Isar Chaudry: Secret 95% Win Rate Strategy The Banks Use Will Make You Rich | WOR Podcast - EP.131

27 years old, managing 6 million in personal capital, which is incredible. And I'm sure people are going to sit there and think, "How do you do that?" The best way to start is probably, "How do we get to that 6 million?" So I bought bonds, and I started trading different asset classes. I took my 50k capital to around 100k, invested about 150k, returned maybe around 500k. From there, uh, yeah, the sky was the limit. We have AAA great setups; we have Ablea great setups. For example, AAA is the best format that we can get, the most high-probability case study. I'll give you a strategy, actually, for, um, you know, this is a big debate: what does the bank trade? How do they trade? I'll give you one very good strategy from the banks, 95% winning rate. If you know that strategy, you're going to be rich, and it's called [Music].

Uh, the number one podcast in the trading space, the fastest growing, and that's thanks to every single one of you. Before we get into this incredible episode, guys, I want to tell you about our free [ __ ]. Make sure you join in the link in the description. Our free [ __ ] community. Inside there, we are doing the giveaways now. All you have to do is the giveaway section; you'll see it on screen right now. You just enter the giveaway, and it automatically selects the winners after the countdown ends. Not only that, we have a free community chat which I'm active in as well. You'll get updates on every single episode. There's an application form for the day trading show if you want to appear on that channel, and so much more, completely free. The link is right there in the description; click it, join the [ __ ], join the giveaways, enjoy this incredible episode. Let's go.

Welcome everyone back to the Words of Wisdom podcast. We're back once again, still the number one trading podcast in the world and the fastest growing, thanks to all of you. As of today, we are on 170,000 subscribers, which is absolutely insane. Thank you, as always, but that's thanks to you and our incredible guest. Talking of which, we have an absolutely incredible trader today. I'm very excited to get into this conversation because we always talk about prop firms, funded traders, and so on, but today we actually have someone who trades very large, seven-figure personal capital, and that is Isar Chowri.

Hi, Riz. Hi. I know we've been speaking for a while, and we finally—funny enough, obviously you're in Europe; I'm in Europe—we decided to come to Dubai of all places, um, but you—it's great to have you with us today. I'm very excited to get into this. I think the best way to start this off, I guess, is to go from maybe the beginning. I haven't done like a podcast where we go into the journey for a while, but I think yours kind of warrants that, uh, because it is such a unique journey that we don't get to hear as much nowadays. Um, you, 27 years old, managing 6 million in personal capital, which is incredible. And I'm sure people are going to sit there and think, "How do you do that?" You know, so I think the best way to start is probably, "How do we get to that 6 million?" Correct?

So just to start off, um, I am from Belgium. I was born in Belgium, and, uh, I actually moved to the UK in 2010, and I did my degree in architecture—so completely different to, uh, investment banking or finance overall. But, um, in my last year, when I was completing my degree, I was also working part-time in an architecture firm, and, to be honest, I liked it, but it was not for me, right? Because all my life I've always wanted to be an architect, but when I got to that stage, it—it didn't satisfy me. It wasn't what I really thought what architecture would be, right? I was young, 20, 20 years old, and I thought, "Why not maybe take a risk, right?" Because I don't have any responsibilities; I was living with my parents, and I thought, "Okay, you know what? I can take a risk. And even worst case, work—if it doesn't work out, I can just go back, back to my job because I have a degree and just continue doing architecture. But let me take that risk." And that's when I started doing research because initially I always wanted to get into real estate, but I did not have the capital to get into real estate. So I needed to find something that can produce cash flow, and that's when I came across, uh, trading—stock trading, to be specific. Back then, I think signals were on the rise; it was, uh, everywhere; everybody was doing signals. And, um, I did try—don't get me wrong—I went with somebody, and he was producing signals, and, to be honest, I lost money, but I knew there was potential. So I was like, "Okay, maybe I should look into it more, dive deep, like deep dive into trading, learn it, study it." And that's when I kind of went on YouTube, books, you know, try to find any study material I could just to get my foot inside the finance space.

Once I started trading, I was breaking even a lot, to be honest. I was too afraid to put large risk because of that; I never actually blew an account because I was too scared, but then I was not also making a lot of money either. So I was always at the break-even, uh, barrier, and it was very tough for me to break that barrier. So I told my dad, "I quit my job, you know, I want to go trading full-time." And my dad knew his friend; he knew a friend that was basically also in the investment banking; he was working in a major corporate, uh, trading flow. Um, for privacy reasons, I'm not going to say his name or the or the bank he was working, but if you go on my Instagram, you could see, you could figure out where he was working. So I basically met up with him, and we sat down, and I told him, "Look, I want to become a trader, you know, I want to see if I can actually make this work." So we became very good friends, and, uh, he actually introduced me to a lot of systems and processes, the infrastructure overall on how to kind of get into, uh, uh, the the investment world, right? Because in this day and age, you could easily go and, you know, because I finished my university degree, I was not going to go again to university to study mathematics or economics or finance overall and then get into investment banking. But I also understood that, uh, there was a lot of hybrid ways to get into the finance space because, for example, look how many business owners we have today without doing a business degree, right? They basically use different ways to get into it, grow their business, and then eventually, uh, uh, dominate their fields. So I was like, "Okay, what can I do in order to fast-forward my, uh, journey and get you into the investment world?" So he told me, "He said, 'You can basically go for certain, uh, certain certifications, uh, such as the CFA, which is chartered financial analyst, uh, you can basically apply that and get your certification, and once you complete that, you can obviously do a program at the bank he was working with.'" So he had an internal program that was happening, and I said, "Okay, if you could hook me up, that would be awesome." We basically then did the program there; I also did my, uh, investment banking program at the University of Geneva, so completed that as well. And, uh, then I basically got a lot more into the investment world—bond trading. So I looked into that a lot more, and that was quite interesting; that's where I actually started making my first initial big money, let's say, right?

So initially what I did was I basically sat down with him, um, I think it was in 2020 when COVID started happening. I told him, "Look at the ultra-short dollar bond ETF," and back then it crashed all the way down to $4.7, uh, per share. And if you understand bonds, usually the one that's issuing—if it the government is issuing it, it has strong basically backing. So I was like, "I'm pretty confident that this will eventually rise back up, so maybe look into that." So I personally also got into bonds, and I bought a lot of shares of bonds. I basically, uh, borrowed money, and I eventually deployed all the cash, and, um, I think I basically did—I think it was 7 months, and we did around 10% for that specific position, and it was about 1.4% a month, right? To him, that was impressive. I know a lot of maybe traders, they look at this 1.4%, that's nothing, right? I mean, 8%, 10% a month is what you what the prop firms are asking from traders, right? So 1.4 is barely anything, but in the institutional world, this is quite a lot; that's a healthy number, right? And he was quite impressed as well, and we became close. He said, "Why not? Why don't we basically do something together?" And I said, "Sure, we can do something together." He said, "Well, I have all the connections; I know people, and, uh, I feel like we can work together; we can do some good numbers." And he asked me if I have a verified track record. I didn't have a verified track record. I said, "I can put it on my effect book and give it to you, and maybe that will work." And, to be honest, he laughed at me. He said, "My effect book is—it's not what investors look at, right?" So he then obviously introduced me to KPMG, uh, huge accounting firm, and said, "Let's get your portfolio audited by them." I said, "That's fine; we can do that." So I got it audited, and then eventually we, uh, once everything was cleared, we sat down with some investors, and that's when I actually took my first investors on board. We did good; we did really, really good. Initially, when I understood the whole game, I was like, "Okay, I feel like I can scale this further, right? I can basically, uh, maybe even start my own hedge fund if I get the right certificates and the right licensing in place." And that's how I basically my journey started. I got into trading, investment world, and, uh, yeah, from there just kept growing and, uh, try to, you know, uh, expand my team.

Yeah, definitely. No, it's absolutely incredible, and there's obviously little things that we should go back there, of course, to, to go into. Yeah, one of which I think it was very interesting that you said is that you never blew an account. Now, when most people hear that, they think, "He's lying," but what you also shared, which I think is very important, is that you couldn't make money either, no, right? And that's something that a lot of people don't realize is that, "Okay, if you never blew an account, cool, but most of the time when people are in that situation is because they haven't risked enough, obviously, to blow an account, which is in one sense good, yeah, but the negative is that they're then too scared to risk to actually make any money because I've seen someone do that, and he was very proud about not blowing an account, but he just wasn't making any money or making any progress." Yeah.

Um, so how did you overcome that bit? So, to be honest, it was tough, right? Because, you know, I came from not having a lot of money, so, you know, risking money and then losing money is very hurtful; it's—it's not easy. So for me, I could never really put a big position and risk a lot, which was good because, like I said, I didn't blow an account, but then I also never made money either. I really had to detach myself from money; that's the first thing I had to do. I was like, "Okay, the money I'm getting, I'm too attached with it, and I need to—" And I spoke with my dad; my dad, he did good for his, for his time; he—he was a hardworking man. He said, "Look, at the end of the day, money comes and goes, right? You're young; worst thing that's going to happen is you're going to blow the money, and that's it; you're not going to come to the streets. I mean, you're living with us, and, uh, why don't you just let go and just take that risk?" And I said, "You know what? I'll try, you know, I'm just going to try to basically, uh, put some money in." And when I did that the first time, it was with the Apple launch, when Apple was launching, uh, a product, an iPhone, and I understood when they announced it, I knew that price could potentially creep higher up to the point when the iPhone was actually released, and I was like, "Okay, you know what? I feel like every time iPhone release, I mean, Apple releases an iPhone, the price does good for its stock. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to put my money in, and I'm just going to invest in Apple and see what happen." So I basically invested pre-release all the way up to, uh, Christmas because Christmas I thought Christmas is a good time; people are actually buying gifts; usually Apple, I've seen—if you look at the charts—usually has an increase in their stock. So I thought, "You know what? Let me take that risk," and that's when I actually first really put money down and said, "Okay, if it goes, it goes; if it doesn't, then it doesn't. Good for me." Let's go into as well because I'm sure people out there would want to know is like how did you start with your first capital, right? What was the the first set of larger capital that started you off and allowed you to sort of build to build that momentum, if that makes sense.

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When I first started to become somewhat profitable, I basically borrowed money from my dad. Like I said, he—he did good for his time, um, not crazy, right? But whatever he had, he—he trusted me to give it to me, right? At that time, it was, I think, around 50k, which was a lot to us. I mean, now, I mean, now it's maybe not a lot, but to us back then, that was, you know, all the savings that we had, and I was confident. I was like, I told my dad, "Look, I feel like I genuinely can increase the investment, right? Think of it as an investment, and I'll try to make a good return on it." So that was my first piece of, uh, real money that I had at disposal to invest in different asset classes. But if you go back further back, when I actually started trading, it was a 500 account, mm, which I deposited in IC Market. Um, I still have a screenshot in my phone somewhere where I actually put a trade in; I think I was maybe 5 pounds in profit, and that was like an amazing feeling because I was like, "Okay, I can do this, right?" But I mean, it was a downhill from there, anyways, because I had to overcome so many challenges.

Yes. No, definitely. And, and props too, obviously, for sharing that as well, cuz a lot of people would probably avoid like, "Oh, took a loan from someone," or even especially your dad, for example. What was your dad's mindset though, like, you know, what sort of profitability had you shown at that point to—for one to have—for you to have confidence to ask your dad, and then also your dad to have confidence to give you the money? I—I did a lot of practicing on a demo account; I'll be honest with you, right? Because I only had 500, and it was not much I could show because I knew if I show him 5 pounds profit, I mean, my dad is like, "It's only 5 pounds," right? But I'm like, "Okay, I need capital in order to show my dad." So I went and opened a demo account. I'm like, "Okay, let me open a demo account, something, you know, that's realistic, not too much," and that's when I opened a 100k demo account. I went and I started trading on that, and I started making decent returns, right? 5,000, 6,000, uh, you know, 5, 6% a month I was doing, and I showed my dad. He was skeptical because, um, trading, it was popular, right? But it was not that popular. It was like, "Okay, so you're risking money to get money." I'm like, "Yes, that's what I'm basically doing." He was like, "Well, what if it goes down? Then it goes down," you know? But, um, I showed him; I said, "Look, I can show you my work first, right? Once you feel like you trust me and you feel like this is maybe something that we can do, then go ahead and borrow me that money," and I showed him I actually did good, and then eventually I, uh, convinced my dad to actually invest in me, and that's when he actually trusted me to give me that capital for me to start.

How long had you been trading up until that point? I think that was, uh, maybe two years, something like that, into my trading. I think the first year was very tough; I mean, it was horrible. I felt like giving up, to be honest, but, you know, once you see some profits, even from a demo account, you just understand the opportunity that's there. You can see, you know, "What I can actually do, do something with it," and it's so hard then to go back into architecture because my backup plan was to go back into architecture, which I didn't want to do at all. So I was so determined to make this happen, right? But the good thing is I met my friend, which he works in a—a banking floor, and call it luck maybe because my dad was friends with him; I'm more than happy to admit that as well. But he helped me a lot as well to understand exactly what systems to put in place and how to actually do things right because, honestly speaking, back then the trading community was very toxic—signals on Instagram, you know, showing signals, x amount of returns, money was like, yeah, buying Lambos or whatever, you know? So it was very toxic, but he came and he said, "Look, I don't know if that's true or if they're actually making that type of money, but if we look at hedge funds, banking floor, you know, investment firms, they're making very small amount of percentages per month; that's your target. Why are you believing some guy on Instagram who's making crazy amounts of money, right?" But, uh, at the end of the day, he's also, you know, selling a course or service or whatever it could be that he's making money from his services, so don't believe into that. And then I looked into it more, and he taught me like how the more corporate world works, and that's like—that's when it clicked for me. I said, "My targets are way too high," you know? And to be frank, I think it's a good time to speak about that as well because the prop firm right now, it's—there is a lot of drama going on. Shout out to Andrew, who kind of introduced me to you as well, and he also kind of showed me what the prop firm world is like, and, um, the prop firm world is—it's—it's interesting, you know? It's very interesting. Your—when prop firms came into the play, right, when it was introduced, they were giving you a target of 10%, I think, right? 10%, and then 5% the next month. At the end of the day, that's—that's the—the—the concept, the design of prop firm is to make you fail, right? So they can collect the fees, and, um, the targets are too high, so every trader then eventually had this mindset that if you're not making 10% of the month, you're a failure; you failed the challenge, so you're not a good trader, you know? And for me, it was like—but to be honest, if you make 5% a month, you're still a profitable trader; that's good. No, you're a failure because you didn't pass the, uh, the—the prop—the prop firm challenge, and I'm like, "Wow, so basically if I make 2, 3% a month or 5%, I'm not a good trader." So the mindset completely changed after that. I feel like then the benchmark of becoming a consistent profitable trader was pushed higher, and thankfully me, when I spoke to my friend, he kind of put things into perspective as well, like, "Yo, this is crazy, you know? When the prop firms came into play," he was like—"Like the way we do it, we do it differently, so don't think if you cannot make 10% a month, you're not a good trader." So anybody who's actually looking at this podcast, if you're making maybe 5% a month, you're still a good trader, you know? You're outperforming a lot of major corporate, uh, funds in the institutional world, so yeah, I mean, uh, for me, yeah, like I said, it was, uh, good for me to get introduced by my friend; he kind of introduced me how everything works and the infrastructure.

Well, no, I think that's a very valid point that you're making because it is so true that especially when there was no time limits, I don't think the time limit thing really made too much of a difference because most people probably aren't trying to take their time; like they're not looking to get funded in 10 months or a year, which I—I also respect is a long time, so I get it, um, but 100%, like most people assume that where it's like, "If you're not making this high return every month, you're not a good trader," uh, when in reality most people aren't making that even if they're funded traders, uhuh. Once they're funded, the consistent ones usually aren't trying to push for 10% exactly; you—they're normally getting 2, 3%, you know? They normally lock that in, and that's the consistent ones, you know? And most people just don't pick up on the pattern; they just see big numbers thrown around, um, so it's a very valid point. One thing I would ask you is though, like, what difference would you say there is then, you know, with this insights into more the corporate institutional side, what key differences between the retail side and what would you say on the institutional side is—is really important, really probably the retail should know about or research? On the institutional level, everybody's collaborating. I feel like on the retail level, the prop firms are against the traders; the traders are against the prop firm—"Oh, you rejected my payout," or, "No, you didn't follow my rule," you know, etc., etc. So it's like prop firms against retail traders when they're not really collaborating. When you go to the more corporate world, everybody is collaborating, and it's interesting to see because they're making money together. I could be a—a fund manager; I'm in a losing position, okay? And I want to get out of this position, so what I'll do is I'll try to minimize my losses. I'll call you; you're a different fund manager.

From a different fund, hey, I'm in this X stock or whatever, and I'm in this losing position. Why don't you buy it off at this discounted price? Okay, so I can get the other person gets a discounted price. I'll take that position off you, and I'll try to minimize my losses, right? So they're collaborating; they're basically working together, and they're sharing information together. And I feel like that's what's a huge difference I saw, right? It's it's amazing to see how us at the retail level are just fighting each other; we're not really collaborating with each other. Um, I think the ICT Community, SMC Community, all these guys are just arguing with each other: my strategy is better, my my concept works better, or you stole it from me, blah blah blah, you know. So it's all fighting while they're collaborating, and that's a big difference I've seen when I look at both sides.

No, I think that's a fair assessment for sure, and I think there is that element as well. And I'm sure it's something that we're going to touch on as well in terms of like more detail of, uh, you know, sort of the teams that they build as well on the institutional side. But in terms of maybe like strategy, in terms of um, aside from say the collaboration, is there anything specific like we talked about targets, for example? Um, is there anything specific on that side of things? You know, risk, you know, these are the sort of things that you know a lot of traders like, okay, let me give you an example. Uh, retail space: 1% risk always, you know, anything, you know, anything above that is like too much; below that's okay, you know, depending on your situation, but 1% is like the golden rule of of risk management in the retail space. Uh, targets like we talked about, you know, you you should be looking at high targets, you know, trying to make as much as possible as fast as possible; that's sort of the retail mindset. Strategies, of course, as you've seen, is like we hear about institutional strategies, which is normally relating to uh, SMC smart money Concepts, which is like supply and demand, for example. Um, obviously, you have like the ICT Community like are coding the algorithm that there's a big algorithm that's running the overall markets and making it efficient. Um, yeah, like like I'm sure there's more like, obviously, prop firms, you know, using funded simulated Capital versus personal capital or private capital or investor Capital. Like what key differences would you say across those sort of lines?

Well, yeah, I think like I said with the retail level, the targets are high, right? I can understand that because you're not dealing with huge Capital either. When you're looking at uh, hedge funds, um, all these big funds, they have billions of dollars under management, right? So they are using very, very small targets; they're risking 0.15%, maybe 0.2% per position. And I actually met uh, for example, a fund manager I think yesterday, um, I believe so, and we were speaking, and he was also telling him about how he was also risking 0.15% per trade, very low amounts, right? But the capital is big, so it kind of makes up for it. But what we are trying to do is we're trying to keep or profit targets very realistic. I think you said early on the ones who passed the challenges, they once they get live, they always look to bank maybe 1, 2%, and then uh, cash out their payout, which is a smart thing to do because your goal to get to 1, 2% is shorter compared to going all the way to maybe 10%, right? So you're more likely to hit that; you can easily achieve because it's feasible, it's sustainable. And then if you're trying to, I'll give you a very simple way example, I don't know, but it's a simple example: if you go to the gym, MH, right, you pick a weight which is very heavy, and you start pushing the weight which is heavy, you'll probably do a few reps, but for how long can you do it? Mhm. You'll get tired, right? So you'll you'll endend up getting to failure, and then you'll basically give up. But if you pick a weight that's very, very low, you can possibly push that weight more consistently, and when you do that consistently, it causes your muscle to grow because you're working hard, and it's working. Trading is the same thing. Why are you putting extreme high targets which you know maybe once a month you probably hit them, and the next month you won't hit them? It's very hard to sustain that, but if you keep it very low and easy, you can do this month in month out, very simple.

Yeah, definitely, definitely. And institutional side is is always interesting to me, you know, because the the most you hear about it really on a retail scale is just people marketing products as an Institutional product, right? Institutional strategy or Viewpoint, uh, but you don't really hear too much or see too much of like institutional traders within the retail space. I'm sure there are interviews out there; I'm sure there are seminars; I'm sure there are people who are providing good information. Um, is there any sort of resources that you would point people towards? Cuz I know that you went and did a degree in investment banking, for example, in Geneva, right? Um, maybe not on that scale because I I know a lot of people maybe don't want to put in that level of work, but you know, do you know of any resources, say on YouTube or on on the social media sphere, or is it pretty much not really? I'm not sure on YouTube if there is somebody doing it; I'll be honest with you, but I can. So if you're somebody who's a trader and maybe you want to diversify yourself more into the corporate world, maybe you want to eventually start your own fund, or you want to maybe, you know, uh, build your uh, credibility, I can suggest you a few things that you can work on. It's a little investment, right? It VAR from uh, $11,000 to all the way to $5,000, so it's a little bit of an investment that you need to make in yourself, but you can get the right uh, accreditation or certification in order to be approved to take on investors, right? Such as CFA, which is chartered financial analyst; it's basically a certification you can go and do it. I think it cost $4,500, uh, but they teach you everything that you need to know, right? If you want to be a bit more uh, risk orientated, you can do a certification on FRM, Financial Risk manager, from uh, it's from GARP, which is a big firm as well; they teach you everything about risk management; it's I think $2,000, $3,000, I mean something around those ballpark, but these are good certifications that you can go and do and understand a little bit more about the corporate world, right? At the end of the day, you're a trader; you're investing in yourself, and go do that investment in yourself so you can educate yourself and become better, right? Because um, our job as traders is to analyze everything and do our due diligence, so why not do that? Understand the market, see both sides, you know, and then maybe get that uh, certification so you have more credibility to understand the market, or maybe you want to get investors, whatever the case may be.

Do you feel like a lot of traders are making a mistake of not trying to build a track record and only focusing on, you know, prop firm capital or essentially valuation firm Capital? Let's take a break for a minute there, guys, cuz I want to tell you about our brand new sponsor, what, a One-Stop shop for all things digital assets and digital Community. Now, if you're a trader out there looking to elev your trading game, which is why you're watching this podcast, [ __ ] is the place to find your community and find your Mentor. There are tons of free trials that you can take advantage of today, so make sure you go check those out. Talking of which, on words of wisdom and day trading show, we're hosting a free community on W, so make sure you join those; the links will be in the description. Now, for the creators out there, W is the one place that you need to be because they're a community-driven platform, and they handle all aspects of your business. You can customize every element of your offer using what; you can either use their in-house apps or even sync your Telegram and Discord. One of the most important things that greatest suffer with and worry about today is having a payment processor that won't shut them down. You don't have to worry about that at all using what. And just to add the cherry on top, they drive demand and subscriptions to your business just because you're hosted on their Marketplace. There is a complete no-brainer. Now there's a link in the description to book a call directly with them so you can get your community setup today. Check that out. Let's get back to the episod. Look at what the what's happening with American traders right now. I don't know if prop firms is a bubble or not; I don't know; I cannot look into the future, but I know as a trader it's all about risk to reward. I need to set myself in a position where I am secure, even the worst case comes into play. So let's say if prop firms something happens or regulation comes into play, what am I going to do? Now I I see so many guys on Twitter, they say I'm becoming profitable now, but the prop firms is in uh, shambles now because you know there's so much going on, so why not make sure that you have a backup plan? It makes sense, right? From a from a risk to reward, make sure you have a plan, a backup plan, so work on that on the site. It's going to take a little bit time and effort, but I'm sure it's worth it.

Mhm, definitely. And so you know we've talked about obviously you got the 50k loan from from your dad; that's what you then put into the bonds, right? Off the back of that, how much did you make from the from that bonds? Was it a purchase, right? You it was a buy obviously after it dropped after Co? Yes, so I bought bonds, and I started trading uh, different asset classes. I pushed that actually I think I I I did 100K; I took my 50k Capital to around 100K, uh, then from there I did a lot more different trades to a point where I initially got to 150k, then I bought a lot more bonds; that's when I started buying a lot more B bonds, and uh, this is when I made the biggest return ever, right? Uh, I invested about I think 150k, and I returned maybe around 500 US dollar 500k US dollar W. So that was my first real actual money, and I was like, okay, I can actually do this, and uh, from there yeah, the sky was limit, I was because once you have Capital you can deploy it in different uh, asset classes to try to make a return. What was the transition from there then? So it's like 500k now; how how long ago was that about the 500k? Couple of years ago, I think that was four years ago, maybe around four, three, three years ago, I think. Yeah, yeah. So about three years. In that three years, it's gone from 500k to to 6 million, yeah, you know. So what what was that progression been like? So I worked with my friend, so we took on investors, and uh, we made a lot of money with them as well. So those investors are actually now ready again to invest again. So I think we were speaking off camera this year, um, planning to transition my fund into a hedge fund, so I'm planning to get my licensing for that. So we are basically uh, planning to take on these investors again. So yeah, once we had investors, it makes everything a lot more easier because they have a lot more Capital; they have millions of millions of dollars, and uh, from there you make a lot of of money because of your performance split, and you make your uh, management fee and of course bonuses on top of that. So that's when I made a lot of money as well.

Yeah, I know a lot of people are interested, so one stage is already you mentioned is getting an audited track record, so not necessarily FX book. So for example, like if you want serious investors, for example, yeah, uh, then you need the obviously audited track record. If you want, say, you know, your friend's dad who owns a business is going to lend you 10, 20K, a Myfx book might be fine, right? Yeah, you know, because they won't they won't know themselves about trust you; maybe they'll probably give you the capital. Yeah, I mean, see, depends who you're asking money from. If you're asking serious money from investors, you need to have serious um, requirements to show them, right? It could be an audited track record; it could be maybe you have done business previously with them, so they have seen your work, but of course, yeah, if you're maybe asking money from maybe Dad's friend or somebody else, even trust could work, right? You don't even need to something; if they trust you, they would give you the money. Mhm. That's true. And in terms of that like what sort of capital, sorry, not uh, capital, I was going to say what sort of return were you showing through the track record, you know, that that they were interested in? So investors like borrowing uh, returns, right? Uh, when I say borrowing anything, you know, 3 to 5% is good because they have big capital, and 3 to 5% shows a stagnant increase in capital. Is that per month or per year? Per month, right? 3 to 5%, because if you're talking billions of dollar or even hundreds of millions of dollars, then the target comes lower as well, but we're not talking hundreds of millions of dollars; we're talking a little bit lower, so 3 to 5% is reasonable, and it's also sustainable, and uh, you need to show that because what you don't want, what investors don't want, is crazy returns, meaning that it goes high and low; maybe one month you do 8%, the next month is us 3%, yeah, then 12%, then minus 8%; that's what they don't want; they want very boring increases in capital, so 3 to 5% and stay like that month in month out, then they feel more confident, right? And that's what they basically look for. Mhm. Yeah, definitely. And in terms of fees wise, you mentioned and like can you give us any insights into the sort of profit splits into management fees, etc.? Like what does that look like?

Yeah, um, usually the usual basically Playbook is 2% management fee of the capital that's being deployed, and then of course you have your performance uh, split from The Profit that could be maybe 20%, 30%; could be like that, depends what contract you're drafting up with the investors, um, so it it it basically depends who you're working with, right? So but that's the usual standard uh, numbers that we're looking at. In terms of uh, getting the infrastructure in place, cuz most people will hear that, especially because they're used to prop firms or evaluation firms, here I say, and they're like 80% split, 90% split, like you know, and then when they hear 20 they're like, oh, it's not even worth my time. But the thing they're forgetting is obviously the capital amount that you're then trading with that 10, 20% or 20% should I say is um, is substantial, you know, because you're talking if you're making 3 to 5% a month, let's say, let's just take a million just to make it easy; that's 30 to 50K. If you're getting 20% of that, then you're making still a very good income, but that's only on a million, right? If I know that your targets or goals starting the hedge fund is to start where? So basically my current capital is at 6 million, and we have basically investors who are ready to deploy uh, so it will take me up to 20 million. So once I'm sitting at 20 million, we have a license that will allow us to take up to $100 million; not saying that I have $100 million, but it will allow me to go all the way up to that. So yeah, to start with, hopefully next year, uh, 20 million under management, and uh, yeah, so make sure we have a good contract in place, and once that's everything is good, it's it's good money; it's good money. So when you're making the percentage Returns on that, then obviously the 20% is very substantial. 100%. Yeah, you know, and I think it's important to highlight that for the audience to understand like what is possible as a trader, you know, 100%, but it's only possible if you have a certain mindset, like I believe I don't like to put a label on it in terms of like retail mindset, for example, retail mindset and institutional mindset; it's not really a thing; it's more so what you choose to do, how you choose to act, you know, you can choose to act more professionally um and try to go down a professional route, or you can choose to sort of not be a professional and you know end up going down a different route. It works. I think a lot of guys say, oh, this works, this doesn't work; anything can work as long as you're good at it, right? There is so many different strategies; there is no right or wrong answer. I do things differently; maybe somebody else does something differently, and we both can make money, right? And I think that's the problem with um, the retail traders as well; they're trying to be right; who cares? Why are you trying to be right, right? When I'm in the market, right, um, I don't care if I'm right or wrong; I just want to follow where the money goes; that's all I care about, right? And my strategy might work for for me, but it might not work for somebody else; you need to find your Edge, and there is a lot of guys, you know, claiming I know the strategy what the banks use, and this is the strategy they use. Have you ever even stepped foot inside a corporate trading floor? I'm pretty sure most haven't, you know, but um, I mean, if that's what they want to do, they want to use buzzwords to you know, attract audiences so they can sell a service to them; good for them. I mean, if that's what they're doing, then that's what they're doing, you know, they say I know the strategy, you know, and sometimes I look at these um, tweets or claims and I just laugh; I'm like, okay, cool, if you think that's the strategy the banks are using, then fair enough.

Yeah, yeah. I think it's a fair fair statement to make, and one thing I will say, seeing as we brought it up, is you know, like most people will hear the numbers, most people hear the journey, and they will sit there and they'll say, you know, you're lying, basically, you know, you're just trying to scam people; you're trying to do something like that, you know. I've had someone on the podcast before; I don't know if you've seen that episode who says he was trading 150 million, right? I think I saw a clip, yeah, and I and I basically said to him at the end, and it wasn't even based on the 150 million; I was excited to have him on cuz I was like 150 million, that's incredible, a great story, you know, um, but then when we did the podcast, I asked a very similar question like I did to you at the very beginning of the Pod; I said like I said to you like how did we get to Six Million, you know, like well, how do we get there? That's a large number too, um, I said the same thing to him, but he spent the whole podcast telling this very detailed the same story he's told many times over and over, but he forgot about a billionaire in there, which that was one red flag, but even the 150 million, for example, is another one, and he was saying like he was risking I can't remember was like two, 3% on a trade and so on and so forth, and I was like, you know, you know, uh, it just there's too many red flags. So at the end, I didn't say like sit there and go you're a liar, you're this; I just said like it doesn't sound believable to me, you know. He sells a course as well at the same time as managing 150 million, so I was like when I there's nothing wrong with courses necessarily, absolutely, but I was like these two stories don't match like in my head, you know, um, and I said I've never really said it before, so I was going to ask you like do you have a service? Do you sell something? Are you have you got a course? Of course, I have a course, by my mentorship. No, I'm joking; I don't have a course; I don't have a mentorship; I'm not affiliated with any Brokers or affiliated with any prop firm, so um, no, um, I'm just purely here to provide some value, show you a perspective from a corporate world, you know, because there's a lot of uh, traders from the retail side that come in and speak. Look, there is nothing wrong with um, sharing a course or selling a course; you're more than happy to do that, right? But I feel like you should be somebody that's in order to do that. So if you're not 1% in the top 1% in your field, I don't think you should do a course; very simple. Now I look at a a senior analyst or even not a senior analyst, just a a a a fund manager who is an analyst, he will bank around maybe 300K a year, 300, 350k a year. So if you're not doing that type of numbers, don't go ahead and start a course; make these numbers first; maybe start doing this consistently, and if you can hit these numbers and you're in the top 1%, then go ahead and start producing a course or teach people or whatever the case may be, you know. And I think I think the thing is with uh, this world is with this uh, Finance world is that um, a lot of people are selling something, and in order to sell, you need to say certain things to attract audiences, you know, but for me, no, I'm not here to sell you a course; I'm not here to sell tell you my affiliate links so click on my link; no, I just want to provide value, and I hope I can do that. CU. You don't even make content either. No, Andrew told me to get into content, you know, he's like maybe it's good that you speak, and I am a private person, but um, I feel like nowadays nobody listens if you're a nobody. You know, in a way to get some followers is a currency as well in today's world; it is a currency, and that way maybe I can educate a few people on what is right and what is wrong because sometimes I get frustrated with certain things people say online, and I'm like, it's completely wrong; you're maybe driving new traders into the wrong mindset and telling them wrong things which happened to me when I started trading because I saw Instagram; it was very toxic, and then luckily I had somebody who could tell me, yo, this is wrong; this is the way it's supposed to be. Mhm. You know.

No, definitely. And you know, sort of moving on to the institutional side and and what you're doing, one thing that we really you know, we were just speaking before we uh, came on to the podcast, and I thought it was very interesting, and it's something that I've spoken about to I think a couple of other people who speak on sort of more the floor level or the institutional level about having different teams, you know, like on a on a corporate floor, there will be a risk team, there will be the managing the the strategist, etc. So there'll be these different categories of people that work on that specific thing before it gets to the trader, and as you said, they will collaborate, right? And what was interesting is that you that's what you've implemented for yourself, so you don't have you don't work on a corporate floor, right? You have your own private Capital, but then you've implemented that same structure for yourself. Why is that? So I understood when you're because I've seen the trading floors on a corporate level, and like you said, um, everything is in departments; they have different departments for every key responsibility: risk management team, strategist, execution team, research team, strategist, all different basically departments, and in those departments, they have experts, right? Just focusing on that specific task; it works because you only have to focus on one thing, and you have multiple people doing the same thing, so you can collaborate. Now when I saw that, I was like, okay, once I made money, why not implement the same infrastructure, but on a lower scale level, right? I don't have billions.

Of dollars to to hire a huge team, but I can do it on a smaller scale. So that's when I went and I hired my own team to handle specific tasks in my, uh, fund. So I have a risk management team, I have a strategist, I have an execution team, a research team. So their job is to completely focus on the key responsibility because, at the end of the day, initially every Trader is doing it themself. I have to worry about my risk management; I have to worry about my strategy; I have to stay on top of the news. So you're doing everything, and you have to put energy into everything. So it's not like you're giving 100% in that specific task. So, for me, I thought, okay, I can go ahead and hire a team and do the same thing on a smaller level, and that was the idea I got from there, and I tried to implement it, uh, here in my own fund.

How does that look for you? Like, how does it work? So like, what, what was the average, say, trade idea look like, or trade, you know, to execution, if that makes sense? That takes us through that process. So what would happen is, right, so I have a strategy team which looks at, uh, potentials, case studies, potential trade scenarios. Once we find a, uh, trade scenario, what would it, it would go to the research team. Now, the research team's job is to look at the currency or the asset class or whatever the instrument is, to look what potential news could affect that specific case study. If there is news, what was the last four news that happened? What was the, uh, outcome of those, right? What is the average move to that, right? So then, once we determine a case study, it goes to the research team; he can basically add notes, okay, we need to be careful because I don't know, CPI is coming out, or something else is coming out. Once we have those highlighted, then it basically goes to the risk management team. Now, my risk management team will look at the risk projection; how much risk are we going to, uh, deploy in that case study, or when are we going to maybe add risk, when should we maybe reduce risk if if it goes wrong, or maybe if there is a hedging position that we can take against that, right? So there's different risk factors that we need to look at and, in order to make sure that we're prepared for every different scenario. Once that's done, then that it goes to the execution team, and they will basically execute the idea, right? But, of course, I overlook the whole process; I need to make sure that the it's like building a case study for me. In very simple words, it's like we have a trade idea; let's build a case study on that trade idea to see if it's a strong, uh, opportunity for us to take. If the answer is yes, then eventually it goes through the system, and then we deploy the risk in order to take that, uh, trade idea.

Would you say that's helped your trading immensely, or would you say it's, uh, it's not too important? Let's take a break for a minute there, guys, cuz I want to tell you about the best trading tool on the market, TradeZella. The reason why TradeZella is the number one trading tool that every Trader needs is because you can do back testing, or automated journaling, trade replay, in-depth analytics, and so much more. And the greatest part about TradeZella is that it's all automated; all you have to do is connect your MT4 and MT5; it will pull all your data onto the dashboard; you can add playbooks; you can just add notes; you can add images from your trades, and you can get the insights that are necessary for you to progress as a Trader. Now, TradeZella is for absolutely everyone, whether you're a crypto Trader, whether you're a Forex Trader, whether you trade prop firms; it is for absolutely everyone, and that is why thousands of Traders have signed up using my link here through the podcast. Make sure you use the code Riz10 for 10% off your monthly subscription or Riz20 for 20% off your yearly subscription. The link is in the description below, and let's get back to the episode.

I 100% believe it helped me because now I don't need to worry about everything to detail because I have people doing that for me, and, uh, in a way, it does help you a lot because they are trained to do a specific, uh, responsibility completely right. So it, it I can trust my team, and I know they will do what they have to do, and then they will give me a report, okay, this is what we need to be worried for, or maybe this is a good trade, or maybe we shouldn't take this, and then I will look at it to make sure that I'm happy with that. So it does take a lot of, you know, in a way, so I can manage things a lot more efficiently, and I think it has worked for, uh, corporate trading worlds, uh, Banks, hedge funds; they have been doing this for a very, very long time, and it works; that's why they do it, but they have even multiple people doing it, right? I think one like, you know, everybody talks about strategy; I'll give you one strategy hedge funds use, right? Very simple, you know, you don't need to look very far; sometimes the answer is right there in front of you. It's at the end of the day, a hedge fund has multiple Traders; why do they have multiple Traders? You have to think about it. Now imagine I have 10 Traders, and six of my Traders have a winning P&L at the end of the month, and four of them have a losing P&L; I will come positive at the end of the month. If it's the other way around, maybe six has a losing P&L, but four have a winning P&L; if my risk management is top-notch, I can still come in the positive, right? It's a numbers game; it's all basically designed to make sure that your Edge is going to take you towards winning and making a profit.

Very simple, definitely. And one thing in terms of like you being away right now, for example, how does that work in terms of the trade? Do they stop trading, or do they just take, send you the… Everything works; everything is, uh, there; systems in place, and, uh, we are in communication. It is Sunday today, so I could actually show you; I have a channel open usually for my, uh, trades, or if we're in communication, but since it's, uh, Sunday, so I think my team is off, obviously, but if it was a week day, I could show you; I could tell them what positions do we have currently; do we have any open positions, and they all communicate with each other and show us, yeah, this is the case, blah, blah, blah, you know, updates information, so we work together, managing everything together.

How do you go about finding those sort of individuals to be part of your team? You need to find people; you know, I started with some of my friends, you know, you basically have good friends, and then you train them, and eventually you basically get people on board, but, uh, it is a tough task to do that. Um, I'm not going to sit here and say it's easy; it is very, very difficult because I had to replace certain people because it didn't work out, or maybe they're not, uh, doing what they're required to do, but, uh, it is very, very difficult to find the right people. Is there any particular place? Like, do you have to go to corporate floors? Is there a particular website? Is there ad placements you put out? I, I did not go through, uh, any websites or ad placement, etc. I usually work word, you know, word of mouth, and I have a lot of connections with fund managers and even, um, uh, basically starting analysts who are basically just coming into the market, and if you feel like they have the potential, you can always work with them and draft up a contract and then hire them, you know, and then your job is, you have to remember, we're not teaching them everything; they just have to learn one specific thing and be good at that, so you can always train them, and then once you're happy with them and you see the work, you can obviously stick with them.

Definitely. And how much would a team like that cost, do you think, like, per month? Well, not think, but, you know, so it could easily be about 10 to 15 grand a month, uh, depends on how many people you have. I have five people full-time, so they're working with me, managing my capital, helping me manage my capital, but, uh, yeah, it depends on how you basically set everything up, and obviously the more people, the more your cost will be. So if you're making a decent amount of money, 10, 15 grand, it's it's a worthwhile investment for me; it makes sense to me because it does help me a lot, and the team helps me a lot in order to filter out trade ideas and do the research and everything.

And in terms of percentage returns you're doing on the six million, for example, what are you, what sort of percentage are you looking at per month? Try to do 3%; that's my average a month; that's what I'm looking at. Um, if we have bonuses, we try to do a bit higher, around the 5% mark, but usually 3% is a healthy number for me personally; I'm happy with that. And what are you trading then? So like, what sort of asset classes are you trading at the moment? Currently FX; we're focusing on mostly on FX, uh, when we have, uh, great case studies on stocks or maybe even, uh, bonds, then we will go ahead and deploy cash into that.

And what sort of risk are you doing then on the capital? It depends; 0.25% per trade, uh, obviously with stocks is a little bit more different, but the ug4 FX we like to deploy 0.25%, um, I have to be very careful because that's my own money, and if I risk a lot, I lose a lot as well, and, uh, with prop firms, obviously you can just risk big amounts and just, you know, hope for the best, but I can't do that at the end of the day, but I do have full control on my capital. Definitely.

And what sort of platforms are you trading with then? You know, so like the retail side, if you were to name it, that would be like Metatrader, uh, usual sort of Brokers, like what, what would you be implementing on? Yeah, we also have, uh, TradingView, which is the best trading tool in my opinion, um, obviously when we when I was working with my friend, friend with investors, he had connections with LPs, so obviously then the orders go straight to the market, but that's a very pricey option to have, obviously. Right now, I can't go for that; I don't I don't think for me it's worth it to basically put that type of money, but, uh, yeah, we like to use, uh, verified Brokers, you know, like Interactive Brokers, which is one of the biggest broker, uh, currently, but, uh, hopefully next year, when we have everything in place, we want to go back to the LP, and it's plug and play, simple as that.

How much, how much capital do you think you need for that? Maybe a million dollars at least, which is obviously doable, but obviously you have to pay a lot of fees as well in order to have that access, uh, but it's also much more secure, and the investors obviously feel much more secure as well. Mhm. So in terms of like the FX conditions on a private account, um, personal capital, and 0.25% roughly on six million, be just over 20k a trade, I believe, if my quick maths was good, um, you know, what, what does that look like, you know, because when we look at the most people are used to evaluation firms now, right? So they're, you know, they start complaining when they're facing some slippage, yeah, and execution problems, let's say, um, when they're using say 50 to 100 lots, let's say like high lot sizes; a lot of them are using very tight stop losses as well, so that a factor, but what does that look like for you in terms of using these huge lot sizes on obviously your personal account on a verified broker? Um, what sort of stop-loss size are you using? You using quite wide, or…? Yeah, we're using it would go up to 30, 30 ticks per, uh, trade; 20, 30 ticks basically. So yeah, so what, what's that experience like in terms of like execution? Yeah, so far so it's been good; obviously when you have large capital, you also get referred to an account manager from the broker who helps you manage everything if there is issues, etc., because obviously the larger the capital, uh, the more beneficial for the broker as well, so it does help you in that sense; it's a little bit more different, um, so yes, me personally, have, you know, we're very, very strict on how we do things, so we want to make sure that we don't have any big losses in, uh, happening because of, uh, slippages or, you know, all that extra stuff that comes into play, but, uh, yeah, so far no complaints to be honest. I, I was with an LP before, uh, when you're trading with the LP, it's much more smoother; you have people that are connected to you in order to make sure there is no slippage or anything that's causing to delay your trades, you know, so it's straight market execution; goes in without any issues, but, uh, yeah, so far so happy; I didn't have any issues.

Definitely; that's good to hear; it's good to hear because I know a lot of people, people… What do you think then when you hear about like slippage issues that people face? Do you think it's more so a strategy and greed problem of, of trying to get very tight stop of huge lot sizes, or do you think it's, uh, also malicious from the, the prop side? Definitely is, I think they trade demo conditions, right? So where does the order go, you know? So the, the fact that they have these slippages, etc., market conditions, you can, you have a backend to that where you can configure everything the way you want to, right? If you have a white label with a with a prop firm, they can basically provide you the settings that you can choose and play with in order to set the conditions for the market, and obviously if their job is to just take the challenge fee and just pocket from that, then they will want you to fail, so anything they can do in order to, you know, uh, make you slip, they will do it. I think what was the firm, MyForexFunds, yes, with their case, I mean, it was very interesting to see what they were talking about and all the conditions; if a company like that on a big scale was doing that, what do you think the smaller companies are doing? They have to stay afloat, right? So I hope, I think I feel like now a lot of firms are also taking, uh, a different route where they can try to diversify on how they make their money, which is good, and I feel like that's the companies that you should go for.

Yeah, yeah. Well, that's the interesting thing, cuz that's one of the reasons why they say they do it is because if it's perfect demo conditions, two reasons: one, obviously if it's perfect demo conditions, then the business model doesn't make sense. Uhuh. But then two, they said that, you know, by having the virtual conditions to try and replicate the live markets, we can then use the data to monetize the data, okay, that it provides. What are your thoughts as someone on the more, you know, we're an institutional understanding? Is that even a feasible business model? Is that something that is actually accurate, of selling data or using data to monetize? I mean, I'm not in the prop firm industry, so I don't I don't run a prop firm, so it is very tough for me to comment on that, but, um, it could be possible, right? But if it was possible, why hasn't been done? Like, is somebody doing that right now? No one's, uh, people are saying it like this; everyone's always saying like we, you, we need to use the data, or this is why we, um, you know, have these conditions or these rules so that we can use the data, so it's replicable in the live markets, uh, but no one's really shown them actually doing it, you know? So it is interesting; I've always found it interesting. I think their system is just to ban profitable Traders and, you know, just get rid of them because obviously if they're banning profitable Traders, they don't have any systems in place in order to benefit from that, you know, the fact that the a profitable Trader is making money, that means they have to ban you because they're losing money, so that means they're just relying on challenge fees, etc., you know? I think it's interesting because it is obviously is, is a valid point, uh, but then equally you see some funded traders who, they've been very profitable and consistent, and yet they've not been banned at the same time with the same firms, so it's it's like they pick and choose sometimes. I think they can look at certain things like high risk, you like using, using high risk, even though the rules allows it, they can then look at that and say that's not something that works in the real world, for example, okay, so therefore they can target that, whether that's right or wrong, you know? I, I also think, you know, you should just be clear, right? If you're going to do a operate a business, just be clear on exactly what's not allowed, so then people can then say then they have then they have no excuse, right? The trader themselves, like, why are you banning me? Well, clearly states here you can't do what you just did versus like leaving it in the air and it being like, ah, we chose that, you know, you fit this rule that doesn't really tell you what the rule is, you know what I mean? Um, so yeah, I think there's a balance, but I think yeah, in terms of data wise, people or firms should really start to use data to then use that as an excuse; they're not using it then, yeah, 100% they should, um, I feel like they need to get innovative with the way they function, you know, and like you said, it's a good point; there's some profitable traders that are still trading with these prop firms, and then there's some that are getting banned, um, it's an interesting thing in my opinion, and for me, I wonder what's going to happen to the industry.

It's a very good solution for people who want to start trading; mhm, they can get funding; it's the best thing because back then I did not have that option when I started trading, so the fact that there is funding available, it's awesome, right? And if you have a right strategy, you can make a killing out of it. I think some, you had guests, uh, that have made crazy amounts of profits from the prop firm, which is good, and I hope that they can find ways to actually diversify the way they make money. Mhm. Because I feel like prop firms need to stay; they need to stay because it's a there is a lot of positives that people can take away from it.

What would your advice be to those consistent Traders out there or any Trader out there who maybe isn't looking to go down the, the prop firm route or is at least trying to find diversify a bit in a sense like where they don't put all their eggs into the prop firm basket? Yeah, um, you know, what would you advise them to sort of try and how would they go down your path, for example? I would suggest them to go ahead and get a certification such as the CFA, CFP, FRM, any of those, you know, go ahead and basically do the exams, complete it, pass it, so you get your accreditation. Once you have that, I, I'm hoping if you're profitable, you're also trading a personal account, even if it's a small account; go trade a personal account; trade that maybe for a year. What during that year, pass your certifications. Once you have done that and a year passes by and you have basically a track record on your personal account, maybe try to aim for 3 to 5% a month. Once you do that, go to KPMG; contact them, uh, basically to get your account audited by them because you need to understand KPMG is globally recognized, so when investors look at you and they say KPMG is backing your, uh, portfolio, and they say, look, we verified it, and everything is in order, your chances automatically increased, so then go ahead and do that, so then you have everything required to start looking for investors actively. And if you're a good Trader and KPMG has verified everything, it's very hard for an investor to say I'm not going to invest money; if you can show it that you can make money, they're more than happy to do so, and I think that's what I would suggest profitable traders to go and do.

What in terms of like an average timeline, you know, what, what would an average timeline look like for that PR process? In one year, you can definitely do this in one year; get everything in place; obviously you do everything together, you know, prepare for your, uh, certification, trade your account, make sure that you're doing 3 to 5%; once you hit those targets, leave it alone; come back the next month; once that's done, then you can contact KPMG, get that sorted out as well, and then you have the full package; you have a portfolio that is audited by KPMG, and then you have the relevant certifications that basically allows you to, uh, give you credibility when it comes to getting investors on board, and that will allow you to obviously diversify more into the corporate world.

Yeah, yeah. And that's what leads me to my next question really, which is like the, the credentials, the licenses, why are they so important in this realm? Like, in the finance space, why are they so important for investors and even just to as a broker, for example, having licenses, even as potentially prop firms… What's missing is maybe that they don't have licenses; it's all regulations, you know, and I think one thing to add is very important is obviously look at your country's, uh, regulatory bodies, right? The FCA or whatever your country's, uh, Financial authorities are, and they require you to have these licenses in order for you to go ahead and take on, uh, investors; you're not just allowed to go take some money on board and start investing, like, uh, managing money for investors. So the reason why they do that is because they teach you certain procedure, procedures and systems that you need to be aware of, so once you do that and you pass it, it shows them, okay, he has done the research, and he's done prepared for the certification; he understands the rules, and then we give you the certificate that shows he's ready; he can go ahead and take on investors.

Definitely. And we haven't talked too much about strategy; I know you mentioned before we got on the podcast like it's a bit, uh, different; you, I remember like volume heat map, for example, was mentioned; like, can you tell us or give us any insights into sort of how you're deploying your capital, how you're sort of basing your trades in terms of a technical point of view? Uh, volume based, uh, I usually like to stick with the trend; it's a famous saying, um, your, the trend is your friend, which is very, very true because the market will go up or down, right? In simple words, it will go up or it will go down, and that basically means there's a 50/50 chance. So if you are in the right direction, you have that initial 50% confirmation. Once you have the right direction, you want to put systematic, uh, procedures in place in order to find your entry points; heat maps, volume, where price basically slow downs, when the volume drops, when there is increase of volume, eventually you look at that and start taking trades, and, uh, my job is to keep everything simple. The biggest, biggest strategy that works and I think is the best strategy is your risk management; know how to manage your risk, know how to cut your losses, and, uh, know how to basically let your winners run. I think this is very, very important; I can give you a strategy, and I can give the same strategy to somebody else; one is good at managing risk, one is not good at managing risk; even though the strategy is the same, the one that knows how to manage risk will eventually basically, uh, be profitable, right? And I think that's very important; it doesn't matter what strategy you…

Trade. Make sure that your risk management is top-notch. I think that's very, very important, definitely, definitely. And I think a lot of people do not focus on that one thing. I realized I've been getting comments a lot on my, on my podcast that whenever a guest stops, I always say definitely, and I just did it then twice. Um, so I'm trying to, I'm trying to change, I'm trying to change for you all. I say basically a lot as well, so I don't know if I've been say, I think everyone does it. I think everyone has something; mine's definitely all M's. Are 100%, 100% people out there, man, they're on it, which is good, which is good.

Um, in terms of, um, strategy, what I was going to ask you was in regard to, like, do you have just one strategy, or are you deploying multiple strategies? Um, or do you have like one particular strategy for a certain condition or certain asset class, and then actually have multiple that you're deploying?

A very good question. We have basically different categories on strategy, so we have AAA grade setups; we have AA grade setups. So these are basically, uh, uh, configurations in the requirement for us to take a trade. It's a little bit different. Sometimes we have, for example, AAA is the, the best form that we can get, the most high probability case, case study. Then we have an AA setup, which is a little bit less high probability, but it still makes sense for us to go ahead and take that trade. So we do have different categories in place, and that's also something I've learned from the corporate world. I've seen how they do things, and they have different categories for different trade ideas. You know, I'll give you a strategy actually for, um, you know, this is a big debate: what does the bank trade? How do they trade? I'll give you one very good strategy for the banks: 95% winning rate. If you know that strategy, you're going to be rich, and it's called, uh, insider trading.

A lot of people don't talk about that. Um, the amount of times big hedge funds, banks have been called for insider trading, for example, Steven Cohen, which is a, a billion-dollar fund from SAC Capital, they have been accused with insider trading; an executive from HSBC, he's been, you know, called for insider trading; Goldman Sachs, you know, all these guys, they have access to information, and they do it very, very good, and obviously some of them get caught, but there is a lot that don't get caught, and that on its own is a strategy. They have the money to buy information, and they make a lot of money. I think, um, a lot of people don't realize is that the corporate world is a, it's an interesting place, you know, it's a very interesting place, and the way they have their strategies is to make sure if anything makes the money, they will buy that information or access to, in order to profit from it, and even that is considered as one of the strategies for these big banks and hedge funds.

Yeah, well, you see that that's like the main point of Billions, right, the, the TV show, which is based on, uh, hedge funds and, and obviously one particular character, but that's like that, that's his thing is buying information. I think we forget that, and I think it's so easy to, I think you like the retail space definitely puts the institutional space on a pedestal, yeah, of thinking they're like the gods and the perfect and the elite, and you know, we all should be like them, and that's why like then people in the retail space make courses and strategies and, and market things as institutional because that's what already everyone's already looking there. But then if you look at two points, one, the point that you just raised there in terms of that is a strategy, you know, insider trading; they get some get caught, and when they do, let's say they made a $2 billion off the inside of trading, they will get fined $100 million. Cool. Yeah. Um, the risk-reward makes sense. Yeah, the risk-reward makes sense. Exactly. And then the other point is that all the institutions don't have their [ __ ] together, not all of them, right? If you look at 2008, there's a, you know, there's two movies on it where firms went completely under, and a lot of firms and banks went completely under because they didn't see it coming; they weren't prepared; they didn't have the, the analysts weren't seeing it, so it's not like they're perfect. They're not perfect individuals, perfect trader, and it kind of is a good point to mention is that there is no perfect trader.

Exactly. Funny thing you mentioned 2008, I actually brought you a little gift. Oh, really? Um, obviously when I meet, I like to bring something, not come empty-handed, but, uh, this is basically, uh, back in the days when you used to buy stock shares or stock capital, you used to get a physical authentic certification of that shares. Now everything is digitalized, but, uh, if you know 2008 was actually ignited by Lehman Brothers, and they were the one that kind of spared the whole crash, and they basically had a fund set up, the One William Street fund, which obviously back then you could buy their stock, right? And this original authentic certificate was from 1961, so about 63 years ago, purchased by a lady called Harriet, and I thought maybe it's a good collector's item because I know you're a trader first, and, uh, you know, 2008 is such a, it's a financial key moment for traders because we remember that, so I thought maybe I should gift you that.

That's incredible, man. How did you even get something like this? Oh yeah, I just basically met somebody; he had access to some, uh, authentic certificates, and I thought, you know, as a financial trader, you know, if you're in, if you love and you're passionate about trading, something like that would be cool to have. It's very cool. I appreciate that a lot, man. Honestly, wow. People need to up their game now. That's incredible. Wow. Yeah, I did not expect that. So yeah, it's in great condition as well. Yeah, it's, uh, 63 years old. Wow. Thank you, man. The fact that you could buy them, you know, it was cool to have physical, uh, certificates on the shares that you buy from companies. Obviously now everything is digitalized. Would have like stacks, exactly like bookshelves and banks worth of, uh, of them. But yeah, no, that's incredible, man. Honestly, I really do appreciate that a lot, a lot, a lot.

Yeah, no worries. No thank you. Luckily, I've actually just moved house, and I haven't been home since I've moved house. Okay. Um, so I'm building up my office, so this will be framed in my office. Oh, actually, we're also building a studio set, so maybe I can frame it in the new studio that we build. Awesome. Either way, it's going to be, you're making a studio in your house? No, in my house, so in my house, I'm making like an office, just like workspace, which we'll have like, it's not, not really a studio, but like we'll have a good filming area. Okay. Um, finally, I haven't, never had one for years, um, but then we're building an actual purpose-built words of wisdom set back home. Oh, um, so maybe I can put it in there; that would actually be better. Um, but thank you again; that's absolutely incredible. I'm actually kind of blown away. I, I don't receive gifts or surprises. Well, CU, I just go silent. Yeah, I just go quiet. No, for me it's like, um, every time I meet somebody, I like to bring something, not to come empty-handed, so something my dad taught me. So definitely, how important has networking been? That's, it's a really good, good pivot, but how, how good has, um, or how important has networking been in your trading career?

Very, very important. Um, I'm still networking till this date. I'm meeting different fund managers, uh, across the globe, uh, because everybody has something to teach you. You can always learn, and it basically helps you get access to certain tools. If maybe you need something and you know somebody that can get that sorted, that person can get that sorted. And, um, I wanted to purchase, for example, this, and I knew somebody who's into collectibles, and I said, can you maybe get me an authentic certificate for a, a share company share? And he was like, yeah, let me go and find one, and then eventually find one, and purely because I knew the guy, he made it happen for me. So networking is good, but, uh, make sure that you're somebody before you start networking, because otherwise a lot of guys get together, they waste time. I mean, what are you networking, right? So you need to be able to provide value at the same time in order to also get back value. That's the only way it's fair. So for me, for example, if I was nobody and I come to you and I'm asking you help, it would be unfair to you as well. So I think it's important to network, but at the right time. Definitely. No, definitely. I, I can completely agree. I said it again. I can completely agree with that. Um, but one thing I was going to ask you off the back of that, though, is how did you build, like, how did you start that process of sort of building yourself up and opening new doors, and especially in our industry, CU, a lot of people, no doubt, are probably interested in that, like, how do you meet fund managers? How do you approach them? Where do you find them in the first place?

Yeah, a good way for me, obviously, um, I, in that way, I got lucky because my friend was already in the corporate world, so I will consider myself lucky in that regards. So I met him, and because of him, I got to meet a lot of other fund managers, and I think social media is a very, very good tool in order to connect with, uh, other individuals, fund managers, for example, yesterday I met another fund manager; I connected with him through Instagram, and I think that's why for me it's important as well. Once you establish yourself, maybe to increase your, uh, uh, you know, your followers or engagement or whatever it is, because it can allow you to connect with a lot of people, and I think that's important. You need to put yourself out there in order for people to discover you. If you're very shy and you're not out there, nobody's going to find out about you, and then there's a lot of opportunities you might be missing. So I think, uh, definitely social media is a good tool. Um, what I used to do is I actually used to go on LinkedIn; that's about I was used to go on LinkedIn, and I used to find, for example, Goldman Sachs analyst, and then try to message them, you know, try to connect with them. Sometimes it works; sometimes it, it doesn't, but, uh, it's worth taking a shot. I mean, if you don't take a shot, then there is nothing left. Mhm.

And would you say that the newbie trader out there, like, like someone coming into trading now, what would you advise them based on your journey or based on not just your journey, but what you've seen in the space and how it's evolved over the last five, six, seven years? Yeah, what would you advise someone who's coming across trading now? You know, they just watched an ad, or they've just seen a YouTube video, and they're, they're interested, and they want to go down this career path? What would you say to them?

First of all, I would say why do you want to get into trading? It's a harsh world; it's very, very difficult. If you're coming from, let's say, a different business previously, maybe you tried dropshipping before this, and now you want to transition into trading, maybe drop sh, drop ship didn't work. So if you think dropship didn't work, right, dropshipping, and now you're coming into trading thinking that's going to work, trading is tough; it's very, very difficult, and you need to be prepared to put maybe even years of trial and error experience to be even profitable, right? So you need to decide is this something you want to do? Because anybody telling you it's quick money, quick profit, you know, you can become a, a good trader very, very quickly is simply lying to you. It's not easy; it's probably the hardest job ever. I have gray hair in my hair, you know, and I'm 27. I don't know if that's normal, but it is very, very stressful, and if you're not ready for it, don't get involved; you'd be saving yourself time and money. But if it's something that you're passionate about and you're not coming for the money alone, you want to basically be curious about, about the market, and you want, you have a passion for the market, go for it. Then I feel like the time that you will put in will be worth it to you.

I think that's a, a beautiful point that I always try and raise. Sometimes I've had people say, oh, no, it doesn't matter in terms of the passion. I think, as you said, it's such a difficult industry and pass, uh, industry to be do good at, just an industry to get involved in, but if you lack that passion, I don't see how you can go forward. You know, 100%. I feel like if you don't have the passion, you will not have the curiosity to learn why the market moves a certain way, why did this happen? You will just take a trade, take a loss, move on to the next one. When you're curious, you're like, why did I lose this trade? Let me go back and analyze it again to see what mistakes were made. This is the mistake I made; let me go ahead and journal that; let me write this down; let me make sure I don't repeat this. Somebody who's not passionate will not do that; it's simple as that. If you're somebody, right, and you're trading for maybe a year or a couple of years, and you're still not profitable, you need to look at yourself and see what are you doing wrong? Are you looking back at the mistakes that you're doing? If yes, are you journaling them? Because it's very, very important because in trading you will make every single mistake in the books until there is none to make. But the key here is that you will make all these mistakes, but you have to learn from them. If you don't learn from them, you're just going to run around in circles doing the same thing over and over again and then wonder why is it not working. So the mistakes is bound to happen; you will lose money; you will not be profitable; you will have issues, challenges, mindset problem, but you need to learn from them. Once you understand, then make sure you basically do your analysis on your losses. Once you do that, then you will slowly start see consistency.

And would you say that journaling, backtesting, these things, what are your thoughts on backtesting? I know backtesting is really one of those where people like it or hate it. Yeah, so what are your thoughts on backtest? It's like homework, right? You trading is all about recognizing patterns. So if it's all about same patterns happening over and over again, and you're not looking back to see what happens, what the pattern looks like, I feel like you're cutting a big, big corner right there, right? You need to understand that going back only get you more experience because we cannot fast forward into the future in order to get the experience. So when, when you have available time and you want to work, you have to go back to relive, relive those moments in the markets to see what the market is doing. But the biggest, uh, biggest, biggest lesson is going to be obviously trial and error. You have to go through the system; you have to go through the progress in order to really understand the market. Market conditions. Y market conditions is something that I feel like I forget to speak about a lot, but also a lot of people don't speak about a lot. Yeah, we all focus on like journaling, backtesting, make sure your strategy is profitable over X period of time, collect this data, etc., but a lot of the time what we fail to sort of indicate, and I think is your perfect person maybe to ask this as well, is market conditions. They changed, like you had a huge run and profitability during COVID; that was a lot of volatility at that time, but we've really transitioned since then, like this, these last maybe month, two months, that's start of this year, really in FX anyway, a lot across a few pairs, we've seen really stagnant market, really slow-moving markets. So how have you transitioned and adapted through different market conditions? Have you ever struggled with different market conditions, and if so, like what did that look like, and how did you ever come?

Yeah, market conditions, market cycles is a real thing. Uh, sometimes you can have a strategy, and it works fantastically well, and then there is times where you see your strategy isn't performing as best, and I'm more than happy to admit this in front of you in the camera that Q1 for me, 2024, has not been the best for me, but that's totally normal. You can have, for example, last year I had a good run, but Q1 2024 has not been the best for me. So sometimes what happens is the market condition changes a little bit, the way it reacts or the way it moves, right? Sometimes it becomes too choppy, and then price doesn't basically trend as efficiently because you basically get stopped out or maybe your entry point is not that good, but it does come in cycles. The key here is to basically reduce your risk and make sure that you only increase risk back when market condition goes back to normal, and you see that in your report, in your statement, uh, that you are gaining back your, uh, profits. So it's very, very, it's a real thing, and I think that's the reason why a lot of people jump from strategy to strategy because something might work, and then they have a cycle of losses; they're like, my strategy doesn't work, and it could purely be because maybe market condition was not suitable for your strategy, and then they go away and then do the same thing over and over again, and then they like, I can't find a consistent strategy. Just understand losses will be part, it will come; you will have some losing moments; you just have to reduce risk, try to refine certain things, and just continue and be, be a bit more patient with it.

And in terms of strategy, actually, I was going to ask you, do you, I know you, we talked about stop-loss size, like 20 to 30 ticks, uh, or points, um, what are we looking at in terms of day trading, swing trading, you know, average whole time, average number of trades you're taking in a, like, let's say, a given month? What does that look like for you?

So my strategy is very systematic based. My average trade whole time can actually go for a couple of hours to even maybe 24 hours. Uh, we are very active in terms of managing or position, meaning that if it goes into profit or even loss, we like to, to re-evaluate consistently, seeing what is happening with the markets. What a lot of time happens is a lot of people put their trade, right, and they forget about it. Oh, just put the trade, set my TP, set my stop loss, let it go, you know, it's going to go either up or down. But for us, me personally, I look at my trade, at my positions, my open positions, and evaluate. If it goes, let's say, into 0.5% profit, I, I like to look back and see, okay, how did the price move from that entry point to 0.5% profit? What type of volume was injected for price to move in that certain direction? If volume has dropped, can we maybe see a region that could maybe cause troubles for us, right? So we like to manage on the go and make sure that we're sticking with the trend.

At the same time, off the back of that, I was going to ask, obviously, as someone who is managing large capital, and also you have high expenses, I don't know about personal expenses, but obviously we talked about the team; that alone is 10 to 15K a month, so that's a large expense, six figures just on that, let alone obviously anything else that you do or have. So one thing I've always tried to highlight is that trading itself is not guaranteed, of course, right, the results. So what have you put in place to allow yourself to have that peace of mind, hopefully, um, that your expenses are covered, maybe outside of trading or, or what does that look like for you?

Yeah, I have, yeah, my personal expenses are decent, you know, we have some big expenses as well, but I have real estate portfolio in order to cover me, uh, when we have rainy days in the trading markets. So to make sure that there is something coming in at the end of the month is very, very crucial because when you're dealing with, uh, teams, managing people, and you have your personal expenses, you know, meetings, I'm always traveling around the world trying to meet people, trying to make connections, so that on its own is very, very expensive as well, so that could be a factor as well. So for that, I have obviously created my, uh, real estate portfolio, which was always the, the goal when I started going my own way, when I quit my job. I was like, I want to get into real estate because, uh, everybody knows real estate; there's a lot of money to be made. So I thought, okay, I need to make money in, inject it, uh, into, uh, real estate. I was actually in Belgium; I was finalizing a deal on a real estate project as well. And for me, it's making sure I have systems that will cover me when I have rainy days, like I said, Q1 for 2024 for me was not the best, but I have systems in place, like my real estate portfolio that helps me stay afloat and covers me when it comes to having bad days in trading. Definitely.

So would you say that Q1 has actually been a negative quarter for you? It's more a break-even for me. So again, not making money, but not losing money. For me, I focus on not losing money; that's the biggest focus point because if you focus on not losing money, you're making sure that if you do this correctly, making money becomes a, like a bonus; it's automatic because you're so focused on not losing money, protecting your capital. A lot of people focus on making money; my job is I need to protect my capital. If I know how to do that, and I know how to cut my losses, I can make making money a side effect of trying to protect my capital.

From your experience of and relationships that you've had with people in the institutional side, how important has that been in terms of focusing on the risk rather than the reward? Have you seen traders who focus a lot on reward and maybe they make some money, but they end up blowing up in the end, or?

Yeah, there's a lot of guys who just focus on making money, which you can, there might be periods of time where you make money, but, uh, when you ignore your capital and protecting your capital, it can go south very quickly. Corporate worlds trading, you know, floors, they focus on managing risk. There is reasons why they hedge positions against each other; they have basically whole teams on risk management; it goes through so many systems before a trade idea gets approved. So making sure that they're protecting their capital, having multiple traders trading different instruments and asset classes to make sure that the numbers fold in their favor when it comes to the P&L at the end of the month. So making sure that you're focusing on your risk and protecting your capital is very, very key. Maybe somebody who's trading right now and they're focusing on making money and you're not consistent and you're not profitable, why don't you go ahead and change that up? Try to focus on not losing money; see how that works out for you. One, maybe you'll stay afloat longer without blowing an account; two, maybe you might even see consistency and become profitable. Maybe that's the switch that you need; change that mindset from making money into more, let me protect my capital.

And is that the same mindset you deploy when facing drawdowns, when facing losing streaks? You know, 100%, uh, when that happens for me, my job is to reduce risk and then eventually go into a protocol in order to make sure I'm not losing more. So it becomes a recovery protocol. We have different protocols in place, so when that happens, we know, okay, now it's a recovery protocol; the risk automatically reduces; then everybody's looking for AAA setups, right? So we don't look at AA setups anymore. So then we have a system in place in order to make…

Sure, that we can first recover if we're in drawdown before we then start making more money again. And is there a similar process when you're in profit and and on a winning streak and seeing sort of consistency within the setups?

Yes, we like to stick with the plan, because if it's working, then it's working. No need to make more changes if something is working; you have to stick with it. But what we like to do is we sometimes like to take a certain percentage of the profit and use that to risk further, right, to get more bonuses out of the market. That's one thing that we like to do as well. So there are different play, play that we look at in in the markets, and uh, yeah, it depends on the condition if we're in a drawdown or in profit, and then we use that and use our protocols in play to tackle these situations.

Definitely. I love that and had to do it again just at the end. Uh, but my final question to you really is like, what is the future looking like for you? Hopefully, we're going to have you back again in the future; hopefully, we can get you on a roundtable of sorts as well. Um, but before we get to that future, I want to know like, where where are you planning to get to? I know we talked about you're getting the licensing, going to be managing hopefully 20 million. What's the end goal for you with trading? Where is it that you're looking to get to?

Yeah, at the end of the day, I am very work-minded. So for me, honestly speaking, I could take it easy and relax and live a good life. You know, I have a I'm very grateful for the life I have made for myself. But uh, it's like I think you were telling me that this holid this trip for you was a holiday, but you're still here working, right? And I think I'm the same; like it's just we keep going. And for me is now, okay, now I'm at this level, now I want to move to the next level. Once I maybe get under once I have 20 million under management, I would look at 50 million. If I get to that stage, hopefully maybe 100 million. So I don't know exactly where I will stop; it's very hard to answer that question. But at the end of the day, I want to eventually start a family one day, and I want to have a good life. I want to make sure that they are well taken care of, and uh, just create an empire for myself and see where it takes me; how far can I push myself, you know? And that's the goal maybe, and that's what drives me further and further.

I love that. I absolutely love that, and it's it's been an absolute pleasure. I'm so glad that we got to do this, and like I said, we will definitely do something in the future. Once again, everyone at home, drop a comment with your biggest takeaway from this episode. I know there was a lot to take away from it. Make sure and if you want to see content from, I'm sure he wants your feedback, so drop in the comment if you want to see that. And uh, there'll be other episodes or playlists here on the side. Check out the day trading show; we're loving that over there. And thank you for all your support as always, and until next time, everyone, take care.