, I read it in Bloomberg, the Saudi ruling family, which has a fortune of 300 trillion, the richest family in the world, so nothing against it, and they offered them, I don't know the sum, an exorbitant sum just to license and use it. They also said no. So, it must be very impressive. Okay. Yes, then there must be something behind it. Yes. Yes. Okay. So, they can't multiply their money so easily in Saudi Arabia with them. No, they also have limitations. Crazy. Okay. Yes, sounds super interesting. And these agents, as you called them, multi-agents, how did you come up with that? Exactly, actually quite by chance. Back then, everyone knows EAs in MetaTrader, you can have them programmed on Fiverr for €30 and so on. I would advise against that first. I personally assume that it doesn't work if you buy a €30 EA. Absolutely not. Absolutely not. Even if you've been programming yourself for 10 years, but have no idea about the stock market, even then, and you will need 20 years, and even the algo will eventually crash. So, I said back then, okay, that's level 1, these cheap EAs, EMA EAs, and whatever, and an Expert Advisor is not an algo for me. Okay, you have a window, make ten crosses, adjust a few numbers, and it doesn't work. There are also all these funding EAs that quickly fund your account at FTMO and then crash it. So, all nonsense. But I found it interesting back then, namely the backtest function of MetaTrader. So, I only trade with ATS or with Bookmap, but the backtest function really, how should I say, captivated me, because I said, okay, you can set up different strategies there, you can test them, of course, nothing was profitable in the long run, and then we went to the next level, namely Sierra Chart, and Sierra Chart is a volume trading software. Sierra Chart is from 2007, 2008, there are Windows XP wipes, if you still remember. So, extremely old, also from that year. So, I'm from 2006. Yes, okay. Almost, right? And then at some point, we started programming volume-based algos in Sierra, and then we programmed my algo, which was only set to velocity, so to auction speed, and only in combination with key levels, which we also defined by code. And the algo was profitable for four months, four months, with a maximum drawdown of 6% and a total of 7.5% per month or something. That was really not bad. And then it caught me, because afterwards it had a drawdown phase, and we cut at 20%, and then we said, how can this be? We looked at the markets, and in those four months, we had very wild markets. It was even January, February, March, April. Those were very crazy markets, and so last year, because you know the market is quiet at first, then it gets faster and so on, and then we said, okay, wait a minute, there's something that performed really well for four months, really well, and then we set ourselves the task, worked everything out, we used Miro, you might know it, it's a planning app, we determined, so with these speech bubbles, line speech bubbles, we wrote down about 7, 8,000 points, so their large. And now we've started to define everything I need and implement it in code. What is a consolidation? When is a consolidation strong? When is it broken? So, when is the speed fast? At which market phase, which volume parameters do we expect in summer, which do we expect in spring? And these are now all the things we're working on. We'll probably need another two or three years. I was just about to say, that's a huge effort, and you mean one programmer or something? Two programmers, so three traders, so me, two traders, and two programmers. Exactly. Okay. Yes. We have a call every week, every week, we do all of this. Looks good. Yes, looks good. Yes, looks good in the sense that we are making progress. How much does AI help you, with this Grok and ChatGPT and everything? I'll put it this way, the whole thing isn't as great as you think with coding and stuff. So, my programmer says, for example, at the beginning, he said, "Great, they can program the basics and stuff." You can also do that, for example, Super Grok can program best, but that's only for the basics, right? So, everything you learn on YouTube, Super Grok can do too, and anything that gets more complex, you have to do yourself. That's why I think AI is great as an entrepreneur, right? Creating PDFs, structuring, daily plan, weekly plan, but anything else as a trader, you might need it as a journal, you can use it to record your thoughts, to make your tables and stuff, but for coding algo programs, I don't think much of it. Yes, you also have to say that AI only works with training data, and if it hasn't been trained with a profitable system or something, then it's difficult to create, but only with the YouTube stuff that you mentioned. That's why we, so you have to imagine, we have our entire training world, these 1700 lessons, we've transcribed them, we've filtered them again, and we've stored them in our own database. It's called LM, and that's something where I say, you need continuous fine-tuning work. Filtering, adjusting, filtering, adjusting. Then you have a GPT that is more or less the digital copy of me, and you can work well with that. That's great. So, all Large Language Model means LM. Mhm. That's okay. Crazy. So, theoretically, like a ChatGPT that you can ask questions to. Not yet. We're in the process, but I think it will be ready in the next one to two months. That's funny. Okay, then I have the entire roadmap, when I founded Trin back then, it's ready, because that's the last thing that's still open. Crazy. AI. Exactly. I find that interesting right now. Yes. What's next for you? You've already said asset management is an interesting point. I've also had two asset managers here. I find it interesting. I'm a bit too young, so I need a little more time, but for you, how does it continue? Exactly, so first of all, you have to see where you want to go in terms of volume. So, for example, I have a very, very good friend who is now also in Dubai. He's, well, he's older, he's 52, Austrian. Does he live with us? No, he's just here on vacation. He spends one month here, one month there, one month here. He has no fixed residence. He's always on the move. He was a hedge fund manager himself. But he wasn't a big one. So, he set up his own hedge fund in Liechtenstein. He had €35 million AUM, so assets under management, right? And I want to do it together with him, because he knows the legal aspects, builds it all up, but he has his own hedge fund with 35 million, he managed it all by himself. Well, he had a programmer, a risk manager, but they were external, hired by the hour, and he did everything himself, and that's also very crazy, because one thing I absolutely don't want is, I don't want an investor who co-founds the hedge fund with me, because then you'll dance to their tune. That's what I wanted to say. That means I want to do it all myself. If you want to do this in Dubai, you first pay half a million for the first license. In total, for all the setup fees, you're at almost 2 million euros, and I have to pay that myself. So, that wasn't really the problem. I'm not multi-millionaire or anything, but that can be earned. The problem, however, is the personnel. Find traders who trade with such quality that you can give them an allocation where it's worthwhile for the trader, for the investor, and for the hedge fund. And that's something where I'm struggling a bit. That's why I might want to move away from futures a bit, or rather, not move away. Futures will remain my main thing, but also options, also CFDs, also stocks, individual stocks, just to diversify a bit more, and I don't have the people for that. I have two damn good traders in my team. And everything else is average, and with an average trader, you can't build a hedge fund. It's not possible. So, sorry to the guys who might hear this. No offense intended, but I've told them to their faces. The personnel problem. A clear personnel problem. Mhm. Exactly. Interesting. Yes, I haven't thought that far ahead. I thought, yes, if it goes well, I'll just open it up for everyone, then everyone gives their money, and then, right? Because if you have a trader now, let's say the best traders in the world make 10% a month. That's really peak, because of course, on a €1000 account, anyone can do it, but try it with 10 billion or 100 billion. We had, as I said, one of the hedge fund managers who explained to us that at a certain size, it becomes much, much more difficult because you can no longer get orders into the market. 100%. You need several people just to get your size in. So, and I'm saying, I don't want a 10 billion hedge fund or something like that. I don't want that at all, but I want to, myself, into a, so it's maybe not that technical, it's more emotional. But I want to leave something behind for the next generation. That's one of my life goals. One of my life goals was to send my mother into retirement. I managed to do that four years ago. And I told myself, whatever you do for yourself, do it right, and you can't found a hedge fund alone. That doesn't work. The colleague who did it, he also has his own ice hockey team, which plays in the first league, he has several tennis schools, so he's quite impressive, but a lot of it is through contacts, and I'm the type of person, I don't want to express myself vulgarly, but I don't suck up to anyone just to get ahead. Because why did we become traders? Because we want to be free, because we want to shape our lives the way we want. So, we want to get up when we want, we want to go to sleep when we want, we want to do our business the way we want, and not have everything dictated to us from left and right. Yes, exactly. Okay. Yes, crazy. So, soon I can invest in a KN Aslan hedge fund, or if it goes well, I can say, hey, this was my neighbor. Yes, one of the two, right? Then our reception will be queuing up, everyone will want to. Yes, probably. Yes, so that's the next step. What is the ultimate goal? Is that it, or do you think it can go higher? So, that's the next thing you're planning for now. So, give us a little roadmap for the next few years. Mhm. Exactly. So, the end is always death. Everything in between can change at any time. And the most important thing for me, so I have the Big Five for Life, as they say. The first was to send my mother into retirement, done. Okay. The second was to do asset management, I've also done that, I have Aslan Capital LC in Dubai, but I don't accept any more funds. It's no longer financially worthwhile for me, because I can't get the size in. If a studio comes to me now, hey Kan, I'll give you 10 million. In futures, I wouldn't be able to get the size in. If I start with CFDs here, it might work here, it will also be messy. Yes. Exactly. And I don't want that. And the third is, I want to, well, I've also fulfilled that to a certain extent. I wanted to create a standard of living for the most important people in my life where I no longer have to worry. I've paid off my brothers' loans. I've saved my uncles from bankruptcy. I've made sure that my mother lives in a new four-room duplex apartment, has a new, well, simply so that I don't have to worry about my family anymore. The fourth is then, my fund, so that I can officially call myself a licensed hedge fund manager. And the fifth, which is also one of the most important things for me, is that I want to do charity with my company and with myself. And that's what I told you. I want to leave something behind for the next generation, for my children, my grandchildren, and so on. No one should ever go to my child and say, your father did something negative. And that's why we've also planned to do charities. We've already built wells in Africa. We want to do more of that. We want to build schools. But we also want to, well, that's my wife, she's extremely into animal welfare. We want to found animal shelters and stuff. So, at some point, I want to say, I'm done, and then I only want to work for karma. But not because I expect anything back from karma, but because it's a fact. Those who give good, receive good. Exactly. I find that interesting. I don't hear anything from you about needing a Bugatti or something. No, not at all. Doesn't matter. I feel the same way, but there are also people who say, when asked what the goal is, you'll get a Bugatti listed and here and there, only material things. But for you, it's much more about values, I'd say, so cash, definitely. Definitely, we already mentioned it. That's maybe a hard transition, but we'll do it anyway. Your accounts. Now I'm interested, and of course, you can always say you don't want to say anything, but how much money do you have in your trading account? How much money do you trade with? Mhm. So, to answer the question directly, it's a little over 2 million. But that's one account. I have five accounts in total, and now it gets a bit more complex. So, I have two buffer accounts and three execution accounts. Okay, you have to imagine, in addition to these 2 million, I have a little over 1.5 million in investor funds. Okay, that means, and these investor funds are traded with an LPOA, so with a power of attorney. That means I have my own account, where most of the money is, I don't touch that. It doesn't even have a data feed, it's a buffer account. So, my second account is my execution account. That's my daily account. There are always plus 100,000 on it. That's for my day trading. My that's my, exactly my second account, right? Say, no, wait. Let's separate the execution account and investors. One is a little over two, the other is a little over one. That's my private wealth or my private trading account, and then the investors. And then I have three execution accounts. One has 100k on it, that's for my daily trading. One has a bit more on it, because I do swing trades. I exclusively swing trade CL, so oil, because it always trends when it breaks out of a sideways phase. And I have the third execution account, there's always 30k on it. That's my investment account. What do I mean by that? With the investment account, money is withdrawn weekly and invested in all sorts of assets. ETFs, individual stocks, warrants. So, actually apartments, for example. Yes. So, I've bought three apartments now. I'm almost broke now. Aslan owns the whole area where we live. Not like that. Not like that. Exactly. So, that's the investment account and the swing account. With the swing account, I do, like you, two, maybe three trades a month. It's very, very passive, and with this account, I always top up the first account, and I do a settlement once a month. So, with the investment account, I withdraw every week. With the other two accounts, I do a settlement once a month, and usually, it's the case that I need the first three months to earn back the investors' money, and the rest of the money belongs to me. Exactly. Yes, I first saw that in your Instagram story or something, when you show account statements like that. And so much earned. You also did that recently, right? Yes, exactly. Yes, what comes out of it for you? Tell me, what exactly? So, I can tell you, last year in May, I had my first six-figure trading month. I also showed it completely with broker statements. But that's actually quite interesting, because that wasn't my best trading month. That was my first six-figure month, and my average position size was around 12 lots. In October, I had my second six-figure month, and my average position size was three lots. That means I generated the same amount with 70% less position size. Why? And that's because the edge has changed, because I had the guiding principle back then, whoever doesn't understand the small picture can't understand the big picture. Whoever doesn't understand the big picture can't understand the small picture. And at some point, I started, because I used to scalp, I always capped my profits at intraday levels from the last 2 hours, 3 hours, 4 hours, and I said, wait a minute Kan, you're right so often that the market runs to your key zone or your level, why don't you let it run? What did I do? I massively increased my stop loss, massively decreased my size. Ergo, I even had much less risk and let the trades run. And the interesting thing is, I don't know why, but in my best months, I have no losing days. That's not normal at all. That's not normal at all. I can prove it. Broker statements, not a single day lost. The reason, however, is, so in May it was like this, I earned around 120,000 US dollars with one account, and for me it was like, okay, it was good, but it wasn't great. Okay, because the quality wasn't top, and because I needed a lot of size, didn't capture much movement, then I reworked my edge over the summer months, did a lot of research, just this thought process, Kan, you have to trust your zones, you don't just have to enter properly, you also have to exit properly, because trade quality includes not only timing, but also sizing, how you hold the trade, whether you compound it, how you manage it, and how you bring it to the finish line at the end of the day. Okay, that's what trade quality depends on, and then it was all about quality. Everything else didn't matter to me, whether I had one euro in my account, 10,000, whether I traded one lot, five lots. It was all about quality. I knew that for a qualitative trade, I needed this stop loss and this target for it to be a qualitative trade. And then I took a vacation in August, and in September I settled down, and in October I said, I'm going to do exactly what I've been preparing for in the last few months. And then, day after day, every day before breakfast, I swear to you, every day, I can prove it all, before breakfast, I earned at least 200,000 US dollars every damn day, because in September it was the point, at the end of September, where I was preparing, that I integrated the alarms. I only traded when I had the best locations, and that day after day after day, and then I somehow looked, at some point I looked, okay, two days left, I went through all the broker statements, and thought to myself, things are going well for you, great, I'm already over 100,000, and then I also made a video out of it to show transparency, and then it was December or November, December, normally 70, 80k, and in April I started trading all three accounts actively, and that was the third time where I made almost 160, and I would say the average I have is somewhere around 80, 90, it's not over 100 yet, but I know myself, I'm almost sure that I will have my first quarter-million month this year, because the cool thing is, when you do that daily, when you don't just talk about it, you live it. I'm not a coach, I'm a trader. I don't want anyone to call me a mentor or coach. I'm a trader who shares his passion, and I'm not the most professional. I don't dress like Lewis Hamilton, try to speak eloquently. I am who I am, and because people accept me as I am, and because I'm becoming more confident in what I do. I also do public webinars for Bookmap. I'm an official partner here. Wasn't that somewhere in this hotel? No, that was a bootcamp. It was an in-person bootcamp. 15 people came on-site, and the people who are with me are lawyers, doctors, and so on, they are also impressive people, right? But I don't pretend in front of them, because they want to learn trading from me, not how to speak professionally. And I think this confidence comes from the years, and therefore, whoever doesn't give up, no matter in which niche, will be successful, because it doesn't matter how many times you fall to the ground. It only matters how many times you get back up, right? I agree. That's a fact. Great, I think we've found a great closing statement. Is there anything else you'd like to add or mention to our viewers? Actually, I can only tell you, stay tuned. Trading can be extremely fun. But trading isn't just about fun, it's about professionalism, about seriousness, how serious you are, and the most important thing is continuity, if you constantly try to reflect. That's the most important skill of a trader. If you constantly reflect and constantly work on your problems and understand where the problems come from, you will be successful. 100%. Perfect. Great. Then we've created a great ending with this. Thank you for being here. Thank you very, very much, and then we'll see you again sometime here, if you're managing your hedge fund or something. Then I'd like to secure an exclusive interview with you here. Very, very gladly. We'll do it. Thanks for your time, Lis. Thank you very much. Yeah.