He won 6 World Trading Cups With ONLY 2 Tools... - Patrick Nill

This German trader is Patrick Nil. And he's a legend in the World Cup Trading Championships for being five times in a row in the leaderboards and reaching the first place for two times. So after going to visit him in his trading floor and spending three days with him learning his trading strategies, as you probably saw in one of my previous videos, I decided to have a first interview with him and the youngest trader on his team, Jonathan. And this is only the first of a series of interviews and podcasts that I'm releasing here on the channel. The next one will be with three times world champion Jan Smolen, with 2017 world champion Stefano Serafini, and even more that are going to come out in the future. So if you don't want to miss out, subscribe now to the channel. Now, without further ado, enjoy the interview of two times trading world champion, Patrick Neal. Well, Patrick, Jonathan, welcome. We're here in Stuttgart and welcome to the podcast.

Thank you.

Thanks.

As you guys may know, Patrick is the two times world champion for now, maybe three times this year. We'll see. And, and Jonathan is a member of his team of trader traders, the young and the youngest on the team yet. And so I would like to start. First, a question to Patrick. How did your journey in trading started and what drove you in trading? What made you want to go and start trading in the first place?

So he started trading during school, like during the dot com bubble where everybody could make money. And that was the point where he was attached just to stocks and trading and then he never stopped it, but he went like to another job and businesses. And then in 2018 he started going full time into trading and then he started to compete in the World Trading Championship.

So you started competing in the world championships very soon in the process of becoming a trader. Right, like the very first years.

So after one year of full time trading where he decided to quit everything else and go full time trading, after one year he started to compete in the trading championship. And the reason was that most of his family and friends told him how risky trading is and how can you do that and why do you risk that money? And it's dumb to do it. And he wanted to show them that it's not that dumb.

All right, so at what age was it more or less you were probably in Your, I guess, 30s, 40s?

I'm an old man.

You started, you started late. But I think it's a good thing, you know, to, even though you're late in life, let's say late, there's no Actually late in life, like you can literally start where there's no late.

The first contact to trading was very early in school. But to go full time was pretty late.

Yes. I had the click luck. One of my best friends, he is a trader, Tom, you know. Yes. And so I could trade after the job. And, and so it's, it's. It's a Leichter ubergang. Some trading.

It was like a smooth process between the job and going full time trading. Because a very good friend of his is trading for a long time.

I get it now. Because before you were a business owner, correct?

Yes.

Okay.

And 2018 there was the. This decision to. To verkhauven this under name to sell the company.

And.

Like 2018 he made the decision to sell his company and go full time trading. Yes.

There's a team behind Patrick. Like Patrick is the world champion and he's the front man. But also in the background, as you mentioned, there is Tom, there is Jonathan and there's all the rest of the team which people also saw in the previous video by the way. Guys, if you didn't see the video, go check it out. How was the process in the team building? Because I don't think you're the first one in the team. You're probably the last one in the team. Correct. The cool came in the team.

Not anymore.

Not anymore.

Right. Team is growing.

Yeah, yeah, like the youngest one. Anyway, so how have you lived the process of, you know, meeting with them and also, you know, learning the strategies? And how was the process of the team building?

You know, the process was very interesting. Like I was just studying in South Germany and trading is very lonely. Like I studied at online university. Then Covid came. Everything was on my own. I was just sitting on the desk trading, studying. And then I followed the trading championship and I didn't knew that there was a team. I didn't knew who was Patrick Neal. I just saw his name several times on there and I followed or tried to contact several persons that made gains over a long period of time in the championship. And then I just did some research. Like there was also Raul Clavan. He's not there anymore because he told me that he sold his soul to the banks.

Really? Really. He said it exactly that way. On Clubhouse. Clubhouse. It was an app very where it is like a short hype. I think nobody's using it anymore there I had a call or I don't know what it was a meeting with him and then he said yeah, he's not going to be on the public stage anymore. And then there was just Patrick Mill, like constantly up there. And then I did research and then I found the website. It looked very old. I was like, looks like a scammy website here. And then there was a phone number. And then I just called the phone number. And then I was talking to a Tom. I was like, yeah, I'm searching for Patrick. And he was like, oh, yeah, I'm sitting in office with a Patrick, blah, blah, blah. And then we did some small talk and I was sitting still in my, my room studying and just calling to Tom. And then he was like, yeah, after some small talk, the information came out that they're not far from the place where I stayed. Yeah, was like 10, 15 minutes by car. And then Tom invited me for a cup of coffee into the office where Patrick Neal was sitting as well. So a couple weeks later, I went to visit them for a cup of coffee. First I was at the wrong place, and then I walked like 3km. I think I jogged to the office because I was late to the appointment, to the coffee appointment. You walked? Yeah, Tom. Tom offered me to pick me up by car, but I was like, nah, I'm going, I'm going. Yeah.

So. And that's the first time I met the team. And then I went like in there. And a little, little dream came true because it was like five, six people sitting in front of screens trading and had like more company than I did lonely in my room. And then I had a three or four hour talk with Tom and I was like, oh, this guy knows a lot of stuff. And then he called like, Dax Moves while we talked and had like a very nice view, sunny day. And he called Moves in the Dax and I was like, oh, damn.

He was like, with a joystick moving it.

Really like moving the ducks and was like, this, this guy's good. And then I went home. And then a couple months later, the relationship re established because they always offered me that I can come to the office and just sit there. And the beginning was like, nah, it's kind of weird to go there. And. And then I was coming there frequently. And yeah, that way I joined the team. Because then after some time they came to me and was like, yeah, you can. You're. You're not dumb. You also have a lot of knowledge. Why don't you want to join the team? We have a free desk here. And that's. That's how I joined them.

That's how you join. Nice.

Well, he never told me that.

You didn't know the story.

Yeah. And I can add that Patrick, in the beginning, didn't even recognize me. I was sitting in the office for three or four weeks on, like, the lunch table and doing a mix between studying and trading and just sitting there with my laptop and being like, thankful for hearing the conversations the other guys in the office did, just to, like, get some knowledge.

Yeah.

And Patrick, like, after five weeks, he didn't knew who I was, what my name was, why I am sitting.

There's. There's some weird intern here. Who is he?

Yeah, kind of that way.

So the teamwork is also like a crucial part of your trading process, as we know. Probably we'll go more into detail of that later, but.

How much the whole team played a role? Because Tom is the founder of the team and also with you, I would like to ask.

How is having him as a mentor and how do you work with the team and Tom and how, you know, how was the process for you inside of the team in the last years? The last four years?

So he was part of the team way longer than four years. Like, from the beginning on, he was part of the team. But at the beginning or in the first 10 years, he was just always in the office. At the end of the day, like after his work, after the stuff for his company was done, then he went to the office. But he knew most of the people. And when he decided to go full time, it was no real integration process because he knew everybody. He knew the office. He was just there longer. Not just in the evening, also in the morning and afternoon.

So I guess my question is, how was the learning process like on the. More on the technical part? I would say, how did you. How was the process of learning trading with Tom and the team?

Yeah.

Because he was there, like every time there was a workshop or there was a mentoring or just in the daily business. Yeah, he just knew so much. And there was not like one. One process or one point at a time where he got the knowledge. It was just a long process of many workshops or mentorings where he got the information, and that way he went into the process and the team.

So in your analytical process, which are the tools or the kind of analysis that you use?

So we adapted the market and the volume profile for the way that we trade. We try to simplify it, and of course, we also use fundamentals and so on. But as we trade all markets, like stocks, futures, currencies, cryptocurrencies.

It'S different for what base we use, for trading, in what market. You can use really all the Flow in the Forex market. So we don't use it there, but in the futures, of course we use it. It also depends on the time horizon you trade. But the main basis of most is volume profile, market profile, of course, fundamentals and sometimes, if possible and useful, order flow.

Would you suggest these tools for a beginner who starts trading? Like what would, what would the, what would be the three top three tools that you would suggest to a new trader who starts his journey?

I think top three is for me or for my personal preference, always tools that are not subjective. So to try to get as objective as possible because yeah, most people trade discretionary, but it's going to be difficult to replicate it. So if I think about it, I think number one is definitely volume profile and market profile. And I think if that counts as two, like one and two, the third one would be.

Just candlesticks but fixed rules about it. It doesn't matter which rules. You can also use Fibonacci, but make a fixed rule set that is not like bendable or flexible in any way. So that for example, an indicator or algorithm is always printing the same analysis. And not that you draw for example a trend line, but sometimes you draw it this way, sometimes you draw it that way to have strict rules. And I think if I would start, the best tools would be volume profile, market profile and then fixed rules for.

Just for price action.

Price action, yes. If people want to add more, then you can add stuff like fundamentals or order flow. But I think there's way more subjectivity in that because to analyze fundamentals is. It's difficult to have like a fixed rule set. You know it. Yes, order flow. There are some strict rules that are always the same. If you have weak tops, weak highs and so weak highs or weak lows. But I think for example, if you look at the order book, what is the large order to quantify? This is really difficult, of course.

Yeah, I guess that there are some patterns in order flow which are more quantifiable than others. We did it with stop runs and icebergs, which are, you know, you don't need to quantify the number of order per se. So I agree with most of it. Probably the. The only macro thing that you can kind of quantify based on the reaction is you can best backtest how news impact the market and a specific news in a specific cycle. But of course to track all the macroeconomics and all the macroeconomic cycles takes huge amounts of data. There's so many data points and to make it, you can make it objective. I believe there's a lot of funds or traders or institution who are able to quantify it and to build algorithms also based on fundamentals. But for normal traders, that's at the beginning for sure. I wouldn't suggest to start quantifying macro, but to start with basic rules for sure.

And it's so intercorrelated. Like all the numbers in all the countries are so intercorrelated. And this time you have to focus on that number or that specific economic data and different times. It's really, really hard. But yeah, I totally agree on that.

Yeah, it's much wider set of data, for sure. I would like to go through, if you can walk us through your most memorable trade in your. In your career as a trader. I remember you were talking to me about a WTI like oil trade during COVID or right after Covid or something like that. Or if you have any other memorable trade, please.

No, no, it was the worst trade.

I had the worst trade. Can you walk us through it?

Future contractance Negative.

I got most of it.

Should I not translate it? I think it's okay. Yeah.

I just didn't understand the part when the price went negative. Then what happened?

Yeah, like it was just oil is so cheap at 13. It was, it costs usually like 10, 10 times more. So they started buying oil and then oil prices fell to eight. And it was like, okay, now we're gonna bend our rules. Because the rule is most of the times you don't scale too much into a position. And he said, yeah, but we thought like, yeah, oil has to rise. So they bended the rules, scaled in again, and then scale in again, again, again.

And what happened?

And then at one day they just decided, okay.

Same day, same day they started to scale in. They just said, okay, now we have to get out of this position because otherwise it can get even more expensive. Although it was very expensive already. And then the price went negative. The problem with the whole story is that interactive brokers, for example, one of the biggest brokers or don't have the negative. Most of the brands that don't had prices or market data at negative prices. So if they wouldn't have closed the position, the brokers would have rent.

They would have rebated like the money you lost because it was a mistake on their side. Although you would have gotten stopped out. Yeah, they still would give you the money back because if they don't provide data for a negative price, it's their problem. It's their problem, not yours. Although your position was in the wrong way. And most likely you would have gone getting or most likely there would have been a liquidation. I think the maximum was minus $40. But they get it out before the prices were negative, but so the losses were on.

Yeah, we thought when the price was at $5, the maximum risk is $5,000 per contract, but it was $47,000 per contract.

That's crazy.

So after, when it went back to positive, did you start buying again?

No.

Nice. Okay.

Do you have also member, did you leave that trade or like what.

You know, I was. I was not in the office during that time. So my most memorable trade was I think when I bought bitcoin at. I think it was $3,900 after the crash.

Which crash?

The crash. I think during COVID 2019, 2020, I don't remember anymore. But it was getting bitcoin really cheap and then selling it like a couple thousand dollars later. I was like, oh, yeah, was a really nice profit. And I went like to 60K. I was like, oh.

It was still happy to make profit, but it was also hard because we missed a lot of mortgage. Yeah. What is your most memorable trade?

My most memorable trade. My first trade, My very first trade is probably my most memorable trade.

My. I was just started trading and we were with my friends and we didn't know what the hell we were doing. Right. We really didn't know what the hell. Online gambling casino, definitely. So we put €50 on an offshore broker account with a 1 to 500 leverage and we use the guard lay strategy, like the harmonic patterns. So for our guard lay, start kicking in all the confirmation. Let's go. Kick in. I. I enter a little bit earlier and I get stopped out. All of my friends enter at the right moment. Like all of my friends, literally three. I had three best friends. They were all in. I wasn't in. And then the bank of Canada releases the policy, the interest interest rate policy, and price goes boom and they all go to profit and they. They start partying basically. And I was there with my burned account and I was like, that's like real fomo, you know, like that would have really kick. And it was my first trade. So it was very. My first trade was very traumatic. But I will always remember it, I think, because FOMO also is like.

The term was born in psychology of social anxiety, you know, because it's a fear of missing out, a social gratification situation, you know. So it was both social FOMO and trading fomo. So I was like, I was devastated, bro. I was really devastated. But that was definitely memorable. Yeah, I think the most memorable one are the ones where you, you were the worst one are the more, more memorable one probably because I don't, I don't think there's a one big trait that makes your, your, your career or your capital, you know, there's no such thing, but there's definitely a worse trade.

I just, I just created some slides about risk management and a presentation and one slide was just. There's not going to be the one big winning trade everybody or many traders hope of because try to make consistent gains and not the one big trade that gets you out of the drawdown or makes the big profit of the year. Sometimes that can be. But you should not work towards it. Maybe it's coming, then it's nice, but it's not or I think it should not be the, the goal to always aim for the one big trade.

So talking about the, the Robins cup, the world, the World cup trading championships, what is your approach like to both to risk management and which assets do you mostly trade during the championships and what's your strategy overall? Like what's your plan? Kind of as a.

In the, in the Weltmeisterschaft is a Schwerig to handle where the order gibbons in exorbitant Toya.

Setups from Margaret Volume profile.

From Risico Management.

So because the fees in the championship are so high, he's mainly using or trading swings 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 days and no intraday trades because it's just too expensive.

And.

The risk management he is taking of course higher risks because if you want to be on the top three or top five in the championship, you need to have 100, 200, 300% depending on the year. So the risk is way higher than on private accounts. And he would never use that risk on private accounts or managed accounts.

And I think in the championships like the whole point is getting to the first place. Right. So.

Throughout the years how, how has it evolved? Because probably there's more and more people now trying to, to win the championship. So.

Do you feel that there's more competition while you're trading and while you're checking the leaderboards?

So a few years ago, like around about four years ago, it was not that common that people or just lucky people came out of nowhere because nowadays people come, you've never seen the name and then they're on the top with 150, 200% most of the times a few days later they are gone again. But four years ago it was more that the people made like constant profits or losses, but it was a constant way. And nowadays or this on the previous year, there's way more competition, way more people participating. And that way you have way more people just being lucky and going to the top very fast, but most of the times also going to the bottom really fast.

Yeah, definitely. Like, I think that one shouldn't.

Judge a trade just based on that number. Like the gain is not what measures the trade, because it could be a lucky streak. One could just go there, do 200% with the trade and then not trade anymore. And he could still be in the top three on the top four. So.

The lucky shots.

That'S the reason he's participating every year. Because yes, maybe then one or two years are lucky shots. But if you make it four or five years in a row, unlikely that you have four or five years in a row a lucky shot every year. And I think an important addition is always that if we held some presentations somewhere, most of the times we published like the P L and Equity Curve and also how many trades were made. Because if you make a lucky shot, you most likely have under like 10 or 20 trades. And on the championship account, I think it was 200, 300 more. So trade numbers in the hundreds. And then it's going to be difficult to have a lucky shot if you make like two or 300 trades, definitely.

So I think those stats should be published. The point is, I think in the World Champs, you just see the gain. But for a proper approach, like maybe a nerd like me who's constantly watching the leaderboards can see that his increase is gradual. So he's from 80, 85, then 90, 120. And then you see people just pop from 0 to 400%. And you can't explain it to yourself, you know, but they could be in the leaderboard after everything is finished. But I think what the World Championship could do, and kind of should do, is to showcase not the trades and the positions, of course, because then you can reverse engineer the strategy and you know, nobody wants that, but at least show some more stats. Like the risk of ruin, the profit factor, the maximum drawdown, the average drawdown. I think that it could be. There's still space for improvement, I think.

But if you think about, and if you change the perspective, there is a conflict of interest. Like the people offering the championship are not interested in that because if they would publish more stats, less people would take part and they make a bunch of money out of fees. And if more people participate, they get more fees. And if they publish all the stats, I mean, I agree the best would be to publish all the stats, but then I think many people would not even try because they know they would not make it to the leaderboard with good stats. So that's why I think they will never do it.

That's probably.

Yes, maybe they will do it if there is a competition that is publishing it and then they have the need to do it because. Yeah, yeah.

If it becomes a new standard at that point. Yes, of course. To you or to your team, has it ever happened to witness a black swan in the markets? And if. Yes, how did you approach it? If you approach it.

So Patrick told that he was luckily never at the desk when the black swan happened, except the COVID rate and that was expensive in the oil example he mentioned earlier. And some of our team members have been at the desks when the Swiss national bank changed the Rate Policy 2015.

Right.

And then there were just. Yeah, big gaps. And one guy traded it the right way. One guy traded the wrong way. Yeah. But that was I think the biggest black swan I've heard of that happened when people were in front of the desks. And of course sometimes when we trade or when we make statistics or build new strategies.

We like to don't track the central bank meetings like we often take other news and trade them as well. But central banks meetings are different because if other news like employment data or something else has a strong deviation from the calculator or estimated number, there are going to be big moves. But you're going to get in or out of a trade, most likely. Of course sometimes you get slippage. But if a central bank meeting acts different than estimated, the markets go very, very different and have very big gaps. And there you don't get slippage of like 10, 20% of the risk you want to make. You can get. Yeah, of course, multiples of the stop losses you wanted to take. Of course you can also get in the right direction. But then it's gambling, not trading.

Yeah, of course, of course. So do you think that trading news is gambling?

Yes.

Okay.

I don't think so, no. I thought I have a little bit of a different opinion about that, but I think I'm lonely with this opinion in the, in the, in the office.

I like to trade currencies before meetings and also during meetings before.

Okay.

So to, to just get limits orders in the market before meetings. Like in the liquid currency pairs, they are most likely very liquid, although if you have deviations from the estimated number. But I think during the news or after the news you have fast moves and most of the times you just have hunts on liquidity. So I don't try to guess what number will be published. I just try to have a look at the market and guess where's the most liquidity and where are the liquidity pools that most likely get hunted and then just try to trade that. I like it. But yeah, of course it's a very fast trading because you make a limit and most of the times you can't manage anything. You just see worked or it didn't work.

I guess you don't trade news.

No, I drink coffee these times. No, it's.

I like the slow market if not much movement and range trading I like.

Yeah, I guess that's also personal and based on, you know, your habits as a trader. Personally, I like to trade news a lot right after the news that came out. It's one of my strategies just on CPI though and there's some setups with a really high, you know, hit rate on those. So, so I could be in the one which trades news definitely.

Do you reverse trade the news or do you continue?

I usually follow. I just, I just follow the second only if I know that it's going to be a news that has a high impact though. So if I, if I realize that inflation data is going to shock gold or silver or S&P 500 like you we've seen the, the last huge move on S&P500 was data after data after date after data and they keep going up, accepting new prices, new highs. So it depends.

Very interesting in the order books like the days when the S and P just rose, you just saw really big order stacked above the price every day.

Yes.

Had a look in there and it was like big order, big order but always above the price. And then sometimes you also had the orders below the price. But usually.

No, I can't say this.

Too much. You say well I guess, of course the, the. There was a lot of sellers in the last bull markets in the S&P 500 I think both profit takers and also, you know, this last bull run probably on S P 500 shocked a lot of traders and a lot of investors. And I've seen In, in the YouTube community a lot of investors say now it's going to go down, it's going go up and it keeps going the up. So it's, it's like, you know, there's, this is like an opposite black swan. It's like a super white swan, you know, like A shining white swan.

I've heard of a lot of traders that have been profitable for several years that really struggled in the past months.

Yes, definitely.

Especially at the beginning of this year.

Yeah, there's been a huge pump. I don't know if it's due to artificial intelligence and the hype that's been about that or if this soft landing scenario is really.

And maybe, maybe. We had some discussions in the office about. About the zero DTE strategy. I don't know if you know it. It's like an option strategy that was getting really, really common or public knowledge. And I have basic knowledge about options, but I'm not deep into it. And if the information comes to me from like every channel I go online and it's zero DTE strategy, blah, blah, blah, and people talk about it. I was like, yeah, this is now too common knowledge and it's just gonna get liquidity. Maybe it is.

Definitely, definitely could be. Well, at the end of the day, like zero dtes are options that expires the same day, so.

And you just speculate on the range the market is closing.

Yes, yes. So I think that, you know, at the end of the day those traders are out of the market. So whoever is taking this position is taking them from the long run. So this is very interesting, a very interesting time to be on the market for sure. A couple of questions like random here and there. You can answer yes or no. Do you think that there is a Holy Grail?

I disagree.

No, just in the church.

Just in the church. Maybe in the church. Okay. Do you think that market moves.

Most of the time in the same way?

Yes, sure, I thought it. But when I. Every time I speak to people.

That are have long experience in the markets, they say no, there's one day the markets change.

The most time.

Yes. Sorry, my answer is too long. Right. We just should agree and disagree. No, no, no.

We can actually, if you argument, it's even better. Of course. Okay.

Okay. Yeah.

Okay. Are there concepts or strategies, let's say concepts that don't work.

What do you mean by concepts?

I don't know, trend line supports, you know, or.

I don't know, volume or like is there any tool, let's say that doesn't work?

The most tools here doesn't work.

I think you can make everything working, but it's gonna be easier and more difficult in some.

Mechanical trading is better than discretionary trading. Agree or disagree?

Yes, it's better. Do you have more markets?

A very difficult question, but I would agree. Yeah, me too. Yeah.

Okay.

I think when you only have one market, you are better when you trade on your own. But.

The mechanic you can make a thousand markets. That's perfect.

Okay.

Discretionary trading in all markets. For that you need a lot of experience, a lot of screen time. If you trade discretionary in one market, you focus on it's going to be easy. But if you want to trade more markets and different strategies and be diversified, I think there is no way around.

Automated or statistical trading or at least statistical support of it.

In discretionary trading, manual trading. On a scale from 0 to 10, how important is subjectivity?

Much important. I think 8, 9.

Yeah. I would maybe give it a 7. Yeah.

So subjectivity is an important thing in discretionary trading, which is the trading we do like. Personally, I do discretionary trading and I think the trade I choose to not do sometimes makes the most profits in a way like avoiding. I can realize when some trades has to be avoided or which trades has to be taken with more risk or more aggressive risk. Based on.

My personal experience with the charts.

I think the biggest edge you have as a discretionary trader is that you can bend the rules, obviously. But I think in many cases it would be better to reduce that individual take. The way you manage to trade, the way you take risk. And although you're trading discretionary, just track it. It's tracking your gut feeling and you can do that. You can print your gut feelings or repress your gut feelings in trading into numbers. And that way you should then decide after a time or a couple takes a couple of trades taken.

Can you make a living out of trading in the first year.

As a complete beginner?

That's really difficult. I think you could make it. You can you. It could be, But I think 80% wouldn't shuffle as would make it would reach.

Yeah.

If you go on full time, have very experienced mentors, I think you can make.

Depends on your quantum and depends.

On the capital size.

If you have much money and you only need 20, 30% a year, you can't reach. But the most people started with less money and then they need 100, 200%. And that's crazy.

The big problem with people trading low capital is that you need to discipline yourself. And then at some point when it's working, you're asking yourself is the time worth investing and then you most of the time stop too early. Because if you risk five or ten dollars a trade or even twenty dollars a trade and then at the end of the day you make like 50 bucks.

It'S okay. But at Some point you're gonna ask yourself, is it worth it? Or can you just go somewhere and work in a job where you have way less risk and you have also more social surroundings? Because I think if you don't have a community or office or other people to talk about trading stuff on a higher level, like not the basic trading stuff. If you don't have that, I think most people leave too early.

Should a beginner trader go through trading education and choose a mentor? Or is it more preferable to find your own path? Because everything there's, there's everything online, you know, all you can find all the information online. So what's your position on that?

I started trading discretionary. I did not have a mentor for a long time because I started during my time in school and I just went on the Internet, looked at all the stuff that is there and had a big Word document. It had like hundreds of pages with screenshots with bullet points of myself. I think nowadays 99.9% of the stuff that you can learn somewhere is in the Internet. But it's just confusing because it's just an information overload. Because I had a look at it and every time I found a new holy grail where at the beginning you think it is the one final step you need and then at the end I just had a look at it, I was like, damn, how should I get a strategy out of this? Because it's too much. Because then there you get a long signal, but ah, this is against it and so on. You have no structure. I think if you have a lot of time and if you're clever, you can learned it on the Internet. But it's going to be tough because you need a lot of time and it's a lot of trial and error and you don't get a feedback from somebody. And I think that's worth a lot to make a mentoring or a coaching by somebody or get a mentor. It's just like a shortcut. You pay money to get information in a structured and more reduced way. And another very important stuff is that you get feedback off the stuff you do. You don't just have to rely on yourself, you get external feedback. And that's the way I view that. Because for example, when I learned trading and I did my own stuff and traded my own strategies in currencies and cryptocurrencies and then I went to the guys, I deleted all the stuff that I did myself or that I figured out myself and said, okay, now I'm just gonna focus on learning the stuff those guys are telling me and afterwards I can start and try to combine it. But the pace I learned a strategy or a view on the market with a mentor with those guys was so much faster than I like. I took years to build a solid strategy by myself. It was like a couple of weeks with the guys which was like the same.

Does bank conspire against retails, yes or no?

Intrigue?

A little bit. I think yes, they do like spreads. And most of the products except futures are way too high. Spreads are so high, the commissions are so expensive. If you buy derivatives, which most people do on stocks, currencies, indices, whatever.

Especially CFDs.

Especially CFDs.

But then it's probably the brokers then, not the banks.

Very high. But there are banks that create derivatives. People trade and that's. I think it's legal fraud. And also when I build a strategy around trading currencies, there are brokers selling the data the customers on the platform have. And I use that data for my trading as a contrarian indicator. So yes, I think banks and brokers obviously do take advantage of. Yes, of course. Okay, why not? It's good liquidity.

Yeah, of course.

Every trader decides by herself to participate in that game of trading. And if you don't know the rules and you don't know the game the banks are playing and they are making the rules in this game, then just learn the rules and then start playing the game. But don't comply about the rules.

Just don't complain. Yeah.

Don'T complain about the rules. But yeah, the rules are clear. You can lose all of your money. I mean, I think CFD futures or whatever contract you might or whatever conflict of interest there is with the broker or with the banks. At the end of the day, if you're a good trader, you're gonna earn money. Even if you're a CFD or futures like you can make money with. Regardless of the instruments and all the.

Stuff most people on the Internet are complaining about, you can build strategies about. If you just look, for example, all the fraud that is done in CF in the CFD space. Just look at it, analyze it and try to build a strategy around it. It's possible and everybody can do it. And you don't have to be a hyper brain mathematician, whatever. You just need some logical thinking. Think about the stuff you complain about and then just build a strategy around it.

Do you think that IQ is related to how profitable you are?

No. No.

So you don't need to be a smart ass to be profitable in trading.

No. Because if you're too clever, you see too many things, you try to combine everything because the IQ measures how many things your brain can connect and intercorrelate and analyze complex scenarios. Yes, that can help in a way, but in most of the ways it's just confusing you because then you have a position and then you see this reason against it and this for it and it's, it's too complicated. You need to be able to make simple decisions and then stick to it to open the trade and just stick to the trade. How many traders open a position and then question it like five minutes later, 15 minutes later, just stick to it. It was your plan. If everything is accordingly to your plan, stick to it. And for that you don't need a high.

Do you need to be passionate about trading to be profitable in trading?

Yes.

You need to like it.

Yeah, I think if you don't like it, you're going to get out of the process, learning process too early and then you tell it's not working. You need to have passion because there are going to be hard times. I think in most of, the, most.

Of the, most of the, let's call it business models. But yeah, of course you need time and an effort to, to make it work.

You need passion. And there's so much to learn. Like I'm in the markets now full time for four years and before that I spent, I don't know how many hours I spent learning stuff about the markets. And still I know that there's even stuff I don't know, I don't know. Like I know that I can way get way deeper into, into options, into all the bond stuff and so on. But that is stuff that I know that I don't know. But I know that when I figure out this or when I start learning about it, there's gonna pop up new stuff that I didn't even know existed before. And then I know that I think it's, it's a lifelong game. If you want to play it, then you can learn or update yourself the whole life. Of course, at some point you can just say, okay, it's, I'm fine with the state I am now and I'm just gonna leave it that way and don't learn new stuff, don't adapt.

But yeah, okay, so I think, I think we're good. Thank you so much for answering all of our questions. If you guys seeing this at home have any other question, please let us know. Hopefully see you in the next interview.

At some point in the future.

And maybe Prague Switzerland or Dubai. Probably Dubai.

Good luck with the championships.

Thanks. You too.

Let's see to you too. Hopefully we have to decide if joining or not.

Yeah. Thanks for the invitation. Thanks for the first podcast experience.