Transcription
With a verified multi-year professional track record of over 110%, it's normal to have phases where things work better and phases where things work less good. You have to analyze: did something change, or am I still more or less within the bulk of my data? When I am, I should absolutely not start to change something. In German, we call it "fiman," which means we make something worse by trying to make it better.
In this episode, Alex reveals the harsh truth that retail traders need to understand, and we go through his systematic approach on technicals, risk management, and how he trades a large portfolio. You have to be process-driven, not result-driven.
You start with building a strategy based on rules that have a statistical positive expectancy. Then you backtest it, so you have a bulk of data that you can actually see this actually, over a big sample size, works. And then, one thing that you should and must understand is Bitcoin. In my opinion, you still have an opportunity to grab some of it while it's at the current price. If you really think you missed the train on Bitcoin at 100 grand, you haven't spent time to understand it. So I encourage everyone that's watching this, understand Bitcoin.
Psychology has become this scapegoat that people would say, "Every problem must be the psychology." And although there are elements of truth in it, I want to understand how you know when it's time for psychology and when it's time for, "Actually, let me fix my edge."
So, number one, ladies and gents, welcome back to another episode. I'm joined by a special man. So, usually, we have a lot of younger influencer-type guests. Well, today, we have someone, Alex, thank you for joining, who has had a very, um, not usual life, I would say. And because you've had experience from retail trader to then being a fund manager, and now to kind of hybrid retail and managing other people's money, you find yourself in an interesting route, but also put time into social media and doing a lot of things. And off-camera, we've been discussing life, tax, politics, a lot of things. I'm excited for this episode. Thank you for joining, Alex.
Yeah, I'm very happy to be here. Thanks for having me. Let's get started.
Yes, I want, I want to start off with some things that you've said. So, uh, first of all, you mentioned that you're not a firm believer in technical analysis. That's a pretty interesting thing to say, and I want to take this opportunity to draw parallels between the average retail trader that's looking online to learn strategies versus someone that was managing, uh, other people's funds. What kind of approaches do they have, and therefore their beliefs towards technicals?
So, first of all, what I want to say by that is that, you know, it's too naive of an approach to think that technical analysis is the one missing aspect to success in trading or the one way to take it. So, there are, what I usually say is that people sort of look for a one-dimensional solution for a multi-dimensional challenge that they, that they are actually engaging with here. And the problem with technical analysis, just the way it's been presented mostly in the education space, is that it's sort of sold as a magic bullet, some sort, you know, just have the, the right, uh, auto block, for lack of a better word, or some sort of, you know, technical analysis-based type of secret or whatever. I'll just call it nonsense, um, uh, that will magically make you successful. But the truth is, is that there are more dimensions to trading or to a working trading strategy.
First of all, you've got to have a statistical edge. It means that whatever approach you have in trading needs to have, in your testing, and in, you know, the actual strategy, the rule set, and all of these things need to have a positive expectancy. Needs to be positive on paper, but it also needs to be working for you. So, if you, and this is another misconception, a lot of people try to copy somebody else's trading strategy and don't even realize whether it works for them or not. You know, constraints of your personality, your time, your location, um, your psychology, all of these things are very, very, um, individual. And, um, that's why the way I, um, approach a trading strategy is that you need to have, I call it the seven building blocks. So, you need to have different blocks or or structures. They need to be in place, and they could work for anything from scalping to position trading, from crypto to futures, really doesn't matter. When you, um, look at your rule set through the lens of these seven structures, then in fact, you know, your probability of having something that you understand well, that you are able to reproduce, and that is working on paper, and actually then also you can directly do, do it in life in the same way or very closely matching your tests, then this is where you get to the money, basically.
So, for a, a new trader that wants to kind of build these seven blocks and kind of get to a point where they're interacting with data and building a proven edge, how, how would you go about navigating that?
So, look, at the end of the day, um, I'm also not trying to overcomplicate that. So, um, the things is that part of these blocks is still, how do I enter? How do I exit? These things are, are definitely technical analysis related, you know, um, is it a breakout? Is it a rejection? Is it a test? What time frame? What time of the day? Um, but also, you need to consider risk management, trade management, um, market phase is something that a lot of people completely ignore. Are we in a trending market? Are we in a, in a, um, ranging market? And as you add these blocks to each other, then you can also develop different plays, you know, um, a lot of people like to trade, for example, the open of the market. I was just speaking to your colleague here, waiting for the bell to start, because they're looking for specific, um, movement or patterns in the market that they're going to capture in a very specific, narrow time window only, you know. So, um, as you then, you know, narrow these things down, and they work with your locality and with your personality, um, so that's why I say you need to have a strategy that works for you. Then you are able to get to the point where you can also do it professionally, in a way that you can again and again and again make money, and when you lose, you lose less than when you make money.
And this gets me also to the point which, you know, mindset is such a word because a lot of people think like mindset is some sort of a Tony Robbins jumping around sort of thing. And nothing against the guy, he's obviously super successful and he's helped a bunch of people all over the world. I've also been to an UPW myself and ended up jumping for whatever [Music] reason. So, well, how was your mindset after that? Well, it was, um, it into the sky, obviously, right? But that's very important. Um, you cannot force a positive mindset. Mindset comes from skills, in my opinion. Of course, the way you think will enforce your ability to build skills and to put them into action because what we are when we are in the market is we're dealing with ad hoc situations. You know, sometimes the heat of the moment is for a regular person, an unbearable stress, and you, even if you know what you wanted to do, you may just freeze or forget or over-leverage or add to the position or not exit when you should have. And all of these psychologically rooted issues. And in my opinion, that's why I would even say is that mindset goes over strategy. But you cannot build that mindset without having the structured process of building a proper strategy that allows you to build the confidence and the ability and the skill set to get. But what you build is not an end amount of, you know, sophistication and strategy details. There's really only a few ways you can kill an animal, basically. But your, your ability to make decisions in the heat of the moment, to take risk when the opportunity is really there, and to, you know, cut your risk when you better do it, that is a skill that is comes from here. And this is something that you need to build.
I want to explore the interaction between technicals and fundament, oh, s, technicals and psychology, mindsets, because it's a, it's a hot topic that, that people really overemphasize on one on the other. Just speaking to some traders now in the summits and having interactions with upcoming traders. So, the crypto bull market is well upon us, and with opportunities left, right, and center, why not utilize other people's money instead of your hard-earned money? So, introducing to you the world's first crypto prop firm, Bit Funded. And they've partnered up with an exchange to bring not only the world's first crypto prop firm, but actually a prop firm that has an exchange-like environment. Imagine as if you're trading on Binance with all the benefits that prop firms bring, with the leverage you're going to have, or hundreds of thousands of dollars in buying power, utilizing other people's money. So, your total risk is just a couple hundred max, or as cheap as $79. And with the special offer that they have going on right now for you as a Titans of Tomorrow viewer, if you buy two prop firm accounts, you'll get a third one for free. So, click the link below this video to head over to the Bit Funded website and start to utilize other people's money to benefit from the crypto markets whilst minimizing your downside.
I met a guy who was saying he's taking his technicals are great, and he's just struggling with his mindset. So, I was, okay, let's explore that. He mentioned to me that he's taking seven to eight trades a day. He doesn't use a stop-loss. But for him, his conclusion was psychology. And I think psychology has become, like you said, is, has become this scapegoat that people would say, "Every problem, it must be the psychology." And although there is elements of truth in it, I want to understand how you know when it's time for psychology and how when it's time for, "Actually, let me fix my edge."
Yeah. So, number one, somebody that tells you his technicals are great and he uses no stop losses at all and he overtrades, that guy is [ __ ] delusional. Okay? No offense, respectfully. Like, probably like, I don't want to like attack that guy, but, uh, reality is a [ __ ] better learn to deal with it in a correct way. You know, if you cannot accept reality for what it is and learn to understand it, you will all your [ __ ] life chase something that you will never ever have, in my opinion. So, fixing your psychology is a, a fool's errand in that regard. When, um, you know, it's, it's like saying, uh, "I want to drive 100 miles," but you're sitting on a bicycle. You know, like, how your, your the technology you're using or the means you want to get to that speed doesn't allow you physically to ever reach that. End of story. You cannot fight with reality. You need to understand reality and work with it. And then the aspect of mindset, which still is 80% of how to become and stay profitable, in my opinion. But then that aspect becomes or center stage, or, and actually allows you to become better than others, or even have the ability to, you know, navigate, um, opportunities more successfully than before. But to say that, you know, your technicals are fine when then, okay, what are your statistics? That's the next thing. Like, just ask them, "What's your hit rate? What's your, what your pip expectancy?" Let's start. Most people don't even know what it even means. You know, what's the average profit you're making per trade? What's your average loser? What's your average, how many consecutive losses you had over the last 300 trades? Did you do 300 trades? Have you backed? You know what I mean? Like, you've got to have a bulk of data that you can start off of, and then you can train your mindset.
Another thing that I also teach in, in, uh, my, uh, mentoring, for example, is that you start to build a strategy. Building a strategy based on these seven principles that I explained, and, um, basically then also something that works for you, that you are interested in. And then, um, you start backtesting the whole thing. Backtesting has a little bit, let's just say, the fallacy is that you see the other side of the chart, right? So, it's never, it does, you don't have that skin in the game like in, in a real-world situation. But, um, one step builds to the other. So, you start with building a strategy based on rules that have a statistical, you know, positive expectancy. Then you backtest it, so you have a bulk of data that you can actually see, okay, this actually, over, um, a big sample size, works. And then you go ahead and you actually should go through something like a simulator. Like a flight simulator. You think a pilot is going to fly a plane with hundreds of people's and responsibilities of lives without going through extensive simulator training first? And this is a step I think a lot of people completely skip. They do, they use like backtesting, but they never do simulation. And, and simulation could be live trading. I actually encourage people to live trade, um, relatively early, but don't bet the farm on it. Because, um, the, the psychological stress that you will then endure as you have real money on the line, you, that's something that you, you, you cannot simulate. But nonetheless, what you want to do, especially, let's just say, even before you go to live trading, if you go for something like a simulation, which is like a real-time backtesting, you know, not click candle for candle, is that, let me simulate a time period and then compare it with my backtesting. How off am I? Where am I off? Why am I off? And this is then actually why you have the seven building blocks, because then you can pinpoint your finger as to where's your weakness, why are you going off track? You know, this is, I think, and this is why a lot of people go to the explanation that psychology is their problem. They say psychology is a problem because they don't have a [ __ ] clue what their problem is in the first place.
I want to get to a point that a lot of traders arrive, and, and it's one of the most common scenarios I see, is that somebody claims, and let's take that claim as truth for now, but they're profitable in backtesting. They go through, uh, simulators, as you said. They, they, you know, go through chart work, and they understand the markets, they understand the charts, and they have a strategy. Now, when they go through simulators, they get great results. When they, the moment they go towards a demo or live account, although they're taking the same strategy, they're just not profitable. Why would you say is the reason people go from profitable in simulators and backtesting and blowing accounts and failing in live markets? Would you attribute that gap only towards psychology, or could it be other things?
Well, psychology will be a big factor contributing to that gap. But nonetheless, you cannot solve it with psychology only. Because again, it could be you're hesitant on the entries, or you're don't, you're not respecting your risk like you on the others, or, um, you know, like, it, it could be a nuance, a simple nuance in your actual technical execution. And that's why again, I, um, I specify these seven structures so that you can then look in which of these structures am I off of what I actually tried to do? Could it be simple, you know, like time of the day? You know, could it be like, you know, like you really, that's why I'm saying, um, if you, if you don't know what it is, it could be anything. I don't think, and what I also don't believe is that if someone says, like, "I'm, I'm profitable in backtesting, simulation, I'm never profitable in demo," I call [ __ ] you know, like, like [ __ ] that. If you're going to lie to yourself, you really, you really expect to get anywhere in [ __ ] life, you know? And by the way, like, I'm sorry to jump, like, topics, you a little bit, but this is what angers me about the trading industry. It's become like this, this pond of rapper looking idiots that, you know, have neither skills nor are putting in the work. Um, look, [ __ ] for what I care, you know, and in fact, pretend that they're making money with trading, whether they're actually affiliates or brokerage owners or, you know, exactly.
So, that, that brings us on to an interesting topic, which is obviously you have a more, uh, I want to say, traditional finance background or route where you have managed other funds and you've, you've been a fund manager. So, when you are comparing it from that perspective to the rapper look or the the flexer look, obviously I can imagine from your shoes, it's like childish. One second, sorry to interrupt you here, just so a little bit of my backstory. So, I was a musician. I tried to, I had a failed musician career in my from the early 20s to the mid-20s. And then, but I was always interested in trading. So, I, um, then I saved some money over six, seven, eight years. And a friend introduced a trader to me back then. And I gave him the money to trade. He lost it one same day. And then that trader came back two days later telling me, "Oh, I had a traffic accident, or you just bring some more money, I'll make it back for you." And I asked my parents to help me out. They cashed out their retirement fund for me. I put the money back in, and we actually made the money back a day later on equity in open positions. And then the trader asked me, "Hey, should I close the positions?" If I had said yes on that day, I wouldn't be here today. I told him, "Dude, you just made 50 grand on a [ __ ] day." Like, "Yeah, man, I'm going to be rich." And then he said, like, "Okay, let's wait until tomorrow, and we're probably going to have twice the money." Next morning, I wake up, the account was zero because we had an FOMC in between. The guy was running leverage like crazy. And basically, so I lost not only my own money, but I lost my parents' pension on top. I had like six figures that. So, I didn't start from zero. And like, because people see me now as this hot shot, you know, institutional guy. Guys, I was a retail idiot losing his parents' pension, okay? Um, hundreds of thousands of losses. I want to explore that journey from, um, not even from zero, which is probably most people, rather from massive negative to then climbing not only back to zero, but actually going towards managing other people's money. I'm sure there's a lot of things you have to develop, not only from a mindset but also technical, or technical strategy, everything in between. Can we get into a bit more of the specifics of exactly how to navigate the, the markets, specific approaches from taking a trade idea to an execution? What does that look like? How does a good trade look like for you?
So, first of all, you know, um, the things is that you've got to get away from this get-rich-quick sort of thing idea, you know. You, you have to have, like, in the institutional world, it's not about your profits today, it's about consistency. Consistency is the currency or the value, the intrinsic value of the fund business, you know? And this is why people entrust you with money, and this is why people are comfortable with, um, letting you, um, risk their money in a way. And I feel like in, in retail trading, consistency is like a word that people like to throw around, but most actually don't have it. Like, for example, also for me, just to shorten that conversation about legitimacy, I started a track record. It's now about two years long. It's on, um, I don't want to say the broker name, doesn't matter, but it's like a, um, a regulated platform. And two years, I'm up about 110%. Drawdown max 10% in between, you know? And it's all there, you know? So, so, because why the [ __ ] would anybody listen to me or to [ __ ] anybody else anyway, but for that matter. And in the, in the social media trading space, you see cropped out trades. "I made 20K today. I made 50K tomorrow." Whatever that [ __ ]. Um, but they never show their losing trades. And, so, what I'm trying to say is that consistency is fake. Most people don't have it, especially in the trading education space. And the reason why this upsets me is that I was one of these stupid idiots that believed that crap and lost his money. I got taken out like an idiot, you know? It was my responsibility, in a way. It was the best thing that ever happened to me in my life, in a weird way. So, God has his great ways of making us or turning us into men if we really take on the challenge, you know? Um, but, uh, if you, if you don't rise up to that occasion, if you don't want to man up, because you are thinking your problem is psychology, instead of having a, an approach that actually has a, a chance of consistency in the first place, which requires you to work with real-world data, with real results, you know, audit yourself. And, so, so these things are extremely important. That it look, math and numbers don't lie. The only thing that lies is you to yourself and to others. And you have a world around you that you, by design, unfortunately, need to expect that it's lying, you know? And, and that's not just in trading, it's a cultural thing. Just look at the media in general, or the kind of life that we're living, or propaganda agendas, and so forth, you know? It's everywhere. It's everywhere. And this is why I don't blame these kids going into trading like that. But at some point, you, you blame doesn't matter. You either take on the responsibility and you really make something out of yourself, or you [ __ ] don't. And, you know what? Nobody [ __ ] cares if you do or don't. It's for you, by you.
I want to explore the idea of everybody looks at institutional guys, institutional money, hedge funds, banks, and so forth, as the gold standard. And, and the reason I want to say that is because we assume that they know exactly what they're doing. They're the ones with the degrees and the regulation and all of this. Now, that you've kind of been on both sides of the of the coin, looking at it as the gold standard or not, because one side of it is that, well, their goal is to just beat the markets. It's 7, 10, 15% a year. And the investors are happy because as long as it's beating inflation and beating the S&P, you've done your job as a, as a wealth manager. But then on the other side, just, you have a two-year record of 110%. So, you've significantly beat the odds and beat the markets and then some. Um, I want to kind of navigate, is it realistic to compare ourselves to the institutions, or is it a different ball game? Because an individual retail trader, we don't have the regulation, we don't have the, uh, the restrictions that maybe they do. We don't have the same leverage that they do. So, is it something that we should see as a pedestal, as gold standard, or is it not even comparable?
The only thing that is gold standard about the institutional approach is that it's structured and rule-based. So, the biggest difference is that the reason they have rules is because they're taking on other people's money, and those people want to know what they're getting themselves into, you know? And so, you can't just decide, "Oh, to I'm just going to trade something else," because if you do that, you're going to get [ __ ] sued by a very rich guy, you know?
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And this is what I feel is missing in the retail space, that people hold themselves accountable to real rules. Um, one day they're doing this, another day they're doing that. In the morning, they do this, in the evening, they feel like that. Today they had, you know, their girlfriend busting their ball, and all these things. So, do you think also the objective is different? Because a wealth manager, I guess one of the priorities is capital preservation. These guys are investing in a fund, they're already rich, they're not trying to get rich, they're trying to just beat inflation, keep their money safe, maybe keep it aside so they don't spend it. There's a different objective, whereas an individual retail trader going through a prop there may be dead broke or very low financially. Their goal is to make some wealth first. So, they're more aggressive, they're more like returns-oriented, whereas an investor is more capital preservation-oriented. Do you think that that different approaches leads to different mindsets, different strategies, and therefore different outcomes?
Well, definitely yes. But at the same time, the best way to make a lot of money is to have a proper approach, and then just risk more with the proper approach. Okay? Yeah. But what we're seeing is that, especially in the retail space or in the prop space, and let's be honest, prop firms live off the fees of the failing traders. This is another thing you need to understand. The economics behind these offers, whether it's a broker, a CFD broker that lives off its losing customers, because they run their B books and they don't H [ __ ], um, or the prop firms that live off the fees for the, for the fail challenges. They serve a purpose, you know? It's okay. You've got to understand their economic model is not to make you successful. Their economic model is for them to be profitable. But at the same time, be by doing that, they're giving you the opportunity to use that system to your advantage. So, you can have access to capital. Suddenly, you can have access to 500 to one leverage, you know? So, um, and but nonetheless, you will only be able to use these tools to your advantage when you apply a proper strategy or a proper structured approach, you know? And, uh, like my, my 100% track record, for example, probably I could have made it 200 and 300 if I had risked 2x or 3x with the same position sizes, you know? At the same time, I just wanted to, you know, create a tangible, real-world example, fully verified, regulated, transparent, every single trade, um, to show this is 100% based on my teachings and the strategy. Actually, the idea of the strategy, I have it for free on YouTube on my channel. I explain the exact strategy. And if you expect some magic formations that I'm analyzing and religiously preaching, no.
So, with the 100% return you've had over a couple of years, one thing that strikes to me is that some of the best hedge funds or, you know, wealth managers, you know, it's 20, 30, 50% is like, wow, they did something special. Whereas in a retail perspective, we see it happening, you know, slightly, slightly supernormal profits. I want to call it. Why do you think that is achievable, and, and how are you able to achieve it?
It's, it's simple. It's size and, and asset classes. Like, uh, FX, for example, is not an asset class that you find a lot in the institutional space. Why do you think that is? Because Forex is more of a, like, there is some FX trading, but you, you, it's more irrational, actually more short-term. And most, most hedge fund managers, from their systematic approaches, they go for more, um, for less, uh, noise, short-term type of approaches. Not all of them, you know? It depends also a lot of that as algorithmic. Also, because a lot of hedge funds that would go into the FX space, they don't even trade the market per se anymore. They trade the liquidity. There's a whole another dimension to things, you know? Like latency, auto books, front running, like all, there's a bunch of, uh, HFT is nothing else than, you know, having the price or the quote a millisecond before you actually know where it's going, and just like squeeze in your own, or even be the market maker to it. And give who that's the next thing. Institutional sales, they have companies and all of that. And, and even other fund managers that trade with them, and they manage that exposure. They may decide to take a position just to, you know, stick it to some of the customers and make an extra buck in between. So, there's a different type of business. It's a, it's a middleman business also here that they do. And also the other most simple answer to that is size, you know? Um, from a specific size on, you cannot fill 100 million order, uh, execution, just like that. The slippage alone is going to cost you a Ferrari, you know?
When it gets to the recent track record that you've built, and 110% over two years, tell me some stories in that process where I'm sure you've had some winning periods, losing periods, some big highs, some big lows. What was it like navigating that terrain?
Well, it's actually what I tried, and I even put again also on my YouTube, like, um, specific trade examples, bad trades, and good trades, especially bad trades as well, because I explain actually in those videos, "Did I do something wrong on that bad trade?" And I show that if you stick to your rules, you can have bad trades. It's important, though, that you stick to your rules, because I even show examples that if I had tried to behave differently, that bad trade would have become a very bad trade. And so, highs and lows, it's normal to have phases where things work better and phases where things work less good. And when things don't work good, you have to analyze: did something change, or am I still more or less within the bulk of my data? Yes. And when I am, I should absolutely not start to change something. In German, we call it "fiman," which means it's like we make something worse by trying to make it better. And, uh, yeah, Germans are very literal, technical type of.
So, when you are encountering a losing period, let's say, would you say, "Okay, don't change a thing and just ride out the wave," or is it a case of maybe size down, or maybe get, um, different types of trades that are more high-probability setups? So, is there any adjustments, or you both of these things?
I actually, you, you just nailed it. When you see yourself losing, losing, losing, it would make sense to scale down on your position size for the next trades until you reestablish, also for your own confidence, until you reestablish, you know, um, that you're back on track. And also, um, setups are not all equal. They're better setups. Set. And I also teach that, that you have to grade your setups, you know? Is it a 10 out of 10? Is it an 8 out of 10? Is it, is it an aggressive entry? Is it, you know? So, you, you, and this is, by the way, where mindset again, at some point, is an extremely helpful factor, because you can very quickly make decisions like that, "Should I take this aggressive trade? Yes or no?" And, and you, I cannot completely explain the, because that's not logic per se anymore, that's like intrinsic skill set that is trained, where you would just decide, "Okay, this one I'm taking," even though it's just a three out of 10 for me, but because of my overall perception, market phase, like a bunch of things that you just quickly assess, you're willing to do that. But generally, if you find yourself in a losing streak, that's not the time to become creative too much, you know? Look for the better setups, focus on those first, reestablish a functioning situation, and then go hard again.
So, with the better, I completely agree. I think, you know, you want to be putting relief on your mind because you're already in a heightened state in a losing period. So, you want to give yourself reassurance that these setups you're taking are high quality. Obviously, there's a pressure of, "Okay, can you be patient to wait for these high-quality setups?" But let's leave that. The thing I want to focus on is the modulation of risk. Because there is one side of the spectrum which you could say is keeping your risk the same, because if you're 10% down, you know, you just need to gain that 10% back and you're back to break even. But now, let's say you halve your position size. Now, that 10% would feel like a 20% because you're, and that could have a further effect of, "Now I'm in the hole for longer." You feel that mental pressure a little bit more. But then you're also avoiding yourself spiraling into a worse position. You just explained the, the mental misconception here, you know? You have to be process-driven, not result-driven. So, focus on your process, the results follow the process. What I mean is that, again, let's just say your average losing streak is three trades, four trades, and now you find yourself in six trades. You mean average like data? Yeah, even in your live trading or in your backtesting. Yeah. And now you suddenly have six losing trades in a row, that would be a point where I would consider to scale down, okay? Until I have another one, two, three trades back to back that actually worked within my expectations, and then you can scale back. So, it's really not about, um, cutting yourself short of the opportunity to make the money back. It's, it's getting yourself back into a productive state first. That's the intention here, or that's the, um, the requirement of you to get back to your peak performance. Because otherwise, um, if you're chasing something, this is what I mean by result-driven. If you focus a result-driven situation, there will always going to be something that's going to [ __ ] you up and that's going to impair your decision-making, not impact, impair. Remove your ability to make proper decisions. And that's why, um, this is the, the reduction of risk, because once you go into uncharted territory, your subconscious will immediately play into, you know, giving you some sort of weaknesses or allowing you to consider inaccuracies or or fear of getting into good trades that you should take that you're not exactly, or even hesitations and things of that nature.
I want to hear your thoughts on the exact same scenario, but now in a winning scenario. Let's say your dates or average winning period is three, you have three and a row sometimes. But now you find yourself in a hot streak, you got six wins in a row. Now you can be on an overzealous, like very confident, high, euphoric, and that can also lead to a negative result. And I see that a lot where people have great trades and they give it all back, usually in the same day. So, I want to hear your thoughts on how you manage your position sizing or yourself or your mind systems, as you said, as opposed to outcome, when you are on one of those winning streaks.
So, again, it has to do with the type of strategy first of all, you know? So, the strategy of my track record, for example, is a, um, I scale down from the weekly, um, to look for important areas, and then I look maybe into the hourly and 15 minutes down, just for the, for the trigger of the trade. So, I maybe have three to five trades a week. So, essentially, an overtrading situation with that kind of strategy is almost impossible. And why did I choose that kind of strategy? Because I value my time. I value my, uh, Mediterranean leisure life. So, I don't want to be, you know, glued to a screen. And maybe when I would, if I would be 25 years old, would be different. And so, again, this is why it's so important to understand, you need a strategy that works for you. So, that's why, you know, uh, yes, when you are overconfident, again, process-driven. So, for me, like I have a clear structure of my day. I wake up, I do, basically, every day looks the same, and I'm super happy with that. Some people would argue, "Man, it's super, like, boring." You know? But I have my few, my window of hours of work, then I go to the gym. I love driving like a maniac while going to the gym. This is another reason why I live in Cyprus, because I have these nice mountain roads, you know, instead of being stuck in [ __ ] traffic here, [ __ ] Ferrari [ __ ] for nothing, you know? Anything, uh, and so, again, I created a life that works for my personality, that works for me to keep my balance, that keeps me focused on what works best. That's another thing why you need to audit yourself. This is where journaling comes also into play. Not just, you know, a lot of people think journaling is writing down the details of your trade. You can look at a [ __ ] statement for that, you know? You don't need the, the price and the hour and all that stuff. What you need to understand is your, your, your mental state in that situation, you know, or the situation, uh, details. This is a lot more relevant. And the same here, review your, your life's, um, uh, yeah, status quo, or procedure, or whatever you want to call it, and understand where are there ways that you could actually, um, optimize it for balance. And then I think automatically, you will be more chill when you lose, and more chill when you win.
Mmm. I want to first of all, are you allowed to, and you go another, last thing, which is, sorry to break it to all these young guys out there, experience. You can't replace experience with with nothing else, you know? That's, if you've been on a [ __ ] rodeo 100 times, it's, the 100 first time you're doing it, you know? It's another day in the office. Yeah. You know, what are you allowed to disclose? How much you had in your fund? How, how much wealth you were managing?
Yeah, we were trading eight figures, you know? Like, I, I didn't make it, uh, to to 100 million, but we were not far away from that.
I want to understand how you navigate that size of a pot. Is it a case of distributed amongst traders? Is it distributed amongst asset classes? How do you manage exposure and just how you position yourself? Because I don't imagine it's just one big account.
And that's absolutely correct. Um, so, I, I do agree with you that we had different strategies going on. So, we had FX strategies, which were direction trading, breakout strategies, um, and, um, rejection, um, plays that we were playing, mainly on Euro dollar for the, for the liquidity and the size. But, um, another thing we would trade is, is options. And I'm still like, very active in options trading, because, um, actually, I, I run today, even, um, a fund with friends together, where we sell volatility. I don't know if you're familiar with the concept. So, essentially, and, and you can sell options. You, you can, not only buy options, but can be the seller of an option, which means that you provide insurance to, um, market participants that want to secure themselves against a market drop, for example. This is what a hedge, I guess. Exactly. They buy the hedge from you, and for that, they pay you a fee. This is what's called premium. Yes. And then you collect that. And, um, now you have to manage your risk. If the market goes down, you got to pay that guy that, you know, the, the hedge cost, basically, or the hedging P&L. Um, so, what we do is we collect premium on puts, but we also hedge the market, um, by trading the futures on the short side. So, it's a market-neutral strategy. Um, so, that's, that's an approach that I also, um, cultivated while working at the fund, and still very much like today. That's the biggest difference to people that have a lot of capital. They're a lot more interested with a bulk of their capital in market-neutral strategies than in strategies that are market-directional, because they're already rich. As a trader, it's very simple. You have to find an edge, and then you have to have a mind so you can follow that edge. But how do you know if you're performing correctly or not? Not, you have to know your data. And TradeZella is going to show you everything that you need beyond the surface level win rates and performance and equity curve. It's going to show you detailed reports. It's going to be your backtesting tool, strategy testing tool, playbooks, notes, and it's going to be a full journal. It makes your journaling easier, faster, and more meaningful, whereas if you were just documenting on an Excel spreadsheet or taking screenshots on your iPhone, you wouldn't be able to pull out the data that you need. The correlation that the AI within TradeZella is pulling out for you. There's so much variety and utility within the software that I think it's essential for any trader. So, the link somewhere below is going to take you directly to the TradeZella website. I'm not getting paid. This is for you. If you want it, if you like it, go ahead and explore it, and probably you'll be using it for years to come.
When I see funds, obviously there's a division which is active trading and, and looking for speculative gain, but there is also ideas of just boring, safe, put it in bonds, put it in property, put it in gold, and just hold it. Were you also doing these kind of?
That's investing. No, at the time, I would not be doing it. And even today, um, I don't do these things personally, even myself, because I think real estate, only people do real estate that don't have the ability to generate return in another way. So, it's basically the uneducated man's investment, in a way, for me. And I know it sounds harsh, but, uh, I can return higher than most real estate. So, why would I lock up my capital in any place of this world, you know? It comes with so many issues, structural issues, laws, like so many things. I'm, I'm a flexible guy, you know? If I today say, like, "See you in another life," I'll be in another country, you know? All good. I don't mind. Um, as for, like, gold or long-term stocks, I think generally, um, it's not bad to have some, some exposure. But probably for the newer generation, um, one thing that you should and must understand is Bitcoin, in my opinion. That's something that's extremely important, because it, it has all the, you know, um, it, it's, it's the hardest money we've ever seen in the history of mankind, you know? And you still have an opportunity to grab some of it while it's at the current price. Even if it's now almost trading at 100 grand, and you would think you missed a train. If you really think you missed a train on Bitcoin at 100 grand, you haven't spent time to understand it. So, I encourage everyone that is watching this, understand Bitcoin. When you understand Bitcoin, then you may actually get interested in MicroStrategy. What is MicroStrategy doing? Why is this stock of MicroStrategy outpacing Nvidia? And then, when you look at MicroStrategy, you could understand, like, "Hm, I could actually trade options on MicroStrategy, collect premium, and then buy the dips if I get." We're getting now to a wheel strategy on an asset and a stock that is poised to go up over our lifetime, in my opinion. So, those are, in my opinion, actually faster ways to become rich than, yeah, the whatever gambling type of things.
Well, as someone that is coming, has a traditional, uh, routes with, um, fund management and so forth, what is your approach to actually?
Looking at the cryptocurrency markets and actually getting in, is it just dollar cost averaging, or do you apply the technicals and the strategies to then getting into the investment side of crypto? So, I... Okay, we have to differentiate between Bitcoin and crypto. Those are two different pairs of shoes, uh, in my opinion, at least. Uh, Bitcoin, yes, just start DCA, whatever it is, forever. Don't ever stop and never sell it. That's my very simple advice. Again, by the way, you get rich by concentration, not by diversification, right? That's what you mentioned. Like, rich people want to stay rich, so they diversify. People that want to get rich, they need to identify the fastest horse and go hard on the fastest horse and stay to their conviction and make sure that the conviction is based on good research.
What gives you a strong level of conviction specifically in Bitcoin? Well, it's, uh, well, first of all, it's, it's scarce, you know, it's limited, it has a hard cap. Um, the regulatory and legal situation has never been more clear than today. Um, with the red sweep in the US, it's, it's basically screaming that, um, it will get normalized. So the fast B accounting rules are going to change, so banks will start to put it on their balance sheet. You see, um, Bitcoin being treated as a treasury asset left and right. You know, we have a problem with our fiat currency in a way that it's losing value. Everybody knows that inflation, even before inflation became a big thing because everybody noticed that they're paying twice or three times as much as they used not too long ago for about most everything. Um, inflation has always been there. So, and especially bonds, you know, um, the, the rates on bonds continued to go up, that means the prices of bonds went down. So if you put money in in bonds, you actually lost money, or you're losing money every single year. And a lot of companies, by law, are required to keep their money in in in bonds. They cannot put all, for example, in the US, they cannot put their B money all in, um, security or otherwise, they would buy their own with everything, their own stock. So, and the bond market is 100 trillion or hundreds of trillion dollar large market. If only 1% of that bond market gets allocated into hard money like Bitcoin, that will continue to skyrocket the price massively. And seeing the success of how MicroStrategy is essentially putting Bitcoin on their balance sheet as the price goes up, they sell the debt of their company to buy Bitcoin again, to drive the price more up, to sell debt again to drive them more up. Like some people argue it's a Ponzi, but the reason why it's not a Ponzi in my opinion is because bonds are losing value otherwise, and there is a need in the market of trillions of dollars of large market that wants to get a a piece of hard money. And that alone, with the legal clarity, the regulatory clarity, um, the decentralization, and also, you know, um, even Trump is saying like, we want to make, um, the US a crypto capital. Never sell your Bitcoin. Like he's been very clear on his statements, um, in that direction. So that gives me, again, look, those are probability bets that we're taking here, but this is what I mean by you got to, you know, identify the fastest horse and then go hard on your conviction.
I want to explore the difference between, as they say, the greater fool theory, which is if everybody's getting into crypto because they think it's going to go up, so they'll buy it at 30k because they want to sell it to someone at 100. But the guy that buys it at 100, they think are going to go to 200. And eventually, the greater fool theory in general is someone's left holding the bag. Now, what is the difference between that and and and specifically Bitcoin? And the answers I usually get is, um, well, you know, an equivalent of money, it's equivalent of, you know, it's the new currency, it's the new digital era. No, it's capital. It's not money. Money is, uh, currency is to for transaction. Capital is to basically, you know, be a collateral. Okay, this is why I want to explore because when I, when I, when I hear that statement of, is the new money, is the future of money? Well, I hear when number one is, if someone wants to use money, it's to transact. And when people use crypto to transact, it's never Bitcoin because I might send you X and it moves, and then I didn't send you the right amount. It's usually a stable coin, USDT. Also, the fees, the time is usually not the most efficient way to transact. The other side is the supply. It's limited. Sorry, finite supply, or at one point it will be finite supply. That gives it a store of value. But then there's also the idea of inherent value. And they usually say gold is the, well, gold standard is the best form of money because it has a value. Whereas Bitcoin, does it have a value?
Let's say I respectfully disagree with that statement. Um, Bitcoin is for a reason. Um, you know, the way you generate Bitcoin is by needing to spend energy. So the, the reason why gold has an intrinsic value is because you need to spend energy to get it out of the ground. You know, do you think there's a differentiation between cost of mining or cost of getting the Bitcoin versus the value of Bitcoin? Because let's say in another scenario, Bitcoin was really down, really down, the cost of mining was superior to the market value at that at that time. There would be that discrepancy in price. So yeah, but do you saw how the price caught up again to to the mining cost? What say, do you believe that the cost of mining is the floor of Bitcoin, or do you think it could go lower based on just speculation? I think as long as you need to spend, um, capital to acquire it, it has an intrinsic value. That's just an answer to the intrinsic value question. First, then there's other aspects that drive the price. Um, some aspects is that what you see is that, um, most or a lot of the participants that end up understanding Bitcoin for themselves are never selling it again. So the stickiness of the holders is, and this, you could argue, could be a greater fool thing. But then again, no offense, we live in a world that it's by humans, so there's going to be a human fallacy aspect to anything, of course. Because when, when you look at the faith and fiat, to the faith in dollar, the dollar is pegged to nothing. It used to be gold pegged, and now it's no gold standard. So now it's just literally paper that is an IOU. And if the whole world agrees that the dollar has value, then it has value. The moment we decide, okay, it's just a piece of paper, then it's literally, there's nothing. Of course, I understand the portion of like people run it, and if people believe in it, the stickiness of it is a form of base.
But speaking of the dollar conversation, just in that regard, I think fiat is not going to die because of Bitcoin. They are two different things. I think that the, and I not just think fiat's not going to die, I think the dollar is going to stay the number one for simple reason. First of all, the US economy continues to be the most innovative, the biggest one in the world. And, um, I think that just, even now with this red sweep in the US, that, um, a lot of deregulation, tax lowering, like, just, I think the economy will continue to support the value of, um, the US. And also, if the US manages to reduce their spending and really get efficiency into their government, that's going to bring a lot more, you know, um, confidence back into the US dollar. On top of that, I think stablecoins are a much overlooked, um, demand for dollars that is coming. As we get see stablecoins get more regulated within the US, maybe Tether actually relocates into the US, Circle is already into the in the US, and then the whole world, the whole world's going to love use stablecoins. People in India, people in South America, everyone that has a shitty currency, which is frankly everyone, even [ __ ] Europe, you know, will to use dollars as a stablecoin. What does that mean? These stablecoins need to be backed by US treasuries. So that's why I think, so, so this is what's going to drive the coexistence of dollar as a means of transaction and Bitcoin as a means of, uh, storing, basically.
Do you think that is sufficient, the stablecoin scenario you're mentioning, to offset the troubles that the dollar may be facing with the petrodollar not being as dominant, and obviously with Saudi's position, and obviously BRICS nations rising to combat the dollar, and people doing trade outside of the dollar now? That's usually the dollar was, or US economy was able to flourish because they could print and offload that inflation worldwide as opposed to just locally in their economy. So that was a way they were able to grow at a faster pace. Now, when, um, they are not able to do it so easily because of the rise of BRICS nations and so forth, that's where a lot of these dollar doomsayers come in and say, well, the dollar is going to ship because it's just a piece of paper, high inflation, print like crazy, and other economies doing gold backed, BRICS, BRICS is going to be gold backed. Do you see that battle playing out?
So, quick question, what's the alternative to the dollar in general? There has to be one. Gold standard, and that's, I think, the fight that's about to go. Not literal fight, but like, that's the, the play, you know. What's the problem with gold standard is that, and this is the big advantage of Bitcoin. Who audits the gold? Who knows how much gold is where, exactly is that really true? Huh? Because I recall Germany calling gold back from the US, and the US didn't send it to them, you know what I mean? So the gold standard is a fairy tale in my opinion. It's, it's, it's out of an older age. Bitcoin is on-chain. There's no, there's no playing around with the numbers. Um, but what I think, um, what were you asking again, sorry? More to say like, the, the rising dominance of BRICS nations that is gold backed versus a dominant, historically dominant US. What we've seen in the recent years was mainly politically driven because the US took the reserves of Russia, and then essentially the rest of the world said, like, wait a minute, like, you [ __ ] you're just going to take our money if we don't like what you're doing. All right, so we're going to, um, pursue other avenues, which is completely normal. I think when there's, again, maybe a bit more of a normalization of political affairs, then, um, that drive could be reduced. I don't think though, I think that BRICS as a, as a, um, yeah, union is a little bit overvalued in the sense of that, because don't forget, what you also need is you need a depth of market liquidity, size, all of that. The treasury market of the US, there is, there's no comparison anywhere in the world. And you cannot do it with a Chinese currency because the Chinese, they play around with with even more, you know, the, the Switzerland, maybe from, but it's so small, tiny country, and, and like, it doesn't have the volume. Europe, like, look, I, I cry really out of my heart to see what happened to my home country. They literally [ __ ] themselves. Okay. And, um, and the funny part is is that Germany was the driving engine of the whole [ __ ] thing. Yeah, yes, it's not funny, actually. But anyway, so what are you going to do? And so, uh, the Euro is a shitcoin. The Euro is a fiat shitcoin. So, however way you look at it, all fiat currencies are [ __ ], but there's less [ __ ] and more [ __ ]. And the dollar is the least [ __ ] when it comes to, um, capital.
You may have to decide, let's say cash reserves, would you rather keep it in a dollar or any fiat, or is it straight to a Bitcoin to kind of, it's liquid, it's easy to then access when you need to, but it's a better store of wealth because at least it's not going deep, or it's not getting inflation? It's a matter of volatility. I think that the volatility of Bitcoin will continue to go down, but at the moment, it's still a lot higher than the dollar. So if you have an immediate need for liquidity at any point in time, then probably storing in Bitcoin short term can be a, um, a problem, you know. And, um, so that's why again, like in trading, you need to know what is it that I'm trying to do exactly? What is my goal? What is my target? What are my requirements? What works for me? And then make a plan based on these metrics and then just execute it.
How have you found the typical old, um, white investor, I want to call it, that's usually the main players in big hedge funds? They were, I imagine, back back in the day, very averse to crypto. And that's nothing they understand, they don't want money in there. Do you think they are now more maturing or liking towards the idea of crypto and allocating resources there? Again, I would differentiate between crypto and Bitcoin. I think that generally, the idea of allocating 1 to 5% of your balance sheet to to Bitcoin or, um, is an idea that is very much accepted. And we're just waiting for more, you know, clarity of rules. And especially the accounting is a big problem because right now, especially in the US, um, they you, they don't show your Bitcoins correctly on your, uh, on your balance sheet in a way like they would show it if you, um, you know, um, kept in another asset, you know, so it's being treated differently. But that will change in January, and then you can just keep it as capital on your balance sheet. And so that will enable a lot of players that have not been in the market to to, um, get engaged in that. Also, the normalization of, of, um, having now a, a BlackRock ETF or other ETFs in the market is certainly a huge development in that regard. So I, I think that from that perspective, the, the old guard is definitely interested and willing to allocate a small amount. Okay. And, um, and for as for crypto, now we're going on the higher end of the, um, of the risk spectrum. And even here, you know, like meme coins and all that stuff. The reason why I would not recommend people to get into that is they would only, they can only get involved in that if they're really, really focusing on doing only this, because the problem with memes is that they're so tiny market caps, most of them is that they're full of manipulation. They're full of, um, you know, if, if any of that stuff would happen in normal markets, people go to jail. And by the way, you don't even know if people will go to jail in three, four, or five years when the rules around that are going to get normalized. Especially there's so many meme coin people out of this city here that have taken out, you know, the reason why nobody finds them on the streets and beats them up is because they scammed millions of $1 to $500 people. I don't know if you saw there's a clip going viral of a 13-year-old who rug-pulled a meme coin on stream live. He literally did it and then started S. It was the most hilarious thing I saw. But in general, these people that are doing the rug-pulling, I think they, they have confidence because they're hiding behind the anonymity side of of crypto.
Do you think that? Absolutely. It's even, it's not even the rug-pulling per se, it's just play like manipulating the liquidity, causing pump and dumps, and pretending they're going to hold forever while they just exit from other wallets while, um, they're bringing in new liquidity from suckers. That's the greater fool theory at play, very much.
I want to explore then, because we're on the topic of the effect of influencers. When I see that, I'm seeing so many exposing documentaries right now that are getting huge traction on like how innocent or how much of a hand or how much responsibility do figures like a Logan Paul or a Mr. Beast, who have huge followings? And when people are doing these investigations, they track the wallets and they say, okay, this guy just bought this coin and then just replied to the tweet with eyes emoji. So they're saying it's just eyes emoji, but that is in a sense a form of endorsement. And then as the value doubles, they, you know, take their money and they average, they calculated that both Mr. Beast and Logan Paul specifically, they've done millions of dollars just from these kind of rug pulls, I want to call them, or influencer coins or meme coins. Right now, they're getting away with it because there's no regulation. It's a [ __ ] scam. There's no other word for it. Actually, leveraging their audience or even crypto's situation, which I don't know if you're aware of, but you know, kind of literally directly saying, this is the future, this is my project, I'm going to put time and effort into it, and then just rug-pulling the hell out. They're lying. They're lying. How that's, I think what keeps a lot of the, um, certain players that have big money out of the crypto markets because they see this behavior and they say, okay, I'm better off in the bonds and the boring, you know, the boring stock market and the boring property. I'll take inflation any day over that [ __ ].
No, um, very simply stated, even within crypto, there's smart ways to do it and there's stupid ways to do it. You know, smart way to do it is to analyze what is the utility of the token. What is the actual, like, for example, two years ago, two years ago, Solana was trading at $8. Today it's trading at 260 or something, you know. And, um, SBF and FTX brought Solana down with them when they collapsed. And, um, even I have to admit, I was surprised at the strength of the recovery. But the metrics of the Solana chain always continued to show strength. The amount of developers that migrated from Ethereum to Solana, the daily active users, the liquidity growing, um, the stablecoin volumes, all of these things, metrics, data, real world, you know, the stuff that people ignore, it was all pointing towards that [ __ ]. There's something going on there. So this was what I was trying to to ask, maybe I didn't word it best, but like, when, when people say, you know, Bitcoin is the way, in the gold standard, but I see something like, like Solana, which is more adoptable or easier and cheap to use. Why do you think Bitcoin will be that dominance one and other rising second or third? Because Bitcoin has the scarcity aspect, the hard money aspect, that, uh, Solana is again, more of a transactional currency and it builds, um, you know, it's more of an active type of thing, while Bitcoin is is a storage. Um, the scarcity aspect is, I think, is the biggest difference here. And also, not forget, no leader, no owner, biggest decentralization. That's, that's also a unique, um, proposition that only Bitcoin has, you know. And you could argue, yeah, who, who is the inventor of Bitcoin? Who, Satoshi Nakamoto? Has like tons. You saw Scotty Pippin the other day, he said that was. I really want to know. I just want to find out this point. Who? Some people say it's the, it's the Fed. Some people say it's the CIA. Like there's. You know what? At the end of the day, it doesn't matter because it's so decentralized by now that it's, it's just that that train or that ship has sailed where it would matter. Even if Satoshi's wallet moved, it's only a million Bitcoin. Um, and it, you know, it's not, it's not from a supply perspective, it's not the end all be all. The next 10 years are the most important ones in Bitcoin in my eyes because basically almost, I think it's 95 or something percent of all Bitcoins will be mined by then. MH. After that, the new Bitcoins that are coming to the market is even, even even less. So, so that's why I think if you, um, you should pay attention these next 10 years on that market, particularly, especially if you're looking for growth, you know, and, and for development there. And as for Solana, for me, it's more like a tech stock. Yeah, in comparison, if Bitcoin is more of a gold, then Solana is more like a tech stock. And that's why it's important to monitor also other competitors to it. Is Sui a real competitor, for example? But if you look at the metrics, like the metrics are again, simplicity, don't overcomplicate things. Daily active users, liquidity, um, developers. Those are like key metrics that are important to understand as to, um, is there a value proposition in that ecosystem? Because those are ecosystems in a way, it's just like Google is an ecosystem with with maps, with search, with ads, with, you know, um, those chains, those L1s are ecosystems with different applications on them. And, um, Solana right now, I think still definitely beats any other. And we will see if Ethereum will find its way out of its current, um, slump because it really has nothing to offer right now other than it's like the second best. When, uh, you know, to quote Michael Saylor here, there is no second best.
There's a couple things that always come to my mind and maybe it's just my risk tolerance or my own mindset. But when I see how, let's say the NFT situation played out, where everybody said it's finite supply, you know, there's, there's utility there of the artwork and, you know, you can validate transactions, all of these things. They were selling it, and then when it came down, the guys were just left with a JPEG and a million dollars down. Kind of crazy things. And also in the crypto markets, you have, you know, the staking stuff, which is okay, I'm going to get X amount return, APY, all of this, but then you're paid out in the native coin. And if that goes to [ __ ], then you are, there's a lot of these things that are tricks of the industry. That's just standard economics. So if you're getting paid in a currency that you need to sell to realize a profit, like what else is going to happen? And the price going down? Exactly. Like, where's the [ __ ] brain?
The kind of question I have is, I don't know if this, and I don't have the full knowledge on crypto, but you know, because you mentioned tech, you like, um, Solana is like a tech stock and Bitcoin is like gold. It just got me thinking, a lot of people, they want to diversify their investments. So instead of investing in specific stocks, they invest in the S&P 500 because the overall health index of the US, you know, US companies is there. Something of equivalence with crypto of like the top 20 coins? So the reason I want to say this is because there was a rise of a coin called Waves Duck or something like this, or Waves, and it was a top 10 coin in the last bull run, but it was, it was a Russian owner, but it was heavily, heavily gaining value because of, um, the biggest Spanish influencers, and they really, you know, got a lot of people on it. And then, but that's really down right now. But if I saw that, okay, this is a top 10 coin, I want to invest in it. XYZ. If I had overexposure into one, I would have failed, let's say. But if I was in the top 20 cryptocurrencies, I could have hedged that loss by other ones. Necessarily, because most of former top 20 coins never really, I, the way I look at it, um, crypto is an extremely fast-paced market. So if you want to get engaged in that market, prepare to need to work for it every day. You know, that's if you think you can just, you know, diversify into crypto and passively make money with the top 20 coins, well, I hate to break it to you, you're going to [ __ ] lose money. Like, no, like, I'm sorry, that market requires your attention like nothing else, in research, in tracking all. What if you want to buy 20 coins? Do you think as a single person, you're able to track the metrics and the development of 20 different projects at that pace? No, you cannot. Again, choose quality, simple, you know, three, two, max. Go on them. And when they, and and as part of your analysis, cross-reference them to other upcoming ones. Like I said, for example, if you compare Solana with Sui, and you look at the stats, even though Sui also went up like a couple hundred percent or whatever, it still doesn't, that's a price movement. Yeah, don't get blinded by the price movements alone, but look at the underlying, um, real metrics. You can see neither the users. Like you said, for example, whatever Waves, if that was driven by influencers, that's something you should and could have found out, you know, and that's your job. Your job in in crypto is a lot more research. Again, that's also strategy at the end of the day. So we find that there's evergreen principles to be successful in whatever you want to trade or invest in, that, you know, and I always say the rules of physics, they apply everywhere. But it matters, you know, if you want to go up in the sky, you build an airplane, which needs to be differently acting on the rules of physics than a submarine that wants to work on the water. You got to, you know, but the rules of physics are the same everywhere, you know. And that's why you need to understand the environment you want to be active in, so that you are in the right vessel. And another thing, this is what, why I encourage people actually to, um, consider learning and understanding about Bitcoin and crypto. The boat you're in is more important than how strong you row. Exactly. And that's, um, um, in general, I would also advise, study these simple quotes of the greats. There's, there's like, you know, um, wisdom of the ages in there that even applies to these new situations, because the only thing that changed to before is speed. And that's why you need to be on your toes much more than they ever had to.
So when it comes to these kind of traditional statements of the greats, one of them is, when there's blood on the streets, don't be fearful. When everybody's looking to buy and screaming at taxi drivers talking about it, then it's look time to sell. I feel like that's is coming to that point right now because I'm getting text messages from my uncle of like, should I buy Bitcoin? Or, uh, even down to, um, the, the TikTok rhetoric right now is like, bull run is here, time to get into crypto. If you, I feel like the time was a couple months ago, maybe I'm wrong. But what I'm also seeing is the apparent rise of everybody's talking about meme coins, everybody wants to get into the next one and kind of get that 10x. Do you think all of these things are signs that maybe it's time to cool off, take some profits, and and wait for a retracement? Or do you think bull run is here and it's time to go forward?
Look, nobody [ __ ] knows. Let's start there, okay? I have an opinion, I'm not a prophet, obviously. Um, what's different about Bitcoin is that with the ETFs, they're buying the the daily issuance multiple times every single day for a while now. So, so you have a more of a perpetual bid than it ever existed. Again, the regulatory clarity and the rule set around it, and also the reallocation from traditional asset managers into it. All of these things support the price more than ever. It's still can it still be violently volatile? Yes. So you should always expect, depending on the asset class, even Bitcoin, like if you cannot stomach four years and 50%, then don't touch it. That's my opinion. And but I would still also not wait for the right moment or the right dip because for all you know, we could go up another 150k. Yeah, and then you get so much FOMO that you then get in, and then it drops, you know what I mean? So, so that's what I mean by saying you really don't know. So that's why you got to have a plan. You either DCA and you just chill it out, or you buy and you know, I'm going to hold this and never sell because that's the proposition of Bitcoin, actually. Buy and never sell. And anyone who's done that, anyone who's ever done that, probably usually hasn't lost. You know, maybe not right now, obviously, but a long time. I mean, just looking at one of the greatest, Warren Buffett, you see his trajectory of his wealth, it wasn't stable over time. It's chill and chill. 80% of his wealth came in the last decade. So it's really the, the effect, good assets, good assets. And this is where you need to differentiate. Speaking of meme coins, meme coins are a craze phenomenon in this space, birthed by the technology and the ability to create a token on Solana with two clicks for $5. You know, and, um, so naturally, the, the hurdle rate to get into that [ __ ] is so low that anyone can do it. It's like anyone is a, is a trader or a mentor. You can. We need to have a word with this man over here because he's been talking about meme coins lately. And I'm here. He's careful. But there's, there's certain literally meme coins. There's a certain meme that went viral lately on TikTok called Chill Guy. So people made a Chill Guy coin out of it. The market cap was 400 million. That's a lot of money that just ended up in a random meme coin. How? I don't see that small money. Then again, there's work to do. How many wallets are there that they really hold? How many of these wallets got the token for free or actually bought them? Okay. Where is the, um, what is the, the liquidity, the volume actually, the transacting volume coming from? Is this more just a market, market making and back and forth on the deck, or is it real money coming new in, you know? So again, if you don't behave like a stupid monkey, you are able to discern between the [ __ ], yes. And, um, but if you're just driven by your greed and whatever you heard or somewhere on social media, then you deserve to lose your money in my opinion. I'm sorry to say that.
Now, well, some, as we wrap up the episode, obviously we covered a lot of things. I didn't think we would take a crypto talk, but I'm glad we did. Me neither, actually. But I want to give you kind of just a fine opportunity to give kind of your best advice for up-and-coming traders. Look, guys, it's simple. You got to build a skill set, and that skill set is going to enable you to have a bulletproof mindset. And that bulletproof mindset and the ability to, um, approach anything with structure and rules will allow you to generate wealth like nothing else, especially in this environment. Whether it's crypto, whether it's trading, whether it's prop firms, whether the, the opportunities to access money and to become rich by yourself, with your own hand, has never been more accessible for just about anyone in this world. But still, the old school rules of the game, the rules of physics, as I call them, they still apply. So value consistency, value transparency, value hard work, and become the smartest person in the room, and you will become a millionaire, easy. There we go. Alex, a wonderful episode. I love the way you deliver your thoughts. A very engaging episode. So thank you very much. There we go.