3-Hour Trading Q&A | How to Stop Guessing, Become Consistent & Get Funded

The Art Of Crypto covers trading psychology, risk management, and position sizing in a three-hour Q&A. He walks through his methodology, demonstrates a TradingView position-size calculator, and explains how his Blueprint and Bootcamp programs help traders become consistent and get funded.
Chapters
What you're about to watch is a full 3-hour deep dive into various topics like, for example, how do you stop moving your stop loss? How do you stop panic exiting trades that you're deep in profit on? How do you stop FOMO entering into trades? How do you manage risk in a way where you protect your downside but you're still able to make money? And even questions like, how do you make a full-time living from trading without needing to start from a lot of capital? Which, by the way, no cap, it's possible and I've seen tons of people do it. And I'm gonna share a lot of like deep answers throughout this entire 3-hour video. And so just a couple of things before you dive into this. Uh, one, there's going to be a bit of a giveaway announcement kind of mixed into this because I recently gave away $35,000 worth of like my coaching. Secondly, before you get into this, I answer a lot of these questions really in-depth. I'm talking like multiple minutes per kind of like topic. And what you need to understand is that the answers that I give you is probably worth, you know, more than some courses alone. And of course, this entire 3-hour video with the amount of value that's packed into it, like there is a lot for for you to get into. My only recommendation is that regardless of how short your attention span is, I'd highly recommend finishing one question first before, you know, you click away and go doomscroll somewhere else. That's my genuine recommendation. But without further ado, let's get into it. Has there anybody here that has joined one of these Q&A calls before? Like, I've done a couple. It always goes— correct me if I'm wrong, but it always goes pretty long, and we do cover quite a few, like, really deep, you know, topics. No, I'm gonna say, like, the official kind of like on paper is gonna be like 2 hours. Like, that's on paper when I'm supposed to end it. But if you've joined any one of these before, you know, it's gonna be very likely way longer than this. So yeah, now that everyone's in, I'm just, I'm just gonna get right into it. So let me just make sure that— are you guys able to see whatever is on the screen? All right. Awesome. I was messing around with Claude. I don't know if you guys have been checking out this new model called Fable, but apparently it can make some pretty good presentations. Real quick, welcome to the scholarship giveaway announcement. But other than, you know, actually giving you guys the announcement and, you know, kind of announcing the winners, this is going to also be a very deep Q&A call. Now again, I've done a couple of these before and it always, like, we always cover like really deep topics. Now I'm not going to have, I have my list of questions that are kind of prepared just in case nobody here wants to ask ask a question, but I highly doubt that will be the case considering we have close to 200 people here. So this is basically just going to be, yeah, a chance where, you know, you turn on your microphone and like we kind of go back and forth on any questions that you might have. It could be trading, it could be non-trading related, anything's perfectly fine. And just for some— and also just for everyone here, even if you don't manage to win one of the grand prizes, we actually have pretty nice in store for all of you just as a little bonus. Like, you know what, I'm gonna let the slides do a little bit more of the talking. So like, let's just get into it. But before anything else, like I'd just like to thank you because this time around, I think we had more than 350 applications and like we could realistically say 400 if we count the people that actually started the application but didn't finish it. So we're not gonna do that. Just to share what it is that you're actually winning. Because I think there is a very solid number of you here that is A, you know, it's one of your first times actually on one of these calls and B, like you don't actually know what Bootcamp and Blueprint is like you kind of know like, okay, yeah, this guy has Bootcamp and Blueprint, but you don't actually know what you're getting and why we're giving this away. So I'm just gonna take a couple of moments just to like, yeah, just talk a little bit about what Bootcamp and Blueprint is and exactly what you're winning here. And part of the reason why like none of you or at least very little of you will actually have a good idea as to what Blueprint and Bootcamp are is because we're kind of secretive about it, right? Blueprint, we open doors like once every 4 months. The last time we opened was like April. And the time before April was December. And so it also makes sense, like probably the next time we're going to open it and kind of make it public, like, hey guys, you know, Blueprint is a thing right now, we're going to be at the end of the year, right? And any other kind, it's only open based on intakes. And Bootcamp is application only, which means there's not some kind of page that you can just go to find out like, oh yeah, this is what Bootcamp is like. There involves some sort of a call. So it's a bit secretive, but it's also like we do keep it this way because You'll understand what I mean in just a bit. Just to talk real quick about Blueprint, this is basically the full system behind the— like, it's the exact system that I'm trading every single day on the YouTube videos, on X. It's essentially, well, the blueprint, right? You go through Blueprint, you will understand every single piece of the puzzle that allows my system to tick the way it does. Now, again, I probably don't have to repeat this, but I keep repeating on every YouTube video and it's honestly getting quite tiring. You know, I have been averaging a pretty solid, you know, kind of win rate across the last year and a half or so, right? Around 75%. And that's just on Bitcoin, right? I'm also taking other trades on forex and indices. If there's any Blueprint and Bootcamp students already here, you know what we tend to do on the live trading calls. This is the full system behind that. And I know a lot of you, and just based on reading your applications, I understand that a lot of you have been trying to piece together what you can understand from my videos, but the truth is like chances are you've already seen some decent results. But if you haven't been seeing the same level of results that I have been, it's probably because you're missing a couple of pieces to the puzzle, which I do try to help in the daily videos, but it's also impossible to cover, you know, every single facet that makes my system, you know, the system, if that makes sense. So essentially Blueprint is just for people that, you know, you can understand roughly what goes on with the videos, but when you actually get to your chart, that becomes a different story, right? You don't quite get the same results as I do. Or simply traders who are looking to start getting into trading, but you're not really quite sure how, or you just want to tap into a system that's already proven, or you want to just tap into a, like a roadmap where I've already kind of given you like, hey, when you reach the first kilometer, this is what you're probably going to deal with and this is how you're going to deal with it, right? So that's what Blueprint is. Completely just solves the problem of like you getting stuck and not knowing how to proceed. Or what to do next. And also just importantly, right, you just start off on the right track. You get everything that is every part of the system right off the get-go rather than having to go through the trial and error to figure this out yourself. And one of the reasons that I made this, in fact, the main reason why I made this is that prior, like from basically 2023 or 2022 all the way till like the end of 2025, the only way that you could kind of work with us directly was bootcamp. Which is fairly expensive and it involves like one-on-one guidance, which means we're gonna be very involved with you at every step of the way. Now for a lot of people, A, they're either not really ready financially for that kind of investment, especially if you are just starting to trade, then you know, you kind of wanna test the waters first to see if this might even might be for you or if this will work for you before you invest more, right? Or B, like people just might not have the time or are interested in just going full one-on-one with me and the team in bootcamp. And so that's why we made Blueprint, right? It's being offered at basically a fraction of the price of bootcamp. And it just works. And it has the same exact course material as bootcamp, right? Nothing, you're not getting like a lesser version of what is in bootcamp. So you also get, you know, a couple of live calls per week with me and our head coach Sid, as well as the AOC AI, which is kind of trained on all of our past bootcamp coaching calls and the results Yeah, the results have been stunning. Don't know how many of you have been following me on X, but just some of the screenshots that you might have seen me post on, you know, X, the majority of them have come from Blueprint. And yeah, it's not a lesser product by any means. If we just kind of, I'm just gonna, this is just like our internal testimonial bank. And you'll see like, I don't think you will, I don't, I could keep scrolling and these are the amount of like either funded certificates or just people making money. And you'll see the kind of date, right? We started tracking this, or like we started collecting this basically on December because that was the first time it was open. And like, yeah, this is— I'm not going to dive into each and every single one of these, but just you guys know how transparent I am with you guys, with, you know, just the YouTube videos and the trades that I put out. There is no, absolutely no reason for me to fake any of this. And part of the reason that we also even collect this in the first place is like As you'll come to find out later, we do really care about people that work with us and people that are willing to take a chance and trust us to lead them to the next step in their trading journey. But with that out of the way, Bootcamp is basically— I don't want to say an upgraded version, just slightly different, right? If you think of Bluefin as me handing you the instruction manual, Bootcamp is like having a driving instructor next to you at every step of the way. Just to explain what this means, Bootcamp is basically the same— again, it's the same program, It's just you get one-on-one coaching through every step of the journey, right? Either you're speaking with me or you're gonna be speaking with Sid, who's our head coach, who is amazing at what he does. Again, if there's anyone in Bluefin and Bootcamp already, like if you guys are hanging out here, I'm sure they will sing praises for Sid. This guy's an absolute legend. So yeah, you'll be working with us basically directly. And it doesn't matter if you are, like Bootcamp's basically split into 3 phases, right? The first phase is where you learn the concepts We're going to be there like watching you, making sure that, okay, when you explain to us what is a fair value gap based on what you learn, we're going to be listening and we're going to make sure that, okay, this guy actually knows what a fair value gap is and he's not understanding it wrongly. Such a big problem we see with the majority of traders out there is that again, there's so much information and there's so much noise out there and everyone speaks with such confidence and conviction that like, yeah, bro, if you just take the retracement at the order block, you will 100%, you know, win the trade. But it's also, you know, people that speak like that that end up getting you confused, right? Because it's hard to filter out good information and bad information. And a lot of the times you learn a concept maybe the wrong way and you don't even realize that you're learning it wrong and you don't realize it until much later down the line once you've, you know, actually lost money. This is what we're here for at this Phase 1, right? In Phase 2, where you're getting into practicing, right? When you start backtesting, we're going to be there personally reviewing your backtests so that we can make sure, all right, You have the concepts now. Are you applying the concepts right? Because that's also another point of failure for a lot of traders, right? You learn the concept, but you don't really apply it the right way. And also, who's there to tell you what is the right way? That's what this solves. And then even when you get to live trading, which is phase 3 bootcamp, like we're just gonna be there. We're gonna run through your journals with you. We're gonna review your journals with you. Obviously you're gonna get to live trade alongside me, alongside Sid. You basically have just an immense amount of support that like there is no, like it would be unreasonable for you to not fit, like to not succeed.. And proof is in the pudding because so far out of like 60 or so students that we have inside bootcamp in total, half of them are funded, which is unheard of in the trading industry. Like I don't think there's any other program that just cares as much as we do on just student success. And like, yeah, it's also one of the reasons why we don't really publicly like just like, okay, yeah, just here's a button, you can join bootcamp. Like we do need to make sure that whoever we're working with in bootcamp is someone that we can genuinely help. Because like one-on-one coaching doesn't really scale. So it works incredibly though. So this like bootcamp is usually a multi-four-figure thing and Blueprint is about $1,000. So all in all, with me giving away like 2 bootcamp spots and about 5 Blueprint spots, I think that puts the overall, you know, kind of giveaway value as we say at around $25,000. Let's get into a bit of Q&A. So I'm gonna say like over here I've written it as, you know, roughly 30 minutes. But again, it's not like this is set in stone. We're just going to read the flow, see how it goes. And yeah, in the meantime, I will personally light up my cigar. You guys know that there is no Q&A call with me that is not complete without a cigar. And essentially the way that I'm gonna be running the Q&A for today is Like basically we'll just keep the call running as long as the cigar stays lit. That's what we did the last time. That's also what we did a couple times ago. So yeah guys, if you want, grab a drink, whatever, and we're gonna spend some time together. Gonna light up a big blunt instead.
Let me actually get my ashtray.
Left it on the floor because funny story, I am currently staying at a 5-star hotel and this in In Korea, it's strictly forbidden to do any form of smoking close to the premise of your hotel room, which means that I kind of have to hide my ashtray. And it's almost like just smoking a stogie is almost like illegal or something. At least that's how I'm feeling like it. But yeah, so anyone here, if you guys want to kick things off, don't be shy. Hopefully everyone knows how to raise their hand, or if you are unable to raise your hand, more than happy to just answer some questions. So just type it in the chat. Now after this kind of Q&A segment is when we're going to start announcing even more winners. And again, like, we've got— I've got some huge surprises for you guys that I'm really keen— like, I'm really excited for you guys to hear this. Again, like, I don't try to be generous for the sake of being generous, but it does— it does mean a lot to me if I'm able to provide someone help at a place where they need it. So like, yeah, just stick around. You guys are like, I think you guys will like it. What if the hotel staff is one of the participants? I'm just going to tell them like, you know, it's a cigar, it's not a cigarette, you know. Right, I'm going to start by answering just a question from chat and then I'll get to anyone that has their hand raised. Hello, when you're in a profitable trade and the price swings up and down like +700 and then +200, how do you handle it psychologically? You watch the screen or step away? If you don't watch, What do you do instead until it closes? But if you can watch and can handle it, how did you train yourself to sit through it without closing? Constantinos, this is a great question. You have, you have a really good way of asking questions. I like it. So to answer the first part of it, uh, no, I'm not oftentimes watching the screen, but not because, not because it's by— not because I'm kind of avoiding it or that that is the strategy that I'm deploying. It's just I'm comfortable enough with my trading nowadays where I genuinely do not feel anything if it's up 5K, if it's down 5K, and if it fluctuates between the both in like the span of an hour or so, like it genuinely doesn't matter for me because it's just risk management at the end of the day. But it's not by design. Now the times where I do actually watch it though, funnily enough, is when I am doing the bootcamp and blueprint calls. Like basically once a week I'm just gonna kind of like live trade alongside blueprint and bootcamp members. And even if I try to avoid looking at the chart, or like even if I just kind of relax and let the price do its thing, somebody in the chat or somebody at some point is going to open their mic and be like, yo, Xuan, your USD, man, is coming into the zone. All right, man, let's take a look. That's the only real time where I'm actually like watching actively. So just to answer, just to add on to that initial question and just to add on to that initial answer, this is something that I think a lot of people struggle with. It's just you're unable to, you know, kind of let go of the trade while it's going and you get like really attached to it. If that is you, then I think you are struggling with, I think there are two things that you're struggling with particularly. First of which is, well, I'm gonna give you the struggle and then I'm gonna give you the solution to it, right? The reason why you feel like, you know, looking at the chart is because you are most likely, A, very attached to the money that you've put on the line, meaning you, you're not really able, like you don't really want to lose that money, right? Because with a trade, if we think about the ideal way to approach a trade, it's like if the trade wins, if the trade loses, if it's whatever, right? We just let it do its thing. So if you get attached to it, chances are fix your risk management. That's the first thing, right? What I oftentimes recommend is for a period of like 1 to 2 weeks or like the next 2 to 4 weeks, try going just half risk of what you would normally do and see if your behavior changes. Most often when that money amount starts going down, starts going down, you start feeling a lot more comfortable with actually holding a trade. But obviously you don't want to just be always reducing the risk. That is not what I'm suggesting at all. It's just for 2 to 4 weeks you're going to do this and you're going to get a feeling for how it's like to actually be comfortable with a running trade. And after 2 to 4 weeks you're going to have that habit kind of ingrained in you like, hey, it's actually all right, right? It's actually not the end of the world. I win some, I lose some, but like overall I didn't blow my account, I didn't liquidate my account, it's actually okay. And you can start realizing also that being able to not like hawk eye, you know, the trade while it's going is actually a lot better for your mental health as well. And the second reason oftentimes what I see is that people just don't trust their system. So I think one of the biggest struggles for most people, traders especially, is that yes, you have a strategy, but you don't actually know and you cannot— like if I were to hold a gun to your head right now, and ask you like, would you be willing to bet, I don't know, $100,000 over the next, on each trade over the next like 20 trades? Would you be able to do that? Assume you have, you know, more than enough money. If the answer is still no, then it means you don't really trust your system, or at least you don't believe it, that this system is going to provide you with more money than it makes, than it loses over the long term. And so you also need to work on building that trust in the system. Now for me, that was the biggest changing factor, right? Other than managing risk, because for me that's, I think, pretty explanatory, right? You should always manage risk as a trader. But the second thing, right, just more practically, the thing that allowed me to get comfortable is just being able to understand like, hey, based on my data, I've hundreds of trades of data at this point, potentially even thousands, I consistently make more money than I lose as long as I follow the system. And once I realize that, there becomes zero reason for me to even want to, you know, get uncomfortable. Because I know like, yeah, like, okay, the only question I ask myself is, did I take the setup? Based on, you know, the rules of my system? If yes, then yeah, the answer just becomes by default, trust the system, trust the trade. And if I didn't, well, that's the part that I have to fix, because then now I'm making an error that is completely outside of the system, right? It's like a me problem. So let me know if that answers that part of the question. It's a pretty long answer, but at the same time, it's also, I feel, at least I believe, right, this is something a lot of people struggle with. And when I'm not watching it, that's also a great question. What do I do until it closes? It's oftentimes something else. And that's like a thing that I'm really passionate about. One of the big beliefs that I have is that if you've ever heard advice from other people telling you, oh yeah, bro, just be patient. Patient for what? Like how? What, just wait? So that type of like vague statement is really irresponsible. Instead, a different thing, and this has helped me a lot more, is just reframing, like giving a definition to patience. So when I say I'm remaining patient in trading, what I really mean is that A, if I'm waiting for a trade, then I'm going to wait until the criteria of my system are met before I take a trade. If I'm already in a trade, the definition of patience for me is just doing something else. And nowadays that something else tends to be Blueprint and Bootcamp and YouTube and X, because I have a love for educating other people. I have a love for helping other people. And oftentimes I have found by explaining these trading concepts and explaining these trading models and, you know, these mental frameworks and stuff like this to other people, it helps to reinforce that in myself as well. So as I'm teaching, I'm learning as well. So that is how I define like, what do I do instead, right? This is how I be patient. I do something else. And so for anyone out there that's, you know, struggling with like not taking action on trading when you're not supposed to, it's— there is absolutely nothing wrong. And in fact, it's even highly recommended for you to get a hobby and do something else because it really helps. But yeah, let me know if that answers your question. And if there's anyone else that kind of gained value from this question, let me know as well. Based on leverage, what's the max percentage of loss you're willing to take? Bro, it's always like if a trade, the way I, here's how I define it based on my system, right? There's a list of 7 criteria. As long as 6 of them or more are met, I always by default take 1% risk. Under 6, so 5 to 6 criteria are met, I feel like, you know, this is still a valid trade, not an A+ trade, then I'll always go half risk. So it doesn't matter what the leverage is, the risk per trade is always going to be defined very clearly. And I made a video on this recently. I think this is going to help you a lot. Ridge, or if there's anyone here, or like Ridge, yeah, if you can go back to a recent video that I made, I think like 3 weeks ago, of like, you don't— I think the title of the video was literally like, you don't understand leverage, because most people actually don't. And like, yeah, it's a video where I get really angry about it, but check it out. I think it's really going to help you. You know what, I think throughout this call there's going to be a load of questions. I'm going to try my best to actually go through all of them. But if I miss a couple, do forgive me. You know what, we'll actually start with a bit of back and forth, right? Instead of just me talking the whole time. Because like in the time that I've been answering that question, the cigar already went out. So Roman, my bro, what's up? Oh, I'm not sure how you can unmute. We have a—
Can you hear me? Yeah, man.
What's up?
All right. I got a pretty quick question for you. How many trades on average do you take per week? And like how many trades a week is too many?
Yeah, that's a good one, man. So I actually limit myself to 2 to 3 trades a day, and I think that for me, that was for a very good reason. I found myself— I'm actually quite open to taking on risk, like my risk tolerance is pretty high, let's put it that way. And so if I actually just let myself take 10, 20 trades a day, I actually would. And I realized over time, like, I was just being way too hasty on too many trades. Ever since then, I just applied a rule like, well, A, I'm only going to take A+ setups if possible, but B, if I'm going to take multiple trades in a day, I'm not going to take more than 3. Like, that's the absolute like cap. I even say 2 is a great one. One of the biggest, like most helpful things that I've noticed ever since applying that was just because I know that, hey, I only have a couple of bullets, maybe 3 bullets to fire today. By nature, it's going to force me to be very selective with the trades that I do take because is this worth it? Like, is this worthy enough to waste one of my 2 bullets? If it's not, then yeah, you know, I'm just wasting it. And as for how many trades is too many, it depends, man. As someone who's still kind of figuring this out, I would also keep it to 2 to 3 because one of the biggest struggles, or at least one of the most common things that I see with beginners or intermediates, because you haven't clearly defined exactly what makes a trade A+ and what makes a trade not A+, you tend to run into a situation where almost every trade looks valid. And so if you never have that rule for yourself, then you're just going to take everything. And that's how you end up losing a load of money. So I would just recommend that for you, man, if that's like, was that what you were asking for? All right, you lowered your hand, so I'll assume that's question answered. Rick, go for it.
Okay.
Hello?
Yeah, what's up, man?
Hey, Xuan, how are you?
I'm doing great. How are you?
Doing good. Shit, man, I lost so much money the past 2 or 3 crypto bull runs. It's insane. So anyway, So my— I've been looking to— so I'm starting over from scratch, saving money. And then at some point, maybe in a year or two from now, I would want to consider maybe doing a boot camp or some coaching with you. And, you know, I've been telling this to my friends. Just as a quick background, like a few years ago, I worked for FX trading desk for a bank. I didn't do too well. This was way before AMC. And, you know, every time I would tell my friends and my colleagues about what I plan to do, like getting a bootcamp with you, they would always say, you know what, if he's so good, then why don't he just put up a hedge for their top trading firm? And I don't mean to be like, I know you're the real deal because I've been watching you since 2020. I've seen your live calls on Twitter, but I'm just curious, like, because like if I had a profitable trading system, that's what I would probably do as well. Just out of curiosity, really.
Yeah, no, it's a great question. At least for me, one of the— at least for me, the way that I see, like, I'm definitely open to the idea and I've thought about it before at some point. In fact, I even told my team this a couple of years back when we were first launching bootcamp. Like, we're gonna create our own little circle of elite traders, and eventually I'm gonna start a prop firm and I'm gonna fund all of these traders, like just homegrown traders. Because there are people that are already trained and also ideally they're also pretty good at what they do. But over time I also realized as I learned more and more about prop firms, I think it becomes a lot less about trading. Like if I'm running a prop firm, I'm not really doing the trading anymore. I'd be more so managing and coaching. And that's oftentimes the role that the head trader, any trading firm, I think you'll be familiar with this. But yeah, they'll be doing trading, but like more than that, they'll be kind of managing and making sure everyone's performance is up to par and making sure that they're doing the reviews. With the junior traders and just overall giving people the tools to succeed, right? And so, yeah, I'm definitely open to it, but that'll be at a point also when I have enough capital to fund this.
That's fair.
That's fair.
Or what about like a hedge fund? Like you can just, you can like outsource, partner with a CEO type who's more interested in running, working on the business than trading in the business. And then you can be like the head trader or something, you know?
Yeah, for sure. Hedge fund-wise, I've also thought about it. I think that will be like the natural next step for—
Yeah.
The Art Of Crypto, or like just even for myself, like I've definitely thought about it. At least for now though, because I have experience trading, you know, other people's money, not efficiently, of course, that was way back when, you know, I had no idea like what the legalities were.
Right.
But I also realized like, I don't need, I don't necessarily need more than what I already have right now. Like I'm making a pretty good living from just trading alone. I'd rather not have the pressure of answering to investors.
Regulators and investors. That's fair.
Exactly.
For now. Eventually, probably.
Okay.
For now, I'm very clear. I'm very happy with where I am. I think maybe you can relate to this, you know, the older you get, I'm not very old yet, but I do realize, you know, as the older I get, you know, the more I just want to optimize for peace and kind of like happiness. It's not like I need to make $5 million a month or something. It's not like I have to have a billion-dollar hedge fund.
That's fair. Yeah, you know, it's— well, I'm, I'm 32, so I'm not that young anymore, unfortunately. I had my chances, but I blew it up. But anyway, um, yeah, I mean, if ever, like, I, I just wanna— at some point, I probably wanna coach with you. And then if I have a profitable track record on my own, maybe this is something like we could just, you know, just explore moving forward. Like, because I have some experience in working for a VC. I was, I was also an investment banker for a couple years. So if you need someone to like manage the working on the business side, the stuff that you hate, and they just want to focus on trading. Maybe that's something we can look into a few years from now.
Who knows, man?
For sure, man.
Yeah, so it's like, it's like, um, it's like you're a Michelin star chef who just wants to focus on making really good food instead of running a bunch of Michelin star restaurants. Basically, that's basically what it is.
Yeah, for sure.
Yeah. Okay, thanks, bro. Appreciate it.
So I'm just gonna go through a couple questions I see on the chat, and then I'll move on to On the screen I see Lucid. How do you define an early entry versus a late entry in your system? What criteria do you help avoiding entering too early? I have a feeling that you're asking this question because you are getting burnt by a lot of early entries. My honest suggestion to you, and the way that I approach it as well, is that I think early entries and kind of like really confirmed entries both have their place, right? It's not that, oh, you go for more confirmation, it means it's better. Or if you go for more early, kind of like more aggressive trades, that is also better, right? It's not to say that one of these is objectively better. They're more so just different. And for example, if you go for the aggressive entry, you're going to miss less trades, you're going to get a better risk to reward, but at the same time you can have a lower win rate because you're jumping in at more signals before they're fully confirmed. But if you go for the more confirmed entry, you will have a higher win rate, but you're going to get less opportunities. But it also just depends, right? What type of person are you? Are you happy to go through like a lot more ups and downs and a lot more losses if that means you're going to kind of overall make more money or have more chances at making money? Or are you more of the type of person where your psychology just gets destroyed after if you happen to lose like 5 trades in a row? Well, in that case, you should go for the confirmed entries as much as possible. So I feel like that's what you were really trying to ask, like the root of your question. If it is, let me know. But for me at least, I tend to go for confirmed ones more so than not. And I honestly recommend that for most beginners as well, because I think for most people the biggest struggle is the actual psychology part.
Right?
You've had 2 or 3 losses in a row, it's like, oh, I got— do I suck at trading? Is trading not for me? And so as you're starting and you're kind of developing, I think you really want to protect your psychology. And a good way to do that is to go for the more confirmed entries. And just one more question from chat, because I love, I love this question. What was the biggest psychological shift that took you from learning trading to actually becoming consistently profitable? Great question, man. And I think the biggest thing, not even like it wasn't even a psychological shift. It was more so just realizing, because I had a very long period— full disclosure, and I'm going to share this not to kind of like brag, like, oh hey, this is how tough my life is, you know, this is what I struggle with. But I am like, I struggle with mad ADHD. And a part, and one of the big things that I struggle with in particular is that it's like a just a straight up inability to do something consistently for a very long time. So the fact that I've been making YouTube videos for like the last I don't know, better part of 5 years is also an absolute miracle. The reason why I share that is because following rules in trading was one of the hardest things for me. I was always the type to want to like experiment with different systems or like I would see some new concept and I would like love to just kind of experiment with it, right? Which is part of ADHD, it's just part of the ADHD experience. And I would just get hyperfocused into all of these different, you know, trading strategies for a period of time. But then the click happened for me when I realized it was at some point where I managed to find a system that I liked enough and I saw good enough results to where I just stuck with it for 2 to 3 months, which at the time was like really long for me. And two things happened when I did that. One, I realized like, yo, I'm actually not just kind of like book smart anymore, right? It's not like I just know all of these different concepts, but I'm not making any money from it. Now I'm actually starting to see some results from trading. That was the first realization. The second one was also instinctually and unconsciously, I was already conditioning myself and building some good habits because as I tap into that, as I followed that kind of good strategy, I started getting wins, right? Because I followed rules, I get wins, and that conditions the brain to go like, when I follow rules, I tend to get good results. So guess what's going to happen? Like, I'm going to start following rules more. And so to answer your question, like, it's a combination of a couple of things, right? One, you make sure you have a profitable system, which Aloysius, you're already in bootcamp, like, you're in the right place. Then the second thing is, um, once you actually start learning the technicals, it's just in that initial like kind of 3 to 4 week kind of phase, you really want to just give yourself one goal. Like you're only going to do one thing, which is follow the rules. You do that naturally, you're going to start seeing some wins. That's how you start building that habit. And over time you realize it's less of a psychological kind of like mind hack or whatever, and it's more so just like you just do the right thing, and as a result, like just by the nature of doing the right thing, you get the result. And it's also not something that you realize kind of in the moment as well. You kind of look back at it like 3 months later, damn, I got funded twice. How did that happen? At least that's how it was for me. By the way, to anyone that has questions in the chat, like I'm slowly but surely going to get to them eventually. So wait, I think I know how to. All right, Lucid, I've asked you to unmute. Oh, okay.
Yeah.
So firstly, I want to really appreciate your work. You're doing a very great job. I've seen, oh, I've seen a lot of your stuff on Twitter and oh, but the question I have is, um, how the— cause my problem actually is I, I, I, I, I can't, I, I'm not really good at managing risk. My risk management game is actually a bit poor. So the question is, um, what do you think I can do? Because I've tried, I've tried, like I try using tight stop losses. Most of the times it takes me out, then goes my way. Um, I tried using big stop losses, but then most of the time it's like my account size can't handle the big stop loss. So I don't know, what do you suggest I can do?
So let me ask you a question. When you say you're not managing risk well, have you ever defined like how much you're gonna risk on every single trade regardless of the stop loss, or does it kind of change based on your mood?
Okay, like deciding how much I want to lose per trade, or what do you mean by commodity?
I'm gonna share my screen and I think this is probably gonna help you. At the same time, I will also direct you to that YouTube video I made, I think 3 weeks ago. That'll also answer your questions on a deeper level. Just so you understand, basically it doesn't matter. Are you able to see my screen, by the way?
Yeah, I can see your screen.
It doesn't matter if the stop loss is this wide or if the stop loss is this tight. If I lose both of these trades, I'm losing the same amount of money. You're currently doing that or does that change?
Yeah, sometimes it changes. Sometimes, okay, let's say I use a kind of big stop loss, so I reduce my lot size so I can lose maybe less since I'm trying to use a bigger stop loss. But if I'm using a tighter stop loss, I try to use more lots.
And are you already using this tool here?
Do you understand?
Have you already set your position size on the long and short position tool on TradingView?
I'm sorry, I can't hear you.
Have you set your account size? Before on the long and short position tool on TradingView?
No, no, no, no.
All right.
So here's what I want you to do. This is the magic trick, risk management. And like, it's a lot. It's very simple. When you go into TradingView, next time you open up your long and short position tool, I want you to double-click it, go to your account size, just set whatever number it is, right? Let's say, let's say you want to do like every trade, right? Let's say you decide, okay, I'm okay with losing $100 per trade. So 1% risk on a $10K account means $100. So once you have this set, every single time you, like, it doesn't matter if your stop loss, like every time you move your stop loss, I want you to notice this number here. This is gonna change. If I make it tighter, it's gonna increase the kind of position size that I need, right?
Yeah.
Yep.
So set this number every time you lose, doesn't matter if the stop is super tight or if it's super wide, as long as you follow this number here. You will always lose $100. That's gonna make your risk management defined.
Wow.
Wow.
Thank you so much. I'm going to try this. Thank you so much.
You're welcome, man. Just make sure you define this beforehand. I think a lot of people, they get stuck up on— but yeah, just decide, right? If you were to lose the next 10 trades in a row, how much will you be comfortable losing? And comfortable meaning it's gonna, you know, it's gonna sting a little bit, but it's not gonna put you out. It's not gonna lose your home.
My account here. Yeah, thank you so much.
Yeah, thank you. Yeah, just get some consistency, decide on the dollar amount that you want to risk and like just do that. Laurie, I've asked you to unmute yourself. Check if you can unmute.
Hello.
Yo.
Hi.
Yeah, I just had a question because I'm based in New Zealand. So I just had a question based on your system because I just see you really just trading the New York open. Does your system, or can you apply it, should I say, to other sessions or any random time during those sessions? Just because, you know, the time I can trade or is more convenient for me to trade isn't really at 3, 4 in the morning for me on the New York open, you know.
Yeah, that was really the question. Yeah, first of all, massive respect to you for joining this call from New Zealand. Appreciate you here. To answer your question, yeah. It definitely works on every session. In fact, I think some of our— yes, you can trade this on other sessions. The only reason why the majority of my video, in fact, all of my videos are during the New York session is because that's just for me, like the session that fits my schedule the most, because that's the only reason. But this works across 3 different timeframes, which is Asia, London, and New York. Now, in fact, you will even be surprised. To know that some of the, like, some of the most successful students that we've had inside Bootcamp and Blueprint are a mixture of Aussies and Kiwis, and they trade during the Asia session. So yeah, the system works on every timeframe. You would apply them pretty much the same way. There are slight differences in the way that you approach every session because they do have their own characteristics. So for example, and If this flies over your head, no worries, but I'm just going to say this just to explain. The New York session is usually the session of distribution. London is for manipulation, and Asia tends to be just accumulation or just setting the tone for the day. And you would apply the system pretty much the same way, just you take into account those slight differences in the session characteristics. And also, on your second question, if this system can be traded at any random time, I would not suggest that, not just because that is a rule in my system, but just in general, you don't want to be trading at random times. One of the reasons why I talk about kill zones so much, which is, you know, the New York kill zone is 7 AM to 10 AM New York, the London kill zone is 2 AM to 5 AM, and the Asia is 8 PM to 12 AM New York time, is because these hours tend to coincide with the opening times of like major market zones. Like for example, if you think about Tokyo and Hong Kong and Singapore and Sydney as the major financial centers in Asia, 8 PM to 12 AM New York time tends to align with that kind of window. And obviously London is the London markets, the European markets, and New York open would be the New York markets. And the reason why we only want to be trading in those times, and this I think applies regardless of if you're trading my system or not, is because you tend to notice way higher probability moves and just way more kind of volume during these times as compared to just trading random odd hours. Does that answer your question?
Uh, yeah, just to sort of clarify, I suppose, um, so if I coincide that with, let's say, like you say, a Red Folder news event at the, um, kill zone on a different time zone, uh, session time, that would be classed as a, you know, as looking at the right time for a trade?
Yeah, and you don't need red folder news as well, as long as you're trading in the Asia kill zone in general. Which if I'm not mistaken, for New Zealand time would probably be like 10 AM to 2 PM New Zealand time. Then the London session would probably be like 4 PM. Like don't quote me on this, like I'm not super certain what New Zealand time is. But yeah, definitely works in Asia, definitely works in London, and you would apply the same way. Paulo, if you're the Paulo that I recognize, then you have a fellow, we have a fellow Aussie as well.
Hey there, Shwen. Yes, I am the same Paulo that seems to pop up on a number of your calls. Thanks for taking my time, taking my question, dude. Yeah, I am based in Aussie and I asked exactly the same question only a couple of days ago on another call. And yeah, the great advice you gave me was about waiting for the Asia sweep if taking a trade on the London kill zone. And I'm— that's my plan for next— for this, this week is to try and execute that and nail that. So thanks for that tip. Um, the other question I've got right now is, um, I have— I seem to have no problem making, um, making money. I, I make a bunch of successful trades. I follow your strategy very closely, and I've also tweaked my own strategy, which probably isn't very PC, but, um, it's worked well enough for me. But your strategy is definitely, um, incredibly successful. The question I've got on the back really bad habit I've developed is I seem to really struggle to stop myself from FOMOing into a trade that I think is running away from me. And then I also seem to panic close trades that run against me when eventually they turn right, they turn correct, and, and take and hit my TP. Um, do you have any recommendation for that? I mean, I know it's probably just set the trade, sit on my hands, look away. But I struggle to do that. So I don't know if you've got any better suggestions than that.
Yeah, yeah, great question, man. I think there's something a lot of people struggle with. So the short answer is, you know, what you've already said, you know, just set the train and kind of leave it alone. But I think something more practical would probably be more helpful. So if you remember earlier on, like, I think one of the first questions that I answered was the reason why people tend to be unable to trust the trade or to just kind of be comfortable with the trade running and not micromanage too much is A, they're either risking too much money that they can't really afford to lose, and B, they don't really trust the system yet. And it's perfectly normal, right? For you, Polo, you just only started this, and so you can't just look back at your data and be like, oh yeah, I have like 500 backtests done already. This is how much my win rate is. This is how much I make on average across 500 trades. I think a lot of people don't have the luxury of starting with that, which is, which is in fact, fun fact, one of the reasons why I share so much data and why I publicly document my trades is because like I understand how difficult it is to just watch a video from like some random trading guy on the internet and be like, oh yeah, that's the system that I want to use. At least if you can look at some guy and be like, yeah, this guy's taken like 200+ trades, is calling trades every single day on X and YouTube and roughly, you know, he tends to win a little bit more often than he loses. Maybe I can take a shot with this. And so for you, the practical advice honestly would be like, you don't have to do this, like would just be to trust, like place your trade, set your stop loss and set your TP. And you want to think of this more so as a 2 to 4 week kind of sprint where you don't need to do this forever. But just for the next like 2 to 4 weeks, you're gonna do nothing but that, right? And you're gonna quickly come to realize one thing, which is whenever you do lose, it's just gonna be 1% or it's just gonna be 0.5%. And whenever you do win, you realize like, yeah, you know, I'm actually making money. And the reason why I ask you to do this initially is to recondition your brain away from some bad habits that you might have like subconsciously picked up just in like daily life. And because one of the things that you mentioned specifically was that, you know, even when like you jump into bad trades, you know, out of FOMO and you panic sell even though you're not supposed to. So when you panic sell, I reckon you could have made money on that trade, but because you had itchy fingers, trade slipped away from you and you're like, ah, you know, why did I, why did I do that? So this advice fixes that. Because you're gonna do that for 2 to 4 weeks and you're gonna come to realize the one thing I want you to actually pay attention to is to realize like, that's actually not too bad. A loss is literally just a loss. And when I win, I make more money than I lose. You're naturally gonna, like, once you start internalizing that, then you start getting really comfortable with just letting things play out. Assuming you have your risk managed, which I'm sure you do. Now on the side of FOMOing entered.
That's another big issue of mine.
Trades that you're not supposed to. Yeah. So the way that I define this is, and like during the program, so you understand this, there's a set of criteria, right? Set of 7 or 8 criteria depending on what asset that you're trading. Oftentimes we FOMO enter into a trade. It's usually because we think, at least for me, right? I'm sharing from my experience as well. When I tend to FOMO enter into trades, it's usually because the trade is valid enough, but I also know it's not the best, right? If I would just be taking A+ setups, I would not take this. But at the same time, I also kind of feel like wanting taking this. And what I've ended up realizing over time is, and the thing that kind of made me stop this habit was that I had a series of funding accounts where, because with your funded accounts, they actually kind of log your trades for you, right? The wins and losses and the kind of like average win and the average loss that you do. I realized when I actually look back at my trades, when I actually just took the A+ trade, like I passed those funding challenges and I got those payouts because of my A+ trades. But I was losing like close to 70% of my trades and the majority of them were kind of like B trades where they kind of look good enough. But then I knew for a fact they weren't amazing. And I took them anyways. And once I actually looked at the data, I was like, yeah, shit, you know, I'm still doing well even while, you know, doing these bad habits. Imagine how much more progress I could have made if I just stuck to the good ones.
Yeah, 100%.
That for me was a big like mental reframe. Now, and this is why like so many traders, especially the more experienced that they get, you hear this all the time in like trading podcasts or whatever. But they say, you know, trade less, but then they don't really tell you how. And so now I'm going to tell you how. The way you trade less is not necessarily looking to trade less, but more so while you're doing that 2 to 4 week thing where you're just going to place your entry and your stop and your TP and you're going to leave it be. The other thing you're also going to do is you're going to look at the checklist every time before you get into a trade. Ask yourself, how many criteria does this meet? Am I 100% certain this is an A+ trade? And if the answer is anywhere, if the answer is any form of no or maybe, leave it be.
Yeah.
And just by the very nature of focusing on that action for 2 to 4 weeks, like naturally you'll fix most problems.
Yeah, that's awesome. Thank you so much, mate. I'm definitely overtrading and I'm definitely oversizing. I know that's true. I get twitchy fingers and I want quicker results. And it works well for 9 trades, but then 2 trades will undo the successes of 9 trades very, very quickly. So yeah, I'll try and implement those. Thank you so much, Sven. I appreciate your hard work. Keep up the great work, buddy. You're smashing it.
Thanks. Just a last little note that I will add to our conversation with Paolo. If you guys struggle with overtrading, I know a lot of you are not currently in the program, like Paulo. So you may not understand the full kind of like checklist or like the full criteria. A practical piece of advice for you, and this is a mental framework that I have in regards to any trades that I do take. I want you to just ask yourself one question. If I put a gun to your head right now, while you're like, while you're thinking of that trade, if I put a gun to your head right now and ask you, will you bet 3 times the usual amount of money that you would usually bet. Let's say you usually do $100 risk per trade. All right, now I want you to put $300. If it starts feeling uncomfortable in any way, shape, or form, chances are that trade is not really that good. Because if it was, you'd be like, you know what, yeah, yes, I would. And that's a really good filter for just taking trades. It's not going to filter out all the shit ones, but it will at least put you on the right path to taking better ones. Just by nature of having that mental framework.
Yeah, sounds great. Thanks, buddy. I appreciate that.
We should have a trading meeting in New Zealand or Aus. Yeah, you guys should. How do you feel about trading indices? They're great. Like, I trade them regularly. I just don't really share it on my X because I think most people follow me for the Bitcoin trades. In fact, like, let me know in the chat if anyone here is actually trading forex. I'm pretty sure it's going to be the minority. But yeah, the system works great on indices. It works great on forex. It works great on even meme coins, believe it or not. And obviously you have Bitcoin. And the only thing I would say the system doesn't really work on is stocks, because you don't really get the benefit of having kill zones. Like the stock market opens at 9:30 AM and it closes at 4:00 PM. So you can't really kind of time that. And also there's so many, like stock trading is just kind of a different beast because you have quite a few more things to consider other than just technicals. "You making public trades, we really appreciate that." Try my best, man. Try my best. "What is the reason that you primarily trade Bitcoin? Is it because your system is optimized to this asset or that you backtested and verified that Bitcoin has the best statistical edge given your strategy or any other reasons?" No, man. The only reason that I trade Bitcoin— sorry, I don't even primarily trade Bitcoin. I trade everything. And the way that I like to explain this is that as a trader, I am not married to any single one asset. I am married to whichever asset is going to give me the highest possible quality setup for the day. I don't care if it's euro, I don't care if it's New Zealand, I don't even care if it's a meme coin. But the key thing here, well, obviously I'm also not looking at like 100 different charts, right? I only have 10 that I look at. But the key thing here to understand is like, this system works on everything. And arguably, people have seen, like, just referencing Blueprint and Bootcamp students, they've seen way better results sometimes on forex and on indices rather than Bitcoin. Because the problem with Bitcoin is that you tend to have 2 days of the week where it's just doing absolutely fuck all. And then even on the days where you have high-impact news or whatever, it just doesn't quite perform the way that you would expect it to. And I think a lot of you will have seen that through, you know, my daily videos. As much as I try my best to hunt for the highest quality setup for the day, Bitcoin is not often so cooperative. And so instead of limiting myself to one asset, and that's a very big— and there's something I want to touch on as well for a lot of you here. If you're only trading one asset, personally, I think that's a mistake, because when you're only looking at one thing, there is a tendency to want to take a trade because you've already put in the time to look at the chart and you feel like you've already invested hours into, you know, doing the work. And so even when nothing's there, you feel compelled to take something. But instead of looking at it this way, I would highly advise you to maybe open yourself up to anywhere between 3 to 5 different assets. And when I say assets, I mean trading pairs. Because from the 5, like you can basically go through 3 a day. That's not going to be too overwhelming for most people. That is very much reasonable. And when you look at 3, here's the mental model that I want you to apply, which is you cannot take a trade until you've looked at all 3 charts. And amongst the 3 charts, you're going to make an active decision on which one you think provides the best possible kind of quality for the day. That's the one that you take. Just doing that alone will make sure that you're always optimizing for better quality trade setups, not just whatever the chart's going to give you today. That's like a big struggle when you only look at one asset. So yeah, um, to answer your question, Mag, I primarily make videos on Bitcoin, and I primarily trade Bitcoin on my— or show Bitcoin on my social media because the name of the channel is The Art Of Crypto. It would be a little bit weird if I started making GBP/USD videos, probably not going to get any views. So I use Bitcoin as a kind of gateway, almost like a gateway drug, just to indoctrinate you guys to see that, okay, this is possible in Bitcoin. But one thing you'll come to realize as you, when or if you eventually join Blueprint or Bootcamp, or even if you just do this in your own time and in your own experience, you will quickly come to realize that this system also works on forex. It also works on indices. It also works on futures. And you'll be surprised at the results that you will get if you just look further than one asset. So yeah, it's not to say that Bitcoin has the best statistical edge. It's just I've been making Bitcoin videos for the last 5 years and I just can't really decide on like what is the right moment and what is the right time to diversify away from that. Hopefully that answers the question. But yeah, Toca, I've asked you to unmute yourself. Feel free to, I think I've unmuted. Yeah, feel free to unmute yourself and ask your question.
Hi everyone.
What's up?
I hope you can hear me.
Yep, perfect.
Yes, greetings from South Africa.
Ah, hello man. Which part?
Yeah, I bet yours. I'm from Johannesburg.
Okay.
Yeah.
I'm a big fan of Cape Town.
Yes, it's a beautiful city. It's a very, very beautiful city indeed. Just a disclosure before I ask my one or two questions. I missed, you know, the dialogue, the first 20 to 30 minutes of the dialogue at the beginning. My audio was terrible. I couldn't hear a thing. So my first question is, Um, would, will there be any other platform where this dialogue would be available for one to listen to at leisure later on?
Yeah, absolutely. We're gonna, like, once this is done, I'm gonna get Clarence, who's the in-house video editor, to, uh, get a nice crisp replay for you guys.
You have the first one. Yeah, that's wonderful because, you know, I would be unhappy or uncomfortable asking questions which might have been asked before.
No stress, man.
Yeah, but the one or two questions that I have, I think I, at some point, I heard you talk about taking 2 to 3 trades a day. What timeframe would that be? Would you be using if you took 2 to 3 per day?
The same timeframe that I share on my YouTube videos. So 5 minutes for execution, 1 hourly for like a middle timeframe, and daily for the higher timeframe.
Oh, okay, okay, okay.
No, one, one. Sorry, just to cut you off for a moment. If your question was along the lines of how long does each trade take, Then usually, usually between 1 to 3 hours is how long the trade lasts usually.
Aha.
I think, I think, I think that's even more precise. That answers my question. Yeah. Uh, okay.
Okay.
No, I'm very grateful really to be part of this, uh, uh, important gathering. Um, I hope we are going to be together for a longer period. And thank you very, very much for your efforts, Lee and company, and for everybody else who is here. Thank you, guys.
Cheers, man. You have great vibes. Huge bug on my neck. Yeah, Danny, I'm going to ask you to unmute yourself. Feel free to unmute.
Here we go. Can you hear me?
Yeah, crystal clear.
Yeah, thanks for taking the question, mate. I actually put them both in the chat, but maybe I could ask you the easy one. So I uploaded a chart for one of them, which might be a little bit much to put you on the spot, but it might help, like, kind of give a visual for what I'm talking about a little bit. So let me rephrase here. So I'll start with the difficult one that I do have a chart on. Actually, you know, I'll upload it right now. Um, so it's just about like when you're looking at— so you got your 3 time frames, you got your daily bias, your H1, um, time frame, and then your M5 for execution. When you're zooming in to your H1 PD arrays and you're observing the price come into your zone, so you're on the hourly time frame, you've got your H1 PD arrays set up in line with your daily bias, um, and you're trying to decide whether that most local H1 leg going into your PD array is going to require, in your opinion, to have a CSD before you feel comfortable taking a trigger.
Yeah.
So when you, you, you say like you have a bearish daily bias, you've got a, a bearish hourly overall structure, and now you're watching that, that most local leg coming back up into the place, their PD array, where you want to take a trade. Sometimes you'll see one single candle get printed counter trend to that leg. Sometimes you'll see 2 or 3, and I'm kind of looking at it and I'm like, okay, if there's only one candle, then maybe I don't really require CISD on the hourly timeframe before I feel comfortable taking a trigger. Because for me, that is still very much, um, a retracement in line with structure, in line with daily bias and into the H1 POI that want to take the trade, but it's kind of that nuance of like in that local structure, at what point do you start seeing a single countertrend candle become two countertrend candles? And now you go, mm, okay, now I'm, I'm gonna, I'm gonna actually require another H1 CISD before I feel comfortable with my hourly timeframe being in alignment with my daily bias.
Yeah. So just to answer your question, the, well, or rather just to clarify something that you said. When you get back into the hourly PD array, you actually don't need an hourly CISD. It's a 5-minute CISD. So you don't have, like, I saw your screenshot, like you don't need the hourly. Correct.
Correct. So it's almost like, when I say the H1 CISD, it's almost like, and so this might be just where my misunderstanding of one of the foundational concepts are, which is when you have your H1 leg coming back up into your point of interest on the hourly timeframe. At what point does that H1 leg have bullish structure going against, say, a bearish daily bias? And you go, hmm, okay, now I don't have timeframe alignment. This, the H1 structure is bearish, no questions asked, but the leg that the H1 takes to get into your PD Array is now forming clearly bullish structure. So, you kind of say, well, no, I, I have my areas marked out, but I actually going to require an H1 CUSD to form a new PD array before I can take the M5 trigger because of how the H1 leg basically came into your area of interest. Lots of waffles. Sorry, everyone.
No worries. No worries. Like, just so I'm understanding your question correct, let's say the overall— are you able to see my screen?
Yeah, I am.
Okay, so let's say the overall order flow is bearish. First question was, how do I determine if that bearish order flow is now changed, right? First part of the question, like, how do I tell when things have changed? And for example, like here you have a bullish CSD. What, at what point is the trade becoming—
are you able to, um, are you able to double-click on the, the chart that I just posted? It should be like the second latest, um, image in the chat. Maybe it would be a little bit easier to just like really hone in on the specifics. Sorry to throw you guys on the spot.
All right. Not even sure how to.
But if it takes up too much time, we can move on from it too. Go on.
Yeah, I'll try. So I'm not seeing the option to show that as a screen share. That's the problem.
So if your daily bias is bearish and if you were to use a line chart, to define your hourly market structure, your hourly market structure is bearish, but then the most local leg going up into your PD array is forming a, in and of itself is forming like a bullish local structure. Do you disregard the fact that the low, most local structure has become counter to the daily bias?
Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah. So yes. You would ignore that. Sorry for not understanding the question earlier. Yeah, you would ignore that bullish local leg that heads into— so the best way that I can explain this, and this is oftentimes the problem that comes up, and I think what Danny was trying to say, if I could try to just fill everyone in, is everything is pointing bearish, but then the candle or like the move that goes into the hourly PDA array is actually forming like you know, bullish market structure or bullish order flow, do we disregard that, right?
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
So this is something that I think a lot of people struggle with. And I say this from experience, having, you know, answering a lot of like questions from beginners. They tend to struggle with this kind of like mismatch of signals where one timeframe is pointing bearish and the other timeframe is pointing, or like there are also signs that are pointing bullish. So in these situations, you always want to give weight to your higher time frame bias and the overall order flow. So if your higher time frame bear— sorry, if your daily chart says bearish daily bias and the overall order flow on the 1-hourly is bearish, then it doesn't matter how bullish it looks heading into the PDAW. You're actually looking for a move, like you're actually looking for it to just retrace back into the PDAW and go down and continue kind of higher timeframe order flow. So yes, you would ignore the, any sort of like small bullishness or yeah, just any sort of bullishness unless that hourly PD array gets taken out, then yeah. Trade is invalidated. Does that make sense?
Yeah, that, that was exactly it. In some of your videos, I've followed you for a long time, but in some of your, some of your videos, like I noticed that you seem to want to have an H1 C/ISD before you, you get involved when I think when the hourly market structure was in line with the daily bias. And so it was just a, a small thing, small discrepancy that I wasn't ever 100% sure of. But every time I run it through different AI programs, they're always like, nope, you're correct. Just follow the hourly. If the hourly market structure is in line with the daily bias, that is the most important thing. So yeah, I appreciate you clarifying that.
And just to be fair, just on that note, one of the reasons why I still kind of define like another CIC and why I tend to look for that is to help the 99% of the viewers that may not be as familiar with the system as you are. And I can tell that you've kind of studied this kind of diligently. And there are a lot of people that haven't. And I don't want, like, just to be safe, knowing the fact that I feel a great amount of responsibility whenever I post any videos. Hopefully that kind of comes across with the advice that I tend to give you guys where I don't just tell you like, oh yeah, this is the trade for today. Yeah, just jump into this trade. No, it's like, if it's honestly looking very sketchy, I will tell you that it's very sketchy, even though it's not the popular thing to say. And for a lot of the new beginners, I tend to just more clearly define a specific area and a specific kind of new CSD line so that at least they can focus on that. Because in order to have that, discretion in choosing, okay, order flow is already bullish, like I can enter realistically anywhere, but a beginner's not gonna know that. And even if they understand the theory, they're not gonna be able to execute that. So that's the reason why I give that extra kind of like explanation or just that extra refinement of every area in my YouTube videos. It's just to make sure nobody ends up getting wrecked, or at least as little people end up getting wrecked as possible. Totally get it.
You mind if I shoot one more really simple quick one at you?
Yeah, go for it, go for it.
Um, in your podcast with your student who was a poker player, I actually sent it to, to one of my friends who I've been nagging to get into trading, uh, who's a poker player. Um, not a consistently profitable poker player, but he's been working towards it. And I'm like, man, look at, look at this podcast. What have I been telling you for so long? As a poker player, you need to You need to reprioritize your time here. But anyway, um, that aside, in the podcast you had said, um, to your student, uh, that when you— when he's trading, uh, NASDAQ, so I just take it, uh, as indices in general, um, that your kill zones are actually slightly tweaked. I think you said 3 to 6 and 8 to 11 instead of the 2 to 5 and 7 to 10. Basically, your kill zone for NASDAQ was, was pushed I hope I'm not giving away too much sauce.
No, no, no.
So I was just wondering if that reflects on most of the TradFi industry. So FTSE, yeah, Nasdaq, SPX, et cetera. Yeah.
So one clarification, I think that kind of like there was a slip of my tongue during that episode where I don't know why I said 3 to 6. So the London kill zone actually remains the same, like 2 to 5. Just the New York kill zone moves to 8 to 11 rather than 7 to 10. That's the only distinction. And the reason why this is, NASDAQ is a futures chart, which means there is a great amount of volatility that happens at around the New York futures open. And it only makes sense, right? NASDAQ is a collection of 100 tech stocks. So it would make sense that a lot of the volatility would come at around that stock market open time. So if we use the traditional 7 to 10 kill zone, we would like, we would have very little freedom to act accordingly during that stock market open timing. But yeah, that's the only distinction. 7 to 10 turns to 8 to 11. That's it.
Cool. I was always wondering if it was a little bit different for the TradFi because I'm like, the volatility is obviously in that slight pre-market hour to the post-market hour. So I'm like, surely there has to be something up. And then I heard that podcast and I was like, oh, there it is. But anyways, appreciate you guys' time. Um, I'll, uh, I'll, uh, stop yapping here.
No stress. And Danny, um, get your friend over here. Like, get him on a call.
This—
oh, I'm, I'm drip feeding him a couple bits and, and, uh, getting him in, in the right direction. And, uh, I think he'll— I think I'll be hitting you guys up with those commissions going on for Yeah, yeah, for sure. I'm kidding, I don't want it. I'll be happy with the—
No, but like commissions aside, yeah, no, like, but commissions aside, like, I honestly, we even made a joke about this internally, like just within our team, but poker players, man, if any of you here listening are good at poker, or if you're interested in poker and you understand poker, join join the program, you, the amount of success that you will see quickly is ridiculous because my theory, and you've listened to the podcast that I had with Vincent, so I think you, Danny, you would already understand this, but to the people that haven't watched that episode, some of the hardest things in trading is not the technicals. If it was, a lot of you here would already be successful because there's so much info, like there's so many videos out there. Including myself, right? All we talk about are technicals. Yeah, you know, CSD, order flow, yeah, PD Array, blah, blah, blah. But if that was all you needed, you'd already be successful, right? You guys have watched the videos, you guys have done the studying. So why is it that you're not able to translate your knowledge into just consistent profits? And the reason, 9 times out of 10, tends to boil down to mental models and psychology, or as people like to call it, or just decision-making frameworks. And for poker players, and also this is something that we touch heavily on inside, I would like to think this makes our programs just a tiny bit different where we actually focus a lot more on the mental models and the psychology. Yes, you still get the technicals, but like technicals are not the only thing that's necessary. But so I digress. One of the reasons why poker players in particular absolutely kill it in trading is because poker and trading, if you really boil it down, they're the exact same game in the sense where with trading, like with poker, right? Just because you have pocket aces and you have, and you see like a couple of aces out there on the flop or whatever, it doesn't mean that you're guaranteed to win. It just means that statistically you're very likely to win, right? You might get beaten, actually probably not, No, okay, let's say you have pocket kings, right? And then there are two kings and two aces, right? Somebody else could have pocket aces, very unlikely but possible. So trading is the same thing, right? You're always dealing with probabilities and you're always dealing with uncertainties where just because this trade looks absolutely amazing doesn't mean that you will win. It just guarantees that you have a higher chance of winning. That's something I talk about daily in my videos and It's also the reason why if you're into poker and you understand poker, first of all, trading is going to come supernaturally to you because it's literally the same. Like, learning the technicals takes 2 weeks. For Vincent, he learned the technicals in 2 weeks and he started trading, and within like 2 months he got like $200,000 in funding. Right now he's close to like $1 million in funding. I think he's gotten $50K in payouts, maybe. I don't know, probably not $1 million, but definitely, definitely close. This is all done in like, I don't know, like a span of 6 months. So yeah, it's more so the mental side of things. It's just more so the decision-making. Like a lot of the questions I see even here is, you know, it's not so much about technicals. It's a lot about just, and even from reading your applications, which by the way, guys, I've read like almost every single application except for the ones that kind of trickled in very late today. Majority of you say, like the majority of your problems based on, you know, that question of like what's the single biggest thing holding you guys back? It's almost never technical. It's always some version of like, I keep moving my stop loss, I keep getting into trades that I'm not supposed to, I know what I'm supposed to do, but I don't, I get tilted when I get into a losing streak. All of these are, you know, for lack of a better word, you know, psychology problems. And it's like 90% of what makes you profitable as a trader. And poker, like if you're already familiar with poker, like you already have the soft skills. So I would actually love to test this hypothesis out more, like I would love to attract more poker players, but like if you guys are in poker, humble pitch, get your ass in here. You'll be pleasantly surprised at how quick you get results. Because Vincent's not actually the only poker player. Another one is also a pretty high stakes player that we have inside and yeah, he's also killing it. And arguably in trading you have way better odds at poker as well. Arguably less discipline required and like you get a lot less variance as well. It's a lot less kind of like randomness., and you can actually get a better edge with trading. So yeah, yeah, currently rake is killing poker. You have a much better rake in— well, you have a much better rake in trading, that's for sure, especially if you're— as long as you're not in crypto. But yeah, gonna take some time to answer. You know what, I think it's about time for us to— let's leave it on that high note. And we're, in fact, just on the note of poker before I move on to announcing the bootcamp winners. Fun fact, there are a lot of trading firms out there, very high-level trading firms that actually send their traders and as a part of their development, they actually encourage them to go play poker. Just because there's so much of that decision-making process that is similar to trading. And if you're good at poker, you're gonna be good at trading. If you're good at trading, well, in my case, I'm not, I would say I'm decent at trading, but I'm not particularly good at poker, but still. Probably doesn't translate one-to-one. On that end. But yeah, poker, definitely. Even if you're not interested in poker, I would highly encourage you guys to just check out the game. I think you will learn a lot of lessons that you can translate over to trading. And I think a really good book to start is this one called Thinking in Bets by this person called Annie Duke. If you guys haven't read that book yet, I think it was very instrumental in my success in trading because it taught me to think in probabilities.. And it allowed me to kind of disassociate and detach myself from— like, I used to get severely tilted if I were to lose 5 trades in a row. Ever since reading that book, like, yeah, I totally understand it. How big is your team and why do you have a team? We have 5 people on the team. Me, Sid, Rid— no, actually more. Me, Sid, Ridj. No, we've got like, we've got a solid 7 actually. And why do I need a team? Because Someone's gotta actually, you know, keep this. For example, this Zoom call didn't just get set up out of nowhere, right? I wasn't sitting there like, oh, how do I set up a Zoom invite? Oh, how do I make sure to remind everybody? I'm great at just being creative and throwing out a whole lot of fucking ideas. I'm great at, I think, rambling and ranting. But I'm not really that good at actually managing a team, and neither am I good at managing a business. Like anything that's to do with like managing an organization, like I absolutely suck at that. So that's why I have a team to make sure the business doesn't just like crumble to absolute ashes. So shout out to Ridge and Jingyao and Li Hong, and I see, not sure if Sid is still here. But without Ridge, I'm sure you guys have heard from Ridge before, like without the team, nothing is possible. So like AOC would not be where it is without the team. See people asking about COSD and stuff like that. Do you have a YouTube video on how to trade forex, indices, futures? As I recall in a YouTube video that you were going to show how easy it is for people that you trade crypto, don't need to perhaps try it out. Can't remember it was a YouTube Yeah, yeah, I was supposed to make that YouTube video. I think it just kind of slipped my mind. This is another one of those ADHD problems, I think. Like, it's really easy to just forget and like completely just not return back to it. But now that you remind me, I'll definitely, I'll definitely work on that. I actually find the system works better on NQ and Forex. Yeah, man, you'll be surprised. You guys all probably know this already. I've been watching AOC since early 2021. Xuan is the real deal and he's sincere about teaching and helping people. I just wish I invested my money in AOC back then. I can always start over. Hey, Rick, it's never too late. In fact, just on that note, feel free to unmute yourself. Like, I've asked you to unmute. We'll speak first and then get to Roman.
Yeah. Yeah, man. Like, geez, like, that would have been more than enough for a bootcamp. Anyway, that's life. Or just to segue, I've The first time I heard about Bitcoin was like 2012.
OG.
Yeah, man. Like, I was literally going to put up some, put just a little bit of money because I was still a college student back then. But like, I didn't pursue it. So that's one of the first few regrets I have in life so far. Anyway, you mentioned about technicals just taking about 2 weeks, and I agree with you, at least based on my experience also with managing money in general. The technicals of personal finance, you can learn that in a week, but it's the discipline and the psychology that matters more. I'd say that's 80% of it. Based on your experience, your personal trading experience and your experience coaching others, what are like the set of traits outside of the technicals that if you have these traits, X, Y, Z, whatever they are, like you have a very good chance of being successful in trading in the long term.
That's a great question, man. Yeah. And the best part, like my favorite part about your question is you're asking traits. And a lot of the traits that I'm gonna— well, I'm not gonna share a lot of traits, but like every single thing that I am going to share is learnable. And it is like you can acquire it and basically nobody's kind of born with those traits. But I have definitely realized that the majority of our successful students all share kind of like some commonalities, if we want to put it that way. So, and also I think in general, if you have these traits, you'll be successful at anything in life, really, not just trading. First one is definitely just, and this isn't even a trait. I'd say our most successful students are primarily, they have just decided and committed that they are going to do this and they are going to figure this trading thing out. Like come hell or high water. And I know this is not really a trait, but I think it's really relevant for me to share this because, you know, how many of you here have heard about my, like how I shared the statistic of like 50% of our bootcamp students are funded? Or yeah, you've heard that, right? And I've also said before, like Blueprint works as long as you put in the work. The reason why I say this, and oftentimes the biggest question that I get is, well, people don't really look at the 50% that make it. They come to ask me, well, what about the 50% that don't? The 50 who lost it. What about them? And I don't want to say like the responsibility is on them because we absolutely do try our very best. You know what, I'll get into that later. But the other 50%, I would honestly chalk it up to they just lost motivation. They just didn't want this enough. Because just to give you a little bit more context, Like one of the things that we do inside Blueprint and Bootcamp is we will follow up with you if you go MIA. And like if you disappear for 3 weeks all of a sudden, like we're gonna be texting you like, hey man, what happened? Like, do you need any help? Can we get you back on track? Because we generally do want the best for everybody. And we also know based on just talking to all of our successful students and the students that make it, that, yeah, you know, we've got a proven process, like this stuff works, you just need to put in the work. And so, like, yeah, as much as we, you know, follow up and make sure like nobody falls behind and, you know, we try to get everyone back on track, there still just comes a point where we realized, at least for me, like the end of the day, I can't want this for you more than you want this for yourself. And so I think that's the first thing, right? You just got to want it because if you have that drive, It means that you're going to be motivated. And when you're motivated, you'll be able to show up and put in the work. Especially like if you show up and put in the work into like without any sort of structure and you just start watching YouTube videos and trying things out by yourself, it's very easy to lose motivation because like, you know, you're gonna have to go through a lot of trial and error. Yeah, if you have a proven roadmap to follow, then all that requires is to show up. It doesn't need to be for a lot, but even 30 minutes to an hour a day and be consistent with it. That's honestly like trait number one. Isn't even a trait, right? You just got to decide that you want this. But now to get into the actual traits. I'd say the first one is, or like the second one is definitely you are process-oriented. So what I mean by that is a lot of our like really successful, like I'm just using the examples of like the top students, like all of them share this one thing, which is they really do focus on the process, meaning it's not really about the results. Of course the results matter, but like just in daily life, they're strict with their routine and they're like, they have a solid morning routine. They're strict about like how, you know, just routine, right? Process-driven, if that makes sense. Now just to give you an example of what I mean, I'm gonna bring up the example of someone called Weber, right? He is, like within 3 months of joining bootcamp, he got like $30,000 worth of payouts. Currently, like 3 months later, as of the time from back then, he's currently traveling like just all around Asia. He's gotten like $50K in payouts. This guy was ex-military for 8 years. So that kind of like discipline/routine/process is literally a part of him. Some of our other, you know, like really successful people are actually like, you know, even engineers. Believe it or not, right? You wouldn't think like engineers would be great at this. We have scientists, right? A PhD student, PhD grad. We've had doctors, like just, or probably at this point we're kind of like merging in away from kind of like process-oriented to some form of discipline where they're able to just not let themselves go and actually decide like, okay, this is what I need to do. And so I'm gonna do it. Which also kind of combines with the first one, which is just deciding that you want it. So yeah, if I could really boil it down, I'd say it's discipline, motivation, and know your motivation, like just decide you want to commit to it. And then third would be, would definitely be how strict they are with, you know, just the process in general. And that could be from the way that they approach the trading and even to the way that they think about journaling. The best part about like these things is that A, it's trainable and we have ways, like if you take me as an example, I am probably the furthest thing away that you would treat as someone with discipline and someone who's process-oriented. Just the fact that I deal with ADHD, right? My brain's always everywhere and like I just decide I want to do this and that's what I'm doing. And if I don't want to do it, like, you know, kind of it's going to be a huge struggle to actually do it. And yet even I've managed to train myself to develop these things. And I think we've also done the same for a lot of the existing students where they didn't come in with this high level of like self-drive and motivation and stuff like that. And, but yeah, just to answer your question, I'd say you just gotta decide you want it. Once you decide you want it, you gotta have the discipline to follow through with it day to day and focus on the process. Does that answer your question?
Yeah, it really does. It really does. Like, I guess a follow-up question would be like, have you had students who were like, maybe for the first couple of months, they were, you know, just going through the motions, but you could tell they were not really like driven. And then something happened in their lives, like maybe a wake-up call, maybe they got laid off, or maybe their girlfriend broke up with them because they didn't have money or something like that. It's like, like a turning point wherein they were like, you know what, screw this, I'm gonna, I'm gonna lock in, I'm gonna sit down, I'm gonna lock in on this trading. And then all of a sudden, their success just comes to them because they've decided midway, like, okay, I'm gonna do this. Have you had students like that?
Yeah, 100%, man, 100%. Like we've had, again, just to share an internal motto that we have when it comes to just within Bootcamp and Blueprint, we have this saying inside the team where like we're gonna follow up with you until you basically die. If you die, then you know, we're not gonna hear back from you, we'll stop following up. And we have gotten people that I can think of two examples right off the top of my head. I'm not going to drop names, but they started strong for like 2 months and then they disappeared for 6 and then they came back. Like we got them back, you know, girlfriend actually left him, which is why I'm not going to drop names.
Yeah, yeah.
And he decided to lock in and like within 3 months, like he got funded for, I think, $200,000. And right now he's also doing way better. Also another student like disappeared for 3 years, I think. That was way back before, like, he joined, he worked with us before bootcamp was ever a thing. He came back 3 years later, like, just really motivated. For him, he just realized, like, his job was not going to be, like, what is going to give him the future that he really wanted. And he was getting to an age where he was thinking about children, and obviously you need some, you know, finances for that. And he just came to a wake-up call, like, you know, if I never figure this out, like, my life fucked. I can't see myself living like this for the next 20 years. So he came back like 3 years later. And yeah, like, I think he's currently on month 3 of bootcamp and— sorry, month 3 of Blueprint. And yeah, funded for $200K, got close to $20,000 in payouts. But yeah, wake-up call for sure. And I think the reason why I shared both of those stories is to also illustrate the fact that, you know, everyone obviously would love for things to be perfect right off the get-go, and we all would love to be just motivated and disciplined right from the start. But the truth is, like, life, life isn't just like one year. It's very long, and shit's gonna happen somewhere in between. And oftentimes it takes a bit of a wake-up call for you to come to the point where you realize, like, damn, I can't continue to let this happen. So, and that's what actually drives motivation. Like, you don't just get motivated because, you know, oh yeah, I'm going to be motivated. Like, no. Oh yeah, I want a six-pack abs. Yeah, no, that's not going to get me motivated. It's more like when I wake up and I look in the mirror and I'm realizing like, shit, I have a belly. I can either change this or like, you know, the alternative is that I live with this thing that I don't really want to accept. So yeah, just on that note, like to a lot of you, I see that within your applications, You talked about, a lot of you talked about how you have a great deal of, you know, pain and a lot of problems, for lack of a better word, in your life. And honestly, like, I know it doesn't feel good in the moment, but you'll come to realize, especially if you do something with that and you channel that negative energy, you channel it into like, all right, this is how my life is right now. I cannot tolerate this. And when you come to that realization yourself, like internally, when you can realize like, I cannot live with this, like, this cannot go on, is when naturally you'll have that motivation to kind of change it. And like, yeah, to a lot of you, I think you already have that. All you need to do now is just kind of like channel it into the right place. It doesn't have to be trading, and it doesn't have to be with us either. Like, that's not what I'm— I'm not trying to sales pitch you guys into anything at all. But just in general, like, we all have things that, you know, they're kind of there and we're kind of okay with it. But you're better than that. Like, you got to look at those problems and be like, you know, that's not up to my standards. I cannot tolerate this. I cannot have a belly. So that's that. Like, just gonna do whatever, I'm gonna figure it out. But whatever I do, I just don't want to have that belly. I'm gonna figure it out. But yeah, that's fair.
That's fair.
Yeah, so it's a great answer, man. Thank you, appreciate it.
Yeah.
And like, if any of you here don't have that like motivation yet, or like enough pain yet, absolutely no problem. If at some point it's going to happen. And I don't say that in a bad way or that I'm cursing you guys, but the truth is shit's going to happen in life. And eventually, if it doesn't happen now, it's going to happen later. You got to start preparing for it now though, and just kind of like start putting yourself in that headspace like, all right, I better solve this because before it becomes a bigger problem or— but eventually something will happen, including for myself. And like, yeah, you can start preparing for it now to avoid it later. I thought you were not going to mention people, now you talk about my belly. But yeah, on that note, I will take some time to announce the big bonus. So something that stood out to me when I was reading through your applications was that, you know, at this point, the fun fact, like the 350 applications we got this time around is not like the total amount that we had, right? Back in April, we also not did a giveaway, but we had a masterclass. And to join the masterclass, you needed to kind of like fill in a survey. And so we have data for like over 1,000 traders at this point. And basically almost none of you have said that your problem is that you need a new strategy or that, yeah, you don't need technical concepts because if that's what you needed to kind of figure this game of trading out, you would already be successful. So in this sense, the things that, like, these are the top 3 things that you guys are doing, by the way. Sorry, no, don't be sorry to anyone who didn't win. Like, you guys have something coming as well. So yeah, it was never like, I need a new strategy or whatever. It was, and these are the top 3 things, which is I keep moving my stop loss, I keep closing my winners early, and I understand like the theory in the videos, but when you actually trade it live, it falls apart. So in this sense, you don't have a knowledge problem. You have what I like to call an execution problem. And an execute— and like more content and watching more videos is not going to fix an execution problem. And the other thing that, like, I think I've already kind of pre-nuded to this earlier, but essentially a lot of you have a strategy, right? You have like technical analysis and stuff like that, but you don't have a system. And this is different, right? A strategy is not a system. A system is a combination of a strategy, right? Which is the actual step-by-step of how you kind of approach the technicals. And you also kind of need an operating manual, like a decision-making framework or mental models. I touched on that a lot during this call. And I don't say, and I don't share these things because like, oh yeah, this fancy stuff, but genuinely because this is what really moves the needle. Checklists, for example, I have a checklist. Once you have a checklist, trading starts becoming systematic. So This is what you need, right? System, not a strategy, is what you need to stop showing up to every session feeling confused and feeling like you don't really know what you're looking for. And even when you do take trades, it's just like some days you win a lot, or like you may have, you know, a week or two of just really solid performance, but all it takes is like a couple of days and like, boom, you're off. And I quote this exactly from quite a few applications that you guys have told me as well. Like as I was reading through them. So, but once you have a system in place, that's when trading stops feeling like guesswork. And that's also when you start getting consistency. So this is just, this is just gonna be like, I think I also kind of preluded to this earlier, but just to share a belief that I have about the trading industry. I think the trading industry has a really bad reputation, especially the trading education industry, because you tend to get a lot of like influencers just severely overpromising. Results and severely underdelivering badly. And this is— can be proven from the fact that a lot of you here, from what I read from your applications, you've tried out other programs before and you've tried other courses before, but like they just hand you a course and disappear and they don't really care about you anymore. And even the course itself, like, doesn't really work. So like, they will— these influencers, they will talk about the people that win but they'll never share anything about the 95% of people that don't get results. But we do this differently. Again, I've already, like, there is a reason why half of the traders that work with us are basically funded at this point. We care about your student, like, we care about your results, and that's why we're just going to keep working with you until you get there, right? There's also probably the reason why in my business, like, the entire business of AOC is not as profitable, like we're not generating that much revenue because what we do is not particularly scalable. But it's also kind of what we optimize for. Like, I don't want to be another trading guru that just— trading guru, like I don't really consider myself that, but I don't want to— doesn't sit well with my conscience to just provide something and to sell you guys on something just for you guys to not get any results, you know. And so that's why we track everything, not just the people that make it, but also every single student that is still on the way there. From what I understood, from a lot of your applications, a lot of you need help. And the other impression that I get is the reason that you guys aren't actually investing into the help that you need is two things. One is trust. You've been burned by other programs before and you see so many of these shady players in the industry where they're like, yeah, again, they overpromise and they underdeliver. And so in fact, a lot of you have even tried getting help before, but you just got burned. But the second obstacle is money, right? Because you could invest like $50 into some really cheap trading program, but chances are you're not going to get the results that you're looking for. So real help, or like proper help, usually doesn't come cheap. So just to talk about trust, on trust, I never ask you guys to trust me. I try to show it as much as possible. By publicly documenting my trades, by showing up every single day on YouTube, not telling you guys to just trust me, but hey, if you want to, like, don't just take what I say in the videos, go on X, you'll see the full records, or like just follow me for like 2 weeks and you'll see that I show up every day. I call it like I make a video calling the trade setup before it happens. When we get into the market session, I'm posting a trade setup on X and I update you guys if I do, you know, do anything different with the process. And that's not all, right? We have, we also, I'm very proud of the fact that we have at this point close to what, 60 funded students so far. And again, we have a 50% bootcamp success rate. Our students have gotten close to $10 million, probably more actually, of funded capital. And in fact, we even track the average amount of days that it takes for someone to join bootcamp and then to get funded. That day is around 76%. So we track all of this because, or at least I track all of this because I want to be as transparent as possible. I don't want to just ask you guys to trust me. As much as possible, I want to be transparent. So much of the trading industry is filled with these shady players. I don't want to be like them. So yeah, we're very vocal about even, you know, the students who struggle, and we just want to give you a realistic expectation. That, hey, I'm not really trying to tell you, I'm not really trying to promise you anything here. This is just what we've been able to achieve. That's all. I'm not gonna bore you with like the kind of sales pitch, but you know what, I do feel obligated to mention it because this really hits home for me. We have had so many people that joined Duplicant that have been struggling for months, potentially even years. And one of the big reasons for that is because they were always like kind of missing pieces to the puzzle. You guys all watch my YouTube videos, and as much as possible, I share as much as possible on the YouTube videos. And I talk about mental models, and I talk about psychology, and I talk about my system, and I go through it as kind of sequentially as I can. But the reality is I still cannot, not because I don't want to, like, share the secret sauce. I actually do with all the YouTube videos, but it's humanly impossible to fit everything that, again, is a strategy. My trading strategy doesn't mean my trading system. It's very hard to touch on everything that makes the system the system in just YouTube videos. And so for a lot of you, and I generalize because this is a very common pattern that I see, a lot of the people who end up coming to work with us have been watching my videos for a while. They've seen some results, but they also know like, hey, Xuan is doing this, I'm here, what am I missing? And the answer to that is simply you're missing pieces to the puzzle, right? You don't have the full picture. So a lot of you have been trying to guess and trying to figure this out on your own. And potentially, if you resonate with this, that's also probably why you're not seeing the results that, you know, that potentially I'm getting. And reading through your application, and there's an opportunity cost to that as well. But just reading your applications, I get that, not only I get the impression, but I've read that a lot of you would like to make trading work ASAP so that you can start improving your situation. A lot of you are struggling with something big, not all of you, but a lot of you are. And the reason why I mentioned that example from just now, because I cannot count the number of students that have joined after trying to figure this out for themselves for years or months. And within just 2 to 3 months of joining BluePin, they start actually getting funded and making a full-time income from trading. Well, not in 2 to 3 months, but like, you start making some consistent profits and eventually that turns into a full-time income. Again, I'm not going to be the guy to kind of overdeliver and underpromise here. Sorry, overpromise and underdeliver here. So I just want to be honest, but they do start figuring things out real quick. So this summer, like this kind of like a summer sale kind of thing that we're doing right now. So it's going to come with like 4 bonuses that's just going to help you be more likely to achieve this. On top of the partial scholarship, if you'd like to apply for that. First of all, it's going to be the VIP experience. Now, I already know that a lot of you here in this room have been a part of the VIP experience before, so you know what this is. But essentially, for 30 days, you're going to be in a WhatsApp group with me at the— during every single New York trading session, where I'm going to be answering your questions and sharing my thought process as the market, you know, kind of happening, so that you get your answers, so you get your questions answered in the moment, and you can actually see how it's like to execute the system beyond what I share on Twitter.. And the reason I'm doing this, the reason why you want this is because like, there's only so much that I can share on Twitter without some guy questioning my entire like framework or whatever. You guys get the idea. Now previously, well not previously, I've only ran this 2 times before. So used to be a $200 a month thing, but it comes included if you happen to join Blueprint this time around. And like, yeah, in during the last 2 runs, quite a few, like I already see a few, I already see a few messages from below, but essentially quite a few people have made their Blueprint investment back just within a couple of winning trades. And again, these results are not, this is not going to be like, you know what, I'm not going to say that this is, I could actually go through the Notion and kind of pull out all the results, but like I think that's going to take too much time. You just got to take my word for it. Just trust that I'm not here to scam you guys.. And the reason why this is here is because it genuinely helps. Now, the second bonus is that, like, usually in Blueprint, you're gonna get, like, access to 3 calls a week, or actually 2 calls a week. And, like, just in the first 30 days of your experience in Blueprint, you're gonna get 2 extra live training calls with me so that not only are you learning the system for yourself, but you're gonna see me execute live minute by minute, second by second. I'm going to be there like, I'm actually still waiting. Okay, here's what I'm waiting for. When I do get in, you guys can obviously follow along with the trades. And like a lot of you have mentioned that you struggle with moving stop loss and taking profit too early. Any Blueprint and Bootcamp student right now will be able to tell you how disciplined I am with that and how easy I can make it look. And I'm going to share with you all of the mental models and frameworks that actually make it possible for you to do that as well. That's the benefit of the live trading call. You're not going to get this on like YouTube. And arguably, this is something that you only get like just inside the programs. Third bonus is that, and also those two extra live training calls are going to be on top of the weekly live calls that you're already going to get. The third is that I'm going to run a live group onboarding with you guys, where I'm going to basically show you the ropes like, hey, here's everything inside Blueprint. And this is how you get, this is how you make the most out of your experience. I don't usually do this. But for this time around, gonna be rolling this. And the fourth one, this is the exciting one, a 30-day accountability group led by Clarence. So remember how earlier I said one of the most recurring themes as to why people don't get results is not that Blueprint doesn't work or it's not that bootcamp doesn't work, it's that they just kind of disappear, right? So one of the things we do actively in bootcamp is that we run accountability groups where we get everyone, define your goal. All right, here's what I wanna achieve in the next 30 days. And Clarence is gonna be on your ass. Like you're gonna need to submit a progress report every single day. And obviously all of you are gonna be joining in the same cohort. So you'll have everyone just kind of keeping everyone accountable, obviously led by a team member here in AOC. But this is to make sure that you already have the right proven framework, right? And when I say proven framework, hopefully I don't have to share too, too much. My result is a point of proof. Every single successful student that we've had inside Bootcamp and Bootcamp, is a point of proof. Our 50% funding rate is a point of proof. Again, this is a system that works as long as you put in the work. So that's why the accountability group is there to help you do, to make sure that you put in the work. A lot of you here want to see results fast. You're at a point now where life is getting tough. Instead of just leaving it up to yourself, trying to program and, you know, just hand you the keys and I disappear, we'll do it differently because we care. And the accountability group is a bonus. This time around that we're going to be applying. Obviously, you don't have to join this if you don't want to, but it's there. I just really wanted to take a moment to thank all of you here for trusting us with the real answer to your problems. And if there's anything that we can do to help, and obviously, like, Blueprint is going to be one of those solutions. It's a whole lot less expensive than bootcamp, and you get basically close to the same thing at a fraction of the price. And we're also offering a partial scholarship on top of that, not for everyone, but like, just reach out to us and We'll see what we can do. And so yeah, at this point, like we're gonna do some open Q&A. Like I'm basically gonna answer questions until I finish smoking my cigar. If you have questions about Blueprint or Bootcamp or just how any of this works, feel free to also, you know, just ask me. But otherwise, yeah, let's continue. Xuan, can an existing Blueprint roll into the next one? I'm so paranoid. Yeah, absolutely, man. Just shoot a message. We'll give you, hopefully, a slow burner scholarship. I've been using the AOC Blueprint AI for the last couple of weeks. It's like having Xuan on call 24 hours, just being there to hammer it home. Any questions? Yeah, I'm really glad that you're finding value from it. Like the amount of data it was trained on, like you won't believe how much time we had to take to, like just the raw amount of data from like, I think it's trained on close to a million words. Of my words that I've said on like these Q&A calls. Can we get a special offer just for today? I don't think we— I don't want to say yes, because like I don't want to discount our products just for the sake of discounting it. Shoot a message, like shoot us a message. Just type the word. Let's see what we can do. Schwend, I also have ADHD. And what I struggle with is the short-term memory in remembering the full system and process when sitting at my desk to trade. Is this something you struggle with, and is it just putting in the reps that solve it? Not really just the reps, man. Like, I think one thing I will say is that if you just continue putting in the reps without actually making sure you're putting in the right reps, it's like expecting to break through a wall by banging your head on the wall repeatedly. Surely there's a more efficient way to do it. One of the things that made it really hard for me back then to follow a process and to follow like a set system was the fact that I never like clearly defined what it meant to follow rules. And it wasn't until like I noted down everything in like very objective terms, like black and white, it's either yes, this is here, or no, this is not here, that I managed to actually know what I'm supposed to look for. Because if I don't know what I'm supposed to look for, like how am I supposed to like follow what rules, you know? So I think that step one is just like getting really clear on definitions on exactly what you're looking for. And then the second thing for me was just honestly, just telling myself like, you know, I don't have to do this for a long time because I think that's like something that ADHD brains struggle with. It's that feeling of like, okay, if I do this, I have to do this for the rest of my life kind of thing. But if I just tell myself like, okay, just for the next 2 weeks to 4 weeks, I'm going to make it my sole mission to follow the set of definitions that I have by myself. And it doesn't even have to be multiple action items because that's another way like ADHD brains just get overwhelmed. So it's like, I'm just gonna take trades that are like objectively, right? The way I define this is for the next 2 weeks, I will make sure that every single trade without fucking fail is going to meet 6 out of 7 of these criteria that I defined for myself.
That's it.
I mean, you only give yourself one task and a task that is very clearly defined, no ambiguity, and just focus on that. That's how you kind of start that wheel of rewiring those kind of like mental habits that we have and actually start like, yeah, just seeing a little bit more consistency. Yeah, I hope that answers the question. Before I get to the rest in chat, I'm gonna speak to Roman, Mysam, and Stofflink. I see you guys have been raised, like your hands have been raised for very long. So like Roman, I'm gonna ask you to unmute yourself.
Hi, yeah, so one of my questions is on a $100K account and the max loss is $3,000, I'm usually risking $600 per trade. So that'd give me like 5 losses. Does that like, is that what I should be risking on that? That's 0.6%.
Mm-hmm.
Is that valid?
Wait, you have a $100K account and your drawdown is $3K?
Yeah.
Is that Apex?
No, it's FundedNext. But I'm on the, I'm on the, I'm on the, I didn't know we were supposed to do the futures. I'm, oh wait, no, the CIST. I'm on the futures, the CFDs. I'm on the futures, not the CFD.
Mm-hmm.
Got you.
Is that just like the wrong account? Is that messing me up?
Not, it depends on what you're optimizing for. So with a 3% drawdown, what's your, what's your profit target to pass?
Uh, $6,000.
Yeah, so these types of accounts are great for like getting your first payout and just kind of get the ball rolling so you have more capital to kind of cycle into other prop firms. Considering you're just starting here, it's not really a bad idea, but also depends on what you're optimizing for. Like, is this like a long-term account or are you pretty clear that—
This is like, this is like what I want it like, like long-term. Like I started with the $25K account testing, like I've been following you for like 6 months. I wanted to test it out with a smaller account. I passed it and got my payout, and now I want to do like $100K accounts.
I got you. A suggestion that I would give if you're thinking any about any account that you want to hold for longer than a few weeks is get the ones with like close to a 10% drawdown limit, because a 3% drawdown limit, you could hit it anytime. And these types of drawdown limit accounts, should be treated more so like, all right, I'm either gonna pass fast or I'm gonna fail fast. And if I pass fast, I'm gonna aim for a quick payout just to get the ball rolling. But when you have like a 10% drawdown limit, it gives you way more kind of like cushion so that if you do run into a rough period in your trading, like, hey, at least you're down 5%, you still got another 5%. It's gonna take longer to pass, but it's also very hard to lose that type of account.
Right, right. Okay. Yep. That answers my question, but another one I had was—
Just a real quick thing that I will follow up if you could.
Yeah.
A lot of the times I would say that this is almost a mistake that people tend to make when they first start getting into prop firms, is they just go for whatever option kind of like it's almost the cheapest, which FundedNext is okay, it's not like the cheapest, but it's also not the most expensive. But usually with like these really low drawdown limit accounts, they tend to be cheaper. And it's oftentimes for good reason because they understand, you know, this is how you get blown up. And oftentimes the proper accounts, you know, the ones with 10% drawdown tend to be a little bit more expensive, which for a beginner, it's completely reasonable to want to save money on the kind of front. But what you end up realizing is that it's going to cost you in the back. So Even when you're first starting out, like if you can't invest into like a $100,000 2-step account, which you know, is usually gonna cost a few hundred dollars, go for a $50K or go for a $25K. Or if you go for these cheaper accounts, don't treat them as long-term accounts. Look to pass fast or fail fast and get the payout fast so you can start rolling the ball into a proper account. And I honestly recommend the second path more.
Okay. Yeah, no, I was, 'cause I, I don't, yeah, like that, you pretty much spotted it out accurately. Like I don't, I don't have, uh, I don't, I'm not comfortable spending that much. I was thinking doing like the smaller ones so then I could evolve to that, but okay. So, so pretty much then like the two-step with the bigger, the bigger drawdowns, a lot more comfortable for the system.
No, like. That's, I think that's what you do after. Just for now, the way that you treat this account is like, yeah, this is a short-term account. Like, I don't care if I lose it, but let me try to get a payout and then cycle those payouts into a proper account. That's the way I would approach it.
All right.
Okay.
And then do you mind if I ask a couple more?
Mm-hmm.
Go for it, man.
If so, I was, I was looking for Asia trade and we got confirmed CISD like 10 minutes, 5 minutes before Asia opened, it was like a pretty, pretty strong, like confirmed CIC, like a lot of displacement. Um, and that, that trade would've worked. Would it, would I have been able to like use that entry, like the CIC that happened 10 minutes before, would that still would've worked?
I think if it's like 10 minutes before it, it would be okay. Like I think I give a little bit of leeway, like 15 minutes before. That started the kill zone, if everything else checks out, like I would still say like, yeah, okay, that's all right. I would try to avoid it though. I wouldn't like be hunting for that stuff. But if I see it, everything else checks out like 15 minutes before, it's okay.
Yeah. And then I remember Danny was saying something like this. We're looking for shorts, say we're looking for shorts for a day and we get hourly bullish CIST, we're just We're just like forgetting about that, like just not even recognizing it.
Okay.
Um, and then another thing I've been backtesting a lot lately, and I think like I've decided to not trade New York PM, like just forget about it. Like, what do you think about that?
I agree, man. Like for most people out there, it's not to say that you're like New York PM is not tradable. It is. A lot of people do. But if you want to compare New York TN to any one of the other 3 sessions, I think you're going to have a tougher time just because there's a lot less volatility in that session. And our system thrives when the market is actually moving and not just chopping around.
Yeah.
Okay.
And then the last thing is I've, I took 14 trades this week, and I don't trade Monday, and I don't trade New York PM, so that's 4 trading days and 3 sessions, uh, for those days. That's 12 sessions. I feel like I overtraded. Like, I, I literally pretty much traded more than every session. Yeah, like, I didn't even realize that till now. Like, I feel like I should be like cutting that in half. I went 7 for 7. I feel like the problem is just waiting for the higher probability things.
On the 7 out of 7, are you going for like the straight 2:1 risk-reward?
No, no, no, the wins way, way outweighed the losses. It was like 20R to like something else.
Oh, if that's the case, I don't really see a problem with that.
Okay, yeah.
Like at the end of the day, it's not really like the win rate is just one thing, and like I think something a lot of people get wrong is, and it's very easy for people to get this wrong, for people that don't know better, they tend to think like win rate is like the absolute king of all like trading metrics. Oh, this guy has an 80% win rate, that must mean he's very good at trading. Maybe, but is that guy making money, good money? And basically win rate only tells you how often you're winning a trade, doesn't tell you how much money you make from a trade, when you win and how much money you lose when you lose. And so a much better metric to actually keep track of is known as expectancy. If there's any poker players here, you would know what is expectancy. But essentially, if you are realizing that you have a 40% win rate or 30% win rate, but you're like fucking profitable, like 14 trades plus 20R is ridiculous. If you can imply that for like the long term, bro, you're about gonna kill it. Now, the only things you need to actually look into is, is this 20R actually kind of like 1% slash 0.5% risk every single time? Because, like, telling people that you made like 20R over 14 trades, I'm not saying that's what you're doing, but like, just a hypothetical example. Oh yeah, bro, I took 20 trades, I made 50R. Oh yeah, that's cool and all, but like, how much money do you make? Because if you in the process of getting to taking that many trades, because a lot of them were kind of subpar trades and you weren't comfortable risking a proper amount of money on those subpar trades because you knew they were subpar trades, then even if you make like 5R on like $10 risk per hour, then you make $50, right? That's nothing. So it's also important to look into that part of the process. It's like 20R is absolutely amazing. I think also what is more like, what's better is like, if you can make sure you're taking trades that you know are decent, then you can at the very least put 0.5% risk behind them. Like, is that like, have you been risking a lot less or are they like properly sized?
Honestly, there, I think there is only one that was half risk. I think every, everyone else was 600 risk.
Fuck. Yeah. Okay, bro, you've got it sorted, man. Like you're sorted. Okay. Continue doing what you're doing, man. Nothing's broken. You don't have to trade less for the sake of trading less. And even I'm gonna tell all of you guys like a little bit of a belief-breaking statement. Trading a lot is not actually a bad thing, as long as you know what you're doing. Or just for 99% of people, they don't know what they're doing. So trade, like if you have a broken system, or if you have a broken process, repeating that more is only gonna make more, like you're only gonna get more broken results. But if you have a sound process and you make sure that every single trade that you take is following that sound process, Fuck, you want to take it as, like, you want to do it as many times as humanly possible. Every single time that trade setup shows itself, it's like, yeah, man, I'm taking it. Doesn't matter if I'm like on trade 4 or 5, 6 of the day. If it's a good trade, it's a good trade. Just most people don't really know that. So keep doing what you're doing, man.
Yeah, right. And I really like the poker correlation because I've been talking about that lately. And one thing for me is that It's like you could be the hours of just getting dealt jack shit, like awful hands, and then 3 hands in a row you get pocket aces, pocket kings, pocket queens. Like, it's just like that in trading. Like, you can have a full week of nothing and then one day, you know, you get 3. That's what happened to me like this week. It like the first like 3 days, just all wins. And then Thursday, Friday, I took my losses, but the wins outweighed the losses.
That's it, man. You got your head in the right place. Just keep doing what you're doing.
All right.
Yep.
Thank you.
Cool. Maisam, I'm going to ask you to unmute yourself. Feel free to— I know you've been waiting for a while.
Yeah.
Hi, how are you doing?
You okay? I'm doing great, man. Sorry for keeping you waiting.
No, no, it's all right. We just spoke, I think, a few months back, and I still remember that conversation. We had a long conversation. I don't know if you remember from England.
I remember.
How are you doing?
I'm really good. I'm still blowing up my accounts every day. So, you know, I came specially to tell guys like, you know what, don't leave it. You will be there someday. Nobody can be worse than me. Oh man.
Yeah, so for context, guys, myself actually joined the last Q&A call that I did in April when I was here in Korea as well. I was basically just hosting like a free Q&A call. And answer a lot of questions. But yeah, good to see you again.
All things good.
Yes, Henry, good to see you. Before I start anything, I think the one thing which I like, I mean, I'm in trading from 2018-19, so I'm long in this game. But most of the people, they fake it. What I like about you is like you don't fake things. You are like what you are. For example, like when I speak to my friends, I use F-word very often and you do that even though you're on camera. You just go, you know what, like, go for it. So that's very good. So, right, lately I just got a few questions for you. Someone I just saw, and they are using the Data Tool to predict what will happen next, and they're quite accurate, which surprised me. So I just wanted to have your view on it. I mean, if you ever use it, and the way they're predicting the levels, it's almost like 100%. So I don't know if those people know about that or not. But what's your view on it, if you ever use it?
When you say Data 2, do you mean Level 2 data?
No, it's that data tool in TradingView that you can mirror the candle. So let's say, like, if you got pin candle, so whatever the measurement it would be, there's a high chance that the market, if it has to go and sweep the spot, it will go almost about the same level. So it will sweep and then will go to the direction. So that really helps for the people to have, let's say, like if you want to put a limit order, you can put the limit order about to that level. So in this way, you have high chances that, you know, you won't gonna be stopped out and you will be still in trade. If it's something you ever come across with?
I wouldn't say I'm familiar with the concept.
Okay.
Yeah, it's something quite new. And like, I was really shocked when some guy just showed me this and I thought like, I mean, wow, it's total math. We skip to that then. When you do levels, I mean, what I did so far since we talk, I'm really good making indicators. I'm working on AI tool. I think you might remember or not. So I made the indicator which would mark your support levels, CHoCH, and like all the things which you need. So basically, it will analyze the chart for you and it's much more easier to take the trade. If you are doing the high level, because I don't know why I just gone into scalping with 1-minute with gold. And you know that like 3, 4 months, the gold is really after your stop loss. It will make sure he will eat your money and then he will go wherever he wants to go. So, you know, it's, I don't know, I need to still go into like higher frame, but it gets so boring compared to like what I use in 1-minute. So what do you use as a timeframe? 5 minutes, I guess?
Yeah, just there's what I use. And then there's also kind of like the, basically my system right now, like I like to call it the intraday model. Because within Blueprint, for example, we have like 3 different models. We have a swing trading model and a scalping model, and they have different timeframes. So it's basically just like, Anyone can make this work depending on whatever timeframe that you're looking to trade. But for me, yeah, like daily, daily is the higher timeframe, hourly is the middle, and 5-minute is the execution timeframe.
And what do you see, like, I mean, when you are marking the levels, let's say like you mark your levels, first of all, how many levels do you mark? And once you do mark the levels, if you do, then you will wait for the market to come and touch that level or sweep that level, liquidity sweep, and then it goes to the direction or like, when basically what I'm trying to find to read your mind basically, when you see the chart, I mean, I'm spending 12 hours a day on chart for past 6 months. So you can see like how serious I am blowing my accounts, you know? So, so when, when you see like the chart, What comes in your mind? I mean, again, end of the day, are they gut feeling? Or you say like, you know what, this is like what can give me the profit. I need to go into this trade. And yeah, this is this and this, and that's it. I'm going in.
Not really. And I think my answer is not going to be an answer that you like, but essentially, I'm a very, like, I used to be for a very long time, I used to pride myself on like being a very good technical analyst and as a very good reader of the markets, right? Like I would always pride myself on being able to kind of predict moves in advance. And I did that for quite a few years. Even if you just look back at my earlier YouTube videos, they were like, I had like 10 different indicators on my chart and I felt, and a lot of the time I did get the move right, right? I didn't get the prediction right. But what I ended up realizing was at some point I actually looked at my P&L and I realized like, shit, you know, I might be getting really good social media metrics, but like, I am making fucking no money. Like, there is a disconnect here. And that's when I had to go back to the drawing board and accept that, you know, maybe trading is not about being smart or being able to, you know, look at all these data points and to kind of predict what the next move is going to be. And I didn't know the answer at the time, but I know now. Which is I'm not really trying to predict what the market's going to do next. I'm like, the way that I look at the markets, or at least the way that I look at trading nowadays, is you have the market, which is a whole bundle of noise and just a whole bunch of shit that makes no sense. Your system is kind of like what you funnel that raw information through. And like, the system is kind of the lens that you apply to see, okay, this is what I want to look for. And if you see it, then, and you take it, hopefully that will give, that will make you more money than it loses over time. And so on a daily basis, that's all I'm trying to do. I'm not necessarily looking to predict what the next move is. It's just, okay, I'm putting my lens on. All right, based on this, I think this makes sense for my system. All right, let me just do that. When it comes to like marking out levels and, you know, all this stuff, I don't have a concrete answer, but what I will say is that I'm a huge believer that most traders are doing way too much in a sense where they're overcomplicating it. Oftentimes you'll see, whenever I see people marking out like 10 different levels on your chart, like, oh, previous weekly high, previous weekly low, previous monthly, previous quarterly, whatever. Immediately I'm just going like, you know, like at least half of those levels don't need to be there because chances are it's not going to be relevant for you. Right now anyways. And even by the time, like, eventually you get it right, like, oh yeah, price goes to the previous quarterly high, at what part of that move are you actually taking— are you able to take advantage of to make money? So I don't have a concrete, like, all right, this is the level, this is that level, but I do have a rule for myself where I will never mark more than 4 levels at a chart at the same, like, at any given time. And I think you guys will— anybody in this call right now, you have seen it in my videos where it never gets complicated. It's always pretty clean. It's pretty simple and simple sustainable. Like, if it's too complicated, you're gonna hop into the charts every day and you're like, fuck, I have like 20 different signals. Which one's, you know, which one's true? Which one do I prioritize more? But when it's simple, you hop in, do your analysis in 5 minutes, trade shows up, you take it. If it doesn't, then you move on. Like, yeah, it's, I don't think it's the answer that you're looking for, but it is what I do.
I just get the picture. I mean, Let's say like you are looking for, um, from 15 minutes to 5 minutes, right? So you see like, okay, I can see on 15 minutes the market is bullish, and on 5 minutes or 3 minutes, uh, time frame, uh, you might have the market has tested, let's say like 2 times or 3 times on one support level. Uh, for me, like if it does on 3 support, 3 times or 2 times or retest on the same level, I would go along with it. I mean, it may be right or wrong. When you see any market is coming to one level for 2 or 3 times to retest and it doesn't break the support, it might take the liquidity. In your eyes, would you take a trade at that level? Or I don't know, like what system you follow. I'm just trying to find myself, like what I follow. Let's say like support and resistance are the same thing regardless, like which approach we do to the market. On the support level, or if he, like I said, if he does test the market 2, 3 times, do you think like is the right approach to go bullish onto that level with very minimum SL? I would say very minimum.
For me, I assume we're talking about like a support level, right? That's right, yes.
Yeah.
So usually if I see price testing a support level like 3 times or more, I usually give a lot less weight to that support level being held, but that's just my kind of— that's just how it works with my system. Essentially, when I usually refer to support levels, they usually mean two things, right? Usually a bullish order block or a bullish fair value gap, or like a bullish liquidity level. If you test the order block, like just to touch on PEAs as an example, the entire concept of a PD array is that it's an inefficiency in the market. There are open orders still left within that order block or that fair value gap, which means that if the market does come back to it, these open orders are going to get filled and price is going to bounce away from that level to continue whatever the trend is. So if I see price touching an order block for like 3 times, clearly there is a lack of interested buyers at this level. I'm not gonna buy into that. So for me personally, yeah, like if I— 2 retests is fine. One is obviously a given, right? You need to retest it once. But 3 or more times, I tend to stop giving it as much weight, especially because if you get 3 tests, what ends up also happening is that you now have 3 relatively equal lows at that level, which probably means you're gonna get swept before the price like actually gives the true move anyways. So there's also that.
It's for me, like it's very, very strange 'cause like they are too opinionated in the market. Like yourself, you won't buy. They are another group which would buy because like what they say is 100%. Yeah. So sometimes it works both ways, which is very strange. Sometimes you will see in a market that on a 5-minute timeframe or 3-minute or even 1-minute timeframe, the market is coming to one level and this is a support level. It might take a liquidity or even it won't bother the liquidity and it will shoot. And you will think like, oh, what the hell has just happened? Why I was not in that trade? Other way, it will break the spot and you think like, what the hell is going on? You know, so it's unpredictable. The more time you test, it can go any side. So I mean, what's your opinion on it? It can go on both sides.
Yeah. So I think the key thing to understand, two things actually. One is that everyone's trading different systems. Maybe for a lot of you here, like you are trading, trying to trade my system. But like just in general, right? In general market, everyone's trading a different system. Yeah. And you need to understand that every trading system out there actually works and they could all work at the same time with that same exact moment in price action. The mistake that people tend to make is trying to make all of these strategies work at the same time for them instead of just picking one and kind of sticking to it. Which leads me onto the second kind of answer, which is again, I'm not necessarily trying to determine if price is going to break or bounce from that support level or any level. I'm not actively trying to predict that, or I'm not actively looking at that and trying to make a decision from that data point. It's just like, overall, does my system say to take the trade? If it does, then, you know, I take it, you know, if enough criteria are met. If not enough criteria are met, then Yeah, like I think probably a better way to put it is that when I used to spend a lot of time thinking about if it'll break or not and trying to predict that, sure, I might have been right, but I also wasn't making a lot of money. At least for me, I prioritize making money a little bit more than being right.
Fair enough. I mean, this is why we are all here, you know, regardless what is your approach to the market. Let's say like, you know, if you are here now, profitable trader, If you have to start from the beginning, I mean, there's loads of people there, probably they can benefit from this conversation. If you have to start from scratch and you are new to the trading, what step you would do, which is a concrete, like you will be there somewhere in coming like a year or 2 year or 3 year or whatever, one. Secondly, to become a profitable trader, I wish everybody minds work differently. What in your opinion is average time for for people to understand the system, to lose or come out from that feeling that, oh, I'm losing, I'm losing, I'm losing. The amount of fear which you got, or the amount of excitement you got in your head. If you continuously lose, it will come out from your head, it will be part of your life. If you continuously winning, it won't matter to you much psychologically. And so you will calm inside yourself and you can take your losses, you can take your profit, and you make a system. In your opinion, how long it will take for a trader to become and come to that level? Having said, like, obviously everybody's mind works differently, emotions work differently. What is your experience to that?
Yeah.
So essentially, like, you're basically asking, like, how long, in my opinion, does it take the average trader to basically hit the point of where trading starts becoming predictable or like easy, where you know exactly what you're looking for and things start becoming consistent and you're not just kind of second-guessing all the time. Is that what you're saying?
Yes, please.
Yeah. So I'm going to give you the dull answer.
First of all, before you answer, I'm really sorry. I'm just asking you very difficult questions or like what I have in my mind. I'm just putting that to you.
No worries.
Yeah.
So like for everyone, it's going to be absolutely different because Everyone starts with different kind of like starting hands, right? And like for some people, you know, they've been in the military for 10 years. The moment they come in, I tell them what to do, they do it, they get results. They're not a genius. It's just, you know, they maybe had a different type of like, you know, starting position when they first got into it. But not everyone has the luxury of having that. And arguably you could say that, you know, not arguably. So that's the obvious one out of the way. So for a lot of people, super different. I think something that helps a lot, just based on— and this is going to come off as an absolute sales pitch, but I genuinely mean this from the bottom of my heart— but there is a huge difference in people getting, like, the speed of getting results between trying to figure it out yourself. Not because, not because, like, free stuff doesn't work. I learned a lot from the free YouTube videos, but I also cannot deny that there was a whole lot of fucking noise out there where I could not differentiate between this and that and what I'm actually supposed to focus on. For me, that was a very big, like, there was a very big chunk of time where I actually spent like just kind of figuring it out. Once there was like, even for me, like back then, like investing in trading courses and stuff like that, because I understood the importance of like structure. Raw information is not really the bottleneck for a lot of people, but when you have like a proven structure and you just follow it, that speeds up your results by a lot. But just from my side, like my experience, I can't speak for anyone else. Maybe I can, because I have worked with a lot of people, but just from myself, my experience, I'd say it took me a solid 5 years before trading became— like you guys look at my YouTube videos nowadays, and maybe even some of you may have gotten like a general vibe from me that like, I'm just taking it really easy with the trading right now. Nothing's really like stressing me out. I'm just almost like robotic and just going through the motions.
Yeah.
To get to this point, I'd say it took, yeah, like a solid 5 years. And a lot of these 5 years was just honestly through like trial and error and not realizing that this piece of content that I consumed was actually hurting me more than it helped. But I did not find that out until much later, which is also a reason why I'm so passionate about what I do currently and why I'm trying to not be like the average trading influencer. I don't consider myself an influencer either, but I'm just trying to at least one step at a time, just change the trading industry, very small step at a time by like, yeah, hopefully not letting someone else go through the same process I had to go through where, sure, I made a lot of money, but I also lost a lot of money. And there was like that whole roller coaster where everything just felt like luck. And even when I won, I couldn't really say like, oh yeah, it's because of you know, system or like because of my skill or whatever. If I really look back at it, I might have just gotten lucky. When I lost, I also could not kind of account for that. I could not predict that either. So yeah, for me it took like 5 solid years, I think. Yeah.
That's very, very, I mean, well, I won't say that is a long, well, I can say that is a very long time for most of the traders I know. Like I said, I've not been doing this for a very long time. And I've lost a lot of money. I did make a bit of money off it, but I have lost a lot of money. The more I lose, the more I learn. I put it this way. So each time I lose a trade, I think about it like, you know, what did I wrong? And before even I take that loss or it hit my asshole, I know it's going to do it and why, what I did wrong. So I think, yeah, you're absolutely right. I mean, it will take good few years. But how to make it short, because I mean, obviously everybody's circumstances are different. You might have started at the right time. Most people, like you said, they might be doctors, or they already spent 8, 10 good years of their life studying, being a doctor. When they become a doctor, they finally find out, like, okay, we can make more money being a trader. So let's go, come on, you know, hit it. So, you know, it's so for them. So somebody like you, wants to start from day one, what is your system which can shorten the time? They don't need to spend 5 years. That's question 1. Yeah, probably, probably you answered this and then I'll throw you another one if you still can handle it.
But like, yeah, like just how I think the way you speed it up and this is not no longer going to be a sales pitch. Don't worry. I think a very important skill to have is at least what really made the difference for me. Is being able to— the easy answer is always like, oh yeah, just, you know, buy a course or whatever. But like, we all know that not all courses out there are like actually good. And a lot of people have been burned by that before. So I think a better way to approach this is to learn how to filter good information versus bad information. And at least for me, so that's step one, like just learning how to filter good from bad. Step 2, once you find good sources of information, stick to it. So as an example for me, I don't, well, at this point I don't watch any of the trading YouTubers or trading influencers because like I have my own system already. I don't want like, I don't want somebody else like coming to my lane and kind of like, oh, my system says this, but like To The Moon Crypto says it's going to go up. Then I'm going to start second guessing. I mean, I'm not going to start with second guessing, but still. Filtering out good information and sticking to that. And for me, that came from less so like solid YouTubers. I think Inner Circle Trader was probably the only one. And, but even for like Inner Circle Trader, it was the, if anyone's watched any ICT videos, he's all over the place, man. Like, yeah. Easily, and a 2-hour video could be 20 minutes, but he chooses to make it 2 hours and puts you to sleep. So there's a lot of like sifting and you need to find the real gold.
Yeah.
But one, like something else that helped for me, I think was books. There were a few books that I read that didn't necessarily teach me about technical analysis, but more so the way I should be thinking about trading or, and they weren't even trading books. Some of them were just like ways I should be thinking about approaching anything in life. And big believer for me is I think as long as you have the right soft skills, you can be successful at anything. Like in the business industry, we kind of say, you know, killers will always be killers, which means like if you already have the character traits to succeed, then it doesn't matter what I throw you in, you're always going to be, you know, successful. Um, so books was one of them. Uh, I see in the comment section below, like Mac, Macca, you said T-Trades. He's a great source, by the way. Very clear and to the point, explains it very simply. What was the other thing that helped me a lot? I lost my train of thought.
No, it's all right. There will be like definitely some good— I never actually read a book.
Uh, you got it.
Yeah, go on.
Hold on, hold on.
Yeah, yeah, sorry. I just thought of it. Sorry. Don't mean to cut you off. As for how to filter good information from bad information, at least in the YouTube space, or like just the overall like trading industry space, I think one thing that really helped me and why I'm doing it now is, do they actually have results to show for what they claim they're able to do? So what was that?
Sorry, say that again.
Are they actually like being transparent and showing like, right? Whatever they claim they can do, like, are they actually showing that? And I think that's a big reason why I'm doing it as well, because I know for me back in the past, like, I really do appreciate when people actually show, like, yeah, you know, they live it. Because one thing, like, I'm going to take fitness advice from, like, an obese mom. Not to say, like, sorry, that's a very broad generalization. I'm not going to take fitness information from an obese person. Let's just put it that way. Yeah. So I think that goes a long way to helping you filter good from bad.
Yeah. Trading, I think it really changed your way of thinking of life and your approach to everything. Continuously lost. I mean, I'm a businessman, basically. I mean, I had a really good time. I've been to all over the world. I've seen the money. I have everything. Like, I don't— I mean, if I earned a million pounds today, It won't affect my mental health. I would say, yeah, it's fine. Money is money. The car is a car regardless if I'm driving a Micra or I'm driving a BMW. I have both of them. So, you know, it doesn't inspire me anymore to be somebody because I've seen a lot. Let me put it this way. But it would change your mental level if, let's say, you have continuously 5 days of loss will affect your emotions, even though like you don't lose so much in account-wise. I mean, this is what I learned. Don't put so much money into it, which you can't afford to lose. So it doesn't affect me at the end of the day. I will go to sleep. It's fine. Another red day, absolutely fine. So it does affect your life at one point where you think like, you know, the bad or good things are part of life. I'll take it. I think it's a really, really hard thing for the traders. To come up with this feeling that they don't get the excitement, they don't get fear. How long it took you to actually come to that point? Does it took you like 5 years, like you said, or, you know, you come to one point in 6 months, it goes, you know what, you know, just fuck it. It is what it is. I'll take the profit, I'll take the losses. It's fine. It's a part of the game.
Yeah. So I think instead of saying how long, and I think it'd be more productive if I shared like what actually made the difference. In me getting to that point. Well, to also answer the first part of the question, like, I generally don't do anything differently, nor do I feel any differently if I go through 5 straight days of losses. In fact, I have made a few videos before, like, just showing you guys the— or like, just showing the records of my, like, trades. And I'm very transparent about the fact, like, during this 3-week period, I had like 20% win rate. And I still, you know, I still make money and I got out of that and I overcome the drawdown, whatever. And the reason I show that was because I wanted to talk through the mental side of things on how you deal with losses and how you deal with like losing streaks. So what made the difference for me, and I think the biggest one for a lot of people here is going to be, it boils down to one word, which is trust. If you really think back to what is the reason that you lose confidence or like you feel the need to kind of change your system is because you don't actually trust it. You don't trust that it's going to get you out of the losing streak and it will eventually help you make money. But when you have that data at hand and when you can truly deeply trust your system, then you realize that this little tiny losing streak is again just a little tiny losing streak in the grand scheme of things. And as long as I continue to execute the system, it's going to get me out of that kind of like low point and get me eventually back. But if I start changing things the moment I am, you know, going through a rough patch, guess what? That's going to reduce my chances of getting out of that rough patch. Because now I'm abandoning a working system for something that hasn't been proven yet, just because I think this is going to get me out. So if I could really boil it down to that, it's like, yeah, do you trust your system or not? And if you don't yet, then there are a few ways you can do that, right? But I think for most people, the most applicable one is going to be just backtesting it. And when I say backtesting, I don't mean like just going on the FX Replay and like just kind of winging it and doing random things. No, it's like, all right, clearly define the set of rules that you're going to follow. And during that FX Replay session, all you're going to do is like you're going to take trades that follow that strategy. You're gonna do that for at least 100 times and you'll see, right? Is it profitable? Is it not? If it is, great, this is a system you can trust. If it's not, maybe you wanna make some adjustments.
Right, before, I think probably the other guys need to ask a question to you. I'll probably let you go in a minute. If I just ask you to, in like 2, 3 minutes, let's say like if I want to join your system, right? I've been already like, been all over the place. You probably know that my background, So what your system can make a difference and how does it work basically? Let's say if I join you today, what does that make a difference or how does it work basically? If I just ask you a very quick question, there will be probably loads of people who already lost. I think it's a guy called Govind and he wrote he already lost 50K left from 60,000 losses in retirement, which he shouldn't do in the first place. You know, so people, because they are the FOMO, when they see like somebody's coming from the Ferrari and they have like loads of things, then they always think about the winning side of the trading, but they never see the losing side of trading, which they should do, the both side of the coin before they jump in. So always invest that money which you can afford to lose. This is the rule number one that should be for the people. So let's back to the question which I was saying to like, if I give you like 2-3 minutes, to ask you what your system can bring the difference in the life of the new traders or the traders who are losing and they have lost quite a lot of money. And what your system can do for us.
Yeah, so great question, by the way. If I could, if I could bought it back, not even bought it back, but if I could just take it back to the reason why most people are failing— well, failing is a very broad statement, but why most people haven't gotten the results yet they want from trading and that they see is possible from trading, very rarely a lack of like information or like a lack of technicals. That's like the easy part. And I can 100% tell you, like if anyone here, you end up joining Blueprint or Bootcamp or whatever, you are gonna learn this, like you'll learn the overall technicals in like 2 to 3 weeks.
Max.
It's not complicated. And it is like, and I designed it that way because complexity does not work in trading, right? The trading is already, there's already so much shit going on. You don't want another complex system to throw on top of that to just confuse you more. So the technicals are super easy. I'm not gonna say like my technicals or like my, you know, strategy is like some very special snowflake that, oh yeah, this is the strategy that you need to go for and the other strategies, they suck or whatever. No, like it's a very, it's a very simple, it's a very straightforward strategy, which I know doesn't really sound sexy, but also like try not to make it sound sexy because also like, yeah, this, this is not the important part. I think the thing that you're gonna get most out of just working with us in general, like working with me, is that I emphasize heavily on the actual process. Because a lot of you, you understand the information, Yet when you go into the live charts, it doesn't quite translate. You can understand it on paper, but you know, when you actually do it—
Yeah, yeah, it's really different. I agree. Yes, I agree.
So yeah, a few ways we do that. One is, I think the very first few modules that you're going to go through is hours upon, like a few hours of like just pure mental stuff. Where if you have those mental things equipped, it doesn't matter what strategy you use. It doesn't matter if you end up, you know, trying somebody else's strategy, you're going to be successful because you have those mental models. Yeah, that's the first thing, right? Just information. But the second thing is also like, I do a lot of like live trading calls where you guys will be in the room with me during, you know, the session, and I'm going to be just walking through my entire thought process from start to finish, minute by minute. Even if it's boring, even if there's nothing going on, even when I'm in a trade and it's in the red, how do I deal with that?. And I think it only takes a few of those sessions where you look at me do it and you're like, yeah, that's what I was missing, right? That's the right way to do it all along. And then things are gonna start clicking for you. And probably just the last thing, and I don't think this is something we do very differently, but I'm gonna use my personal example here. There has been a lot of things in life that I tried to figure it out myself because I do believe that I'm a pretty smart person and I have an ego to just kind of like Yeah, I can totally figure this out myself. But every single time I end up just paying for a little bit of coaching, not even like for the course or whatever, but just coaching where I get to pick the brain of someone that's already, you know, achieved what I'm trying to achieve. In 15 minutes, they'll be able to unblock literally months of like what I was trying to figure out but kept failing. And that has been a very similar kind of like success. There's a very similar story that a lot of our students have had where they've been struggling for months and like with one conversation it made them $10K. In fact, I even have word for word that phrase, like that sentence that came from a recent interview that I did. So Sage is a combination of those three. Like I don't think it's super special. It like, we understand enough that you don't need more technicals, you don't need more information, you just need execution because that's the only thing that's It's cool to know a lot of knowledge. It's cool to be really good at technical analysis, but like, we're all here to make money. At least I hope we're all here to make money. So yeah, that's what we focus on.
So you do take the live trades into the live market with the community?
Yeah, yeah.
Is it like every day or just like one session a week or how does that work?
Just one a week, man. I would love to come this year. I can do it every day. Although, I will be there every day on like WhatsApp. Right. Just there to answer questions, like live during the markets. But one day a week, we hop on a call together and you guys see everything like start to finish.
Right.
So, okay. And I'm presuming like you don't do the, like the signals on Telegram and all that stuff. So don't do that. No, it doesn't work at all. It doesn't work at all.
Look, I think with signals, because I am guilty of having run a signals group before, like for the first few years where I was running AOC, signals just felt like the easiest thing to do. Because, you know, believe it or not, signals are actually very profitable for like the guy running it, not particularly helpful for the actual people taking it. Again, so much of trading is in the mental models, it's in the psychological side. Signals don't give you that. If anything, it even makes it worse because now you're like, okay, you're in the trade, but you actually don't know why you're in the trade in the first place. You're in it because somebody else said so. Yeah. And then now when you want to think about how you're going to manage it, it's like, it's just a whole shit show. So yeah, no, no. Like we do share trade ideas and I do share the trades that I'm taking. Like Sid shares a lot of the trades he's taking. So in a way, there are signals like the entries, the exits, the TPs already there. Like we are doing signals in a way, but that's not like a— in fact, we do it every day, but like, that's not the main, that's never the main kind of like selling point. It's kind of like a bonus where as you're learning to do this stuff yourself, you just get to follow along with the trades that, you know, me and Sid are sharing to hopefully help you recover your, not hopefully, like to help you recover your investment into the program even before like you figured it out.
But it's about like, you know, the business model. I mean, most of the people which I know, like they're influencers, they are like good traders and like they do whatever, the YouTube and whatever. So what the model, what they use, they have affiliation with, let's say, a broker and they get obviously commission of each trade. They don't tell obviously to the people. They go like, you know what, join us and we give you the signals and come on, we're going to make you a millionaire. Let's go. So I don't know who's going to be a millionaire, probably the YouTuber than the actual guys. But the way the model works is like the more people join and they don't have to pay obviously the fee, they need to put like $100, whatever into their broker. You know, they got advantage of it. They might get $100 more for the trade. So they got $200 at the end. But each time they take a trade, the guy is making money. So when it comes to your business model, obviously, you know your model better than I do. I'm just asking, probably be a stupid question. Wouldn't that be easy for the people who can't afford to pay? And on your side, I mean, I don't want to go into detail, you know, like what I'm talking about. So won't that be easy for the people to put the $100 or $200 into the broker because they need the broker anyway. So this way they can join up to like initial level and then you have the upper level for, I don't know, for people who pay. Won't that be like something?
I think I'm just going to say this, like as a trading, like I have a sizable, you know, number on social media. I get approached every single day multiple times from these exchanges and brokers. That will offer me like amazing rates. In fact, yeah, the insane rates. I'm not gonna get too deep into like the sketchy stuff that they actually do, but for the most part, the reason I don't do it is because I'm never gonna get this type of offer from like Binance or Bybit because they don't need this. The exchanges and brokers that I usually get this from are usually quite sketchy. And I cannot in my good conscience promote something, like get you guys, like get my audience who trust, like who decided to, you know, put their trust in me to use a shady-ass broker that I'm not even willing to use myself. Like, sure, I would make money from it, but like, that's got to be, at least for me, there's a better way to do it. And yeah, I'd rather not go down that route. But believe me, man, I get some insane offers.
Yeah, I'll trust you. I know like other YouTubers are like making money that way. I don't know if somebody else wants to add a question. I probably can go on for hours before your cigar finished. So I don't know, the people are probably cursing me, you know, when this guy's gonna go. So I just feel like if somebody else wants to have any question.
Yeah, for sure. I'm gonna answer a few questions from the chat.
Yeah, please.
But I need to sign off now. Thanks again, Shwen. Really happy. You've genuinely made a huge difference for me. Thank you enough. Please, you already logged off. From anyone on the fence about Blueprint or Shwen's system, I've been in Blueprint since the beginning and the value is enormous. Shwen is always around to answer questions. The live trading sessions are incredibly helpful and the system generally works when it's followed correctly. And overall, even at full price, it's incredible value and worth every penny. Thank you again. Great words. Could you recommend some books? Yeah, for sure. First one that you should definitely look into is Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke. I think that's a non-negotiable. Second one that's really great, one that really changed my relationship with loss or like losses in trading, is called Best Loser Wins. It's by this guy called Tom Hougaard.
Great book.
I'm almost tempted to give more, but I say start with those two. Not because like more books are not like, not because there are not more books that are going to be better or whatever, but I think if you like, less is more, right? You don't need too much information. You need like, I'm a big believer in trying to filter out quality information and not necessarily having a whole bunch of shit. You just want to make sure you're reading stuff from people that have good information to share. I think both of those books are really great. If you want to third one. There is this one called The Mental Game of Trading by Jared Tendler, and he used to be, if I'm not mistaken, like a poker coach for some of the top poker players out there. And so he also wrote a book called The Mental Game of Poker, if I'm not mistaken. And like, he managed to also coach like really top-tier traders on how to improve their mental game. So I think that's another one that's going to be worth looking into. I know I said I'm not going to share too many books, but Everything by— oh, what's his name? The guy who wrote— Nassim Nicholas Taleb. So the guy who wrote Black Swan, Antifragile. I can't recall other books off the top of my head. Black Swan, Antifragile, Fooled by Randomness. Any one of Nicholas Taleb's books are insanely useful to understanding the financial markets in general. But I say those would be secondary compared to the first 3 that I gave you. Ian Betts. Best Loser Wins, Mental Game of Trading. You're very clear in your videos. Thank you so much. Who is the worst type of influencer on YouTube and why? Man, I wish I could give you a better answer because I haven't watched trading YouTube for like the last 2 years, or even actually the last 3 or 4 years actually. But I'd say some of the worst for me have been like just like, yeah, you know, the moonboys or like the signals bros. Because in a way I'm also like a signals bro, but like very systematic and very process-driven signals probe. And I'm not just kind of shouting off degen predictions. It's actually a process behind it. So yeah, I'm not super sure how to answer that. I'm not familiar enough anymore to answer that. This exchange alone has so much value. Glad that you're finding value from it. Nice. I like how everyone's like answering people's questions in the chat. Like, it's great. Shwen, what if someone is still learning all the technicals and needs full guidance but can't afford the bootcamp? What would you recommend for him? Join Blueprint. Like, even though it's like a little bit more DIY compared to Bootcamp, where Bootcamp we take a very active approach in working with you one-on-one, I'm still gonna be there answering questions in Blueprint. You're still gonna hop on a call with me every single week, where not only are we doing a Q&A just like this, but I'm also trading the live markets while I'm answering questions. And like, generally speaking, I'm like, not only me, but Sidj, like we're gonna be there answering questions and stuff like that. You're not gonna be left alone. It's not like, hey, here's the course, fuck off. So I wouldn't necessarily continue just watching educational YouTube videos. I'm pretty sure you've already done that and it's probably also a reason why you're still stuck. So I'd say like if it's possible, get some help because especially with trading, there is a lot of things that you are not aware, you don't know. And the correct term for this is called unknown unknowns. So there's like known unknowns where like, yeah, okay, I know for a fact that My trading system's not the best, right? But like, I don't know how, you know, how I can get a better strategy, right? That's like an example of a known unknown. But the unknown unknowns are the things that get you. They are the ones who deal the most damage because you're not gonna realize you're making mistakes and you're never gonna find out. Well, for most people they never find out, but for a lot of people, even if they do find out, it's gonna be too late, right? It's already after the damage has been done. And so much of what I preach in why people should join Blueprint or like just work with us is because we give you like, we just solve these unknown unknowns right out of the gate, right? Here's everything you need to know, here's everything that's probably gonna happen throughout your journey, and this is how you're gonna solve it. And that alone, like obviously that's not gonna cover everything under the sun, but it's enough to where you'll actually get a very structured approach and you start making progress. Hopefully that answers the question. If you have anything else, like feel free to, you know, just send a follow-up. So from Philip, what should we journal? Oh, that's a great, That's a good one. We could go like deep on this, but in general, I'd say with journaling you can do too much in a way where if you're trying to log literally everything about your trade to the minute details, it can generate a lot of friction. Because like you're going to be looking at the act of journaling and you're going to be like, oh man, I'm going to need to spend like half an hour just journaling this one trade, and you're never going to want to do it, which is normal. It's just normal human behavior. So If I can boil down the important things, I'd say arguably the most important one, if you only journal one thing, this is it. From a score of 1 to 10, how well did I follow my rules? 10 out of 10 if you followed everything. And obviously 1 out of 10 if you just started FOMO and panic selling and doing it multiple times in like 30 minutes. And if you only journal that, I think that's where you're gonna get you a really long way there. And notice how nothing in that sentence talks about if the trade won or lost. It doesn't matter if the trade won or lost. The only thing that matters and the thing that will get you improvement in trading is how well you're following your process. There's a very ironic thing in trading that I like to talk about where oftentimes if we keep chasing the wins and if we keep trying to like, oh yeah, I really want to win today, I really want to get a win. Oddly enough, that's the exact thing that will kind of let the win kind of escape you.. But when you actually just put your head down and focus on the process and like, all right, I don't really care, you know, what results I'm gonna get, but I'm just gonna make sure I control what I can control, which is executing my system to the best of my abilities. Naturally, as you do that, ironically, the good results that you're looking for will naturally come to follow. And so yeah, if I could boil it down, that's the only one thing. If you have a little bit more time, I'd say journal down any Yeah, no, not even just that. And if you can add a quick sentence of like why you think it's a 10 out of 10, or why, like if it's a 5 out of 10, all right, what could you improve, then what do you think happened there? If I could just boil it down, I think that it's going to get you a really long way there. And as a follow-up question, you also asked, I've come to the point now that I place my orders thinking how hard it is for me to lose this trade. Yeah, yeah, that's a good, that's a good approach, man. Like you can think of everything that can go wrong with the trade, and if you genuinely cannot find anything, then yeah, congrats, you have an A+ trade on your hands. Brother, can you do a very short analysis on today's Bitcoin chart because I'm planning a short at $64,600? My brother, my advice to you genuinely, never trade the fucking weekends. So every single financial market in the world is closed. You're going to get zero volume. Even if you see like a solid setup, just because you're operating in very low probability conditions, chances are you're going to get chopped out or worse, nothing's going to happen and you're just going to be sitting there monitoring the trade like, Oh, when is it going to move? Oh, is it going to stop me out? Oh, what's next? Avoid weekends, man. Like, there's a reason why, like, yeah, there's a reason why the market's closed. Take a break. And it's like, I think a lot of the people, they tend to want to trade on weekends. One, because they get a lot of dopamine from trading, which in that case, you know, you already know that's a problem. But second, you know, people do this because they may not necessarily have time during the weekdays to get like proper trades in. But the, That's also like a very, you know, big misconception about trading, which is that this takes a lot of time. But the reality is like, just to give you an idea, I trade maybe like actively 30 minutes a day, maybe less some days. And so are a lot of our students at this point where they're spending less than an hour a day actively trading. And so everyone has an hour a day regardless of your job or whatever. So yeah, I'd say get a— try to avoid weekends, not try to avoid, like just avoid weekends. You'll thank me later. Nothing good ever comes from trading weekends. Before I move on to the rest of your question, the most of the questions, Rick, if you like, I'm gonna unmute, sorry, I'm gonna also unmute you. Feel free to go away.
Hey man. Yeah, so I like what, I have a follow-up question on what you said earlier with the other guy. You said that because you are a pretty smart guy, you have a bit of an ego of like, I just want to learn how to figure this out on my own. And then all of a sudden you go to a coach and then he solves your problem like 15 minutes, but it took you months struggling to solve. Yeah, man. Based on your experience, personal experience and the experience of your students, because, you know, I'm assuming the average AOC follower is pretty intelligent. And especially for someone like me who already has a finance background, you know, so I have an economics degree, I have banking. So, you know, a lot of the stuff about macro and interest rates, I'm already very familiar with that. What do you think are the common problems of number one, like just typical high IQ people like scientists and engineers and also people who might also already have some technical background in this game like me, who was a banker, a finance guy, but hasn't really had any trades. I mean, hasn't had any serious like action or experience in trading and who, you know, just people in general who just have a tendency to hoard information and then just get analysis paralysis. Like, what do you think are the common issues that they tend to have to go address basically?
You hit the nail on the head, man. It's usually the biggest problem that I see. And this includes myself, is a tendency to overthink. Like, we think too much. And in trading—
Oh yeah.
I've already, I think I've already kind of covered this earlier, but like in trading we almost don't wanna think, right? A lot of people talk about, oh yeah, you just wanna, you know, be robotic and follow the system, right? Turn off your brain, which is tough for people like us to do. But genuinely though, that is what we need to strive for in trading, which is just less overthinking. And for me, the thing that helped was I have one system, I have one set of rules. And instead of just trying to predict or like think about this and think about that and how interest rates are going to affect the markets and how blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, it's like, all right, every day I come in, I have one job to do, follow my system. Naturally, as I continue to do that, that's how I managed to turn my brain off. Not by like, not because I purposely wanted to do that. It just kind of came as a result of executing the same system over and over again. And like just You know, another thing, especially with people that already have a solid background, like for example, you said you had a finance background, which is very respectable, by the way, even, and I'm going to use my example just to avoid like maybe insulting you. But for me, I have by all accounts, I think I have a pretty decent like kind of YouTube channel and I have pretty decent understanding of like how social media works. And yet, like despite what I think, I know. Fun fact, and I use this as a recent example because it's truly what I went through. For months, I was actually trying to just get more people to actually watch the daily videos that I post on YouTube. So if I'm going to be posting these videos anyways, I might as well get more people to watch it. For months, I like tried everything under the sun, but then I just missed. And then basically I ended up paying like a consultant a decent chunk of money for like a 1-hour call. And in that 1-hour call, He just said two things that were super simple that I applied and immediately, like for the last 3 or 4 weeks or so, like my views have like tripled consistently every single day. And it was just like adding a simple phrase at the start of like, hey, I'm Xuan, I have a 78% win rate. So if you're here, chances are like I'm probably going to be a little bit more right than I'm wrong. So you're in the right place. Just that little bit of credibility. I think that was one of the only things that I applied. Like, fuck, who would have knew? Like the rest of the content stayed the same. I just added a little phrase at the start, like, hey, why should you listen to me? You know, it was something so simple that it just completely eluded me. And so the biggest lesson that I keep learning is like, regardless of like what background I tend to have or like what expertise I already have, you have something to learn from everyone. And it's just like putting that ego aside. And if this person has what you're looking for and you're already managing to achieve it, like just shut up and listen. And I need to remind myself that all the time as well. Because like, yeah, you know, I think I'm pretty smart and I think I'm pretty successful, but Little do I know in Chinese there's a saying that "一山有比" , "一山有比" . Basically translates over to behind every tall mountain there is an even taller mountain, which means that you are never at a point where you absolutely know everything and that you are at the pinnacle. There's always going to be somebody that knows better than you. There's always going to be somebody that is doing it better than you. And you just got to learn. You just got to learn. But at least for me, like I just had to learn to shut up and listen and actually seek help. When, like, to actually seek help instead of, like, trying to figure it out myself.
Yeah, no, I absolutely agree. Like, I actually noticed, uh, like, here's the thing, a lot of, a lot of people in finance, myself included, like, sure, maybe we make pretty decent money, but you'll be surprised, a lot of them are actually not very good at handling money. A lot of bankers are not very good at handling money. They make a lot of money, but they spend a lot of money. Like, yeah, so I, you know, it's like a doctor who, who should be in the best position to take care of his health, but he smokes. I mean, no offense, I used to smoke too.
I stopped smoking a long time ago.
But yeah, man, um, the other pattern that I've noticed is people who are good at something, that they are coaches, whatever it is— trading, dating, social skills— like the ones who are legit like you, eventually I find out— I noticed this as a pattern— they actually get coaching for other aspects of their life. So like this other guy, if he's a great dating coach, he's good at that, he can coaches people in dating and romance. But like, he's also, he's also like a serious gamer. And he actually hires coaches for gaming in the same way that you are a great trading coach. But you also hired coaching for social media or, you know, content creation. So, so I guess, yeah, man, that, that answers a lot of the questions. And because I'm also kind of ADHD like you. And oh, yeah, just one last thing, like How is the success? Because you mentioned some of your bootcamp students, like about half of them got funded. What about for your Blueprint program? Like what's the success rate of people using Blueprint program?
I will say this, the people that actually show up and consistently put in the work, then just, I think just by the very nature that, and I don't say this as a knock on anybody, but I think just the very nature that, you know, it is a cheaper program. There tends to be people that are less lacking in terms of the soft skills. Right? You know, the commitment, the overall discipline and the overall capacity to just remain consistent. I generally don't know how I can help. Like, we do try our very best. At the end of the day, I can't want this for them more than they do for themselves. I think a rough success rate is around, if I'm not mistaken, around 15 to 20% of people that actually get funded and start making money. But the common consistent pattern that I just see with every single one of them is that they just want this and they may not make the fastest progress immediately. They're not like the most disciplined people ever, but they do show up consistently even 2 or 3 days a week and they just, you know, stick with it. And this is gonna come off as a bit of a sales pitch, but like I do genuinely believe that the framework and the roadmap works as long as people actually put in the work. So yeah, like I think my goal for like moving— oh, also another thing, the people that actually make it are like massively successful to the point where even I'm surprised. Surprised because I would have thought like, you know, people would get way like just more amazing results consistently with bootcamp and maybe with Blueprint, you know, people are going to be a lot slower. But we found the complete opposite to be true. Sometimes like people don't— there are certain people that don't really need that kind of like handholding, like, hey, you show up today, like we're going to hit a workout. Some people don't need that, right? They're able to just kind of go at their own pace and kind of figure it out. So surprisingly, like we've had some insane case studies. From Duopin, which was also a big surprise to me. But yeah, in general, I think moving forward, one of the big goals of mine is to get the quote unquote success rate of Duopin up. But yeah, as long as you're like semi-consistent, then you're going to do well.
Yeah, like, because I've, after thinking about it, at least for my case, like, you're right, all the information is there. Like, there's probably some dude out there who could just learn and apply all of the stuff you put on YouTube and he's going to make money just if you just stick to it.
Right.
Yeah.
And I have a few, like, I have a few examples of that. Like, there's a guy that got funded for $1 million and made basically like $30K in a single day.
It's crazy.
Just from watching my videos. Yeah.
So like, cause I think for someone like me, at least it's not a problem with info. As a matter of fact, I bought some of your stuff, like the AOC masterclass content, something like a year ago or something. And yeah, one of my problems is procrastination. I still sat on it. I'm sorry.
No worries.
But I would, if I, what I like about the blueprint is, is I think what I need is it's not, it's, it's more of like number one, creating a structure to make sense of all of this information without the noise, the signal from the noise, like step one, do this, step two, step three, do this. And then someone to just, you know, buzz me and tell me, hey bro, sit the fuck down. Just lock in on this one. Just focus on this.
Okay.
Just stop doing all this other shit. Just, just focus on this. Put your reps in on this thing and then this one, and then let's take it from there, figure it out what you're good at, what you're not good at, what you need to work on. Yeah, it's like that analogy would be like if you're going to gym, I already know how to do a bench press.
I don't—
I know how to do a dumbbell, you know, dumbbell curls and all that stuff. It's just being able to like put them together in a way that makes sense for you and based on the experience of someone better than you, more experienced than you and and then just block out everything else. Just focus on that, focus on this. So I'm very interested in the blueprint. Um, one, one last thing I'd like to ask, like, how realistic would it be? Because like, I'm based in the Philippines, so the cost of living is not too high. How realistic would it be to consistently earn, let's say, a minimum of $2,000 a month? Because I don't pay rent, I own my house, I have a car, so I'm not paying rent. So my cost of living, my overhead's not very high. Let's say $2,000 consistently in trading and for an average trader, average successful trader, doesn't have to be great, doesn't have to be a rockstar, just that your average successful student, how long would it take for them? Is it realistic to expect $2,000 a month consistently? And how long would it take for them to get to that level from, from a beginner, basically for like the average student, not even like the great or just average student.
So, um, one thing I would totally love to point out is the fact that a lot of the people that actually join us are not looking to— because you know, like the average trade, like the average trading guru, bro, they're always like, oh yeah, make $10K a month from trading, which is cool and all. But what we found, at least a lot of people that end up joining us, is they're not looking to make like $10K a month. Like it would be nice, of course, but of course, yeah, they would just like to even replace like half of their, you know, kind of like full-time salary, but they have more options. In life. And obviously if you can get to $2,000 a month or something, you can always— it means that you will now have the skills and capabilities to make that more. Yeah, so to answer your question, first of all, is it realistic? The answer is like, and this is not from coming from like that kind of like over-promise under-delivery kind of side of things, because most of the time when people are just starting out in trading, they may be really interested in trading as like a career kind of like option, or like it's just something that they would love to do for a living.. But the thing that makes it tough is that they may not start with a lot of capital. So even if you do insanely well in trading, like, oh yeah, you make 20, 30% month over month, which you're from finance, you know, that is absolutely ridiculous.
Yeah, it's insane.
But if you only have like $1,000 to your name, then yeah, it's like, you'll probably make even more money just doing your daytime job. Yeah, exactly. So that's where prop firms come in. So just to give you an idea, a $2,000 a month income is literally one payout from one $50K account. You have options like Apex and you have also some, you know, other different kind of like prop firms. They'll cost at most like $100, $200, $300, maybe at most $500, but that's pretty rare nowadays. So you spend like a few hundred bucks, get a $50K account. Obviously you need to have the trading skill to actually, you know, pass it and get a payout. Once you do, an average monthly payout to get $2K a month is 4% on a single $50K account. Actually 5% because they do take a bit of a split of the profits.
Sure.
5% a month. That is, even as a finance guy, that's realistic.
Real, yeah, that's definitely realistic.
And even if you don't, and 5% a month realistically is, if we really do the math, let's say you take like 10 or 20 trades a month, 40% win rate, you drop like 40%, very average, right? That's, I think that's a very average number. $500 risk per trade. Every time you win, you make times the amount of your your risk, you can start to see how you only really need probably like 10 trades a month at a 40% win rate. 10 to 12 trades, I'd say, on average again. So in terms of realistic, 100%, like no question. We've like, I don't have a lot of like case studies of people doing like absolute crazy numbers, like $20,000, $30,000 a month. We do have that, but that's very much, you know, minority. But the majority of people that actually make it are very comfortably making like $2,000 to $3,000 a month and they're already happy with that. So yeah, in terms of realistic, in terms of how likely it is for the average person to do it. With a prop firm, yes. Unless you have enough capital, then that's a different story. But yeah, 100%. And if you're talking about the amount of time, honestly, man, that's very dependent on you. Like, you could be really consistent, you show up and put in the work, even at just an hour a day. Also, with already, like, I get the feeling just from speaking to you that you're a very self-aware person, which already is a very important skill. Yeah, yeah. In trading, just to be aware like, hey, you know, you're in this emotional state and here's what you should do next.
It comes with age.
Yeah, that as well, yeah. So yeah, honestly, realistically, could be short, could be long, but one thing's for sure, I don't ask that you kind of trust that this will work. So I've already proven it, a lot of other people have already voiced it as well. I think as long as you trust the process and you put in the work, like, you'll be pleasantly surprised.
Yeah, so like an hour a day, right? Because I, just sharing from experience, when I worked for a few years in the FX trading, you know, like one of the things that I kind of hated about the job is like the markets are always at the back of your mind.
Yeah, man. No kidding. Tell me about it.
We're out drinking, having a good time, and then I'm thinking, oh shit, the dollar's going up, or non-farm payroll just got released.
Holy shit.
By Monday we're fucked. You know, it's like, is your system like once you get the hang of it, are you going to still be having that weight at the back of your mind, always thinking about the markets, or is it going to be more of a— I wouldn't say set and forget, but something leaning more towards that than, than, you know, because you know what I mean? Like, because when I, when I was, when I was trading crypto during the '21 bull run, and that was, I think, around the time you started showing videos, it's like, man, I can't sleep, you know, I can't, I can't eat. It's like, I'm eating, I'm looking at the charts and talking to my friends, I'm looking at the charts. It's like I want to do trading full-time, but at the same time, I don't want my brain to always just have this at the back of my head, you know?
Yeah, for sure, man. That's actually a great point that you brought up. For me, at the very least, I'm a big believer that trading is something that conforms to you, not you conform to trading. I know like you coming from a finance background, you might have seen otherwise, but it is definitely possible. And at least for me, like, I optimize a lot of the decisions in my life to having freedom. Just to give you an example, last Monday I decided that I had enough of the city and I just wanted to come over to the beach, get a little like nature getaway. And here I am for the last week, just right by the beach. I really value the ability or like just the option to do that, not just in terms of time, but also like obviously money is an important thing to make this happen. Like, there there are not a lot of careers out there that will allow you to just kind of get that freedom to just fuck off if you want to fuck off. And yeah, you want to work. So one thing you will realize about the system that I've developed is it's simple, man. Like you don't need to put in a lot of time. Like if you want to, like we have a scalping model where you could go like balls to the wall if you want to spend the whole afternoon like just locked in on the charts and taking like 5 trades throughout the session. 100%. That's your That's a model that you can go for. But in general, what I optimize and what I kind of like help people just achieve is I don't want you to look at the charts more than an hour or two a day. And honestly, you can get away with way less. I can get away with way less. A lot of Tesla students get away with way less as well. But yeah, don't think that this is something that's going to require like 8-hour days. Like you can if you want to. Some people do, but I don't want to be forced into doing that. Right. Hope that answers your question.
So like once, once your 1 to 2 hours of charting a day is done, that's it. You just focus your mind on whatever you want to do, basketball or watch football or spend time with friends. That's great, man.
That's great.
Okay. Um, yeah.
Yeah.
I like what I'm hearing, man.
Yeah. Dude, I'll see you inside, man. Like you'll be pleasantly surprised. And, uh, yeah. Yeah. If you've tried, if you've tried all sorts of shit before, like, yeah, no, I've, uh, I've actually watched, uh, one of your videos on the strategy.
Like, I kind of forgot it, but like, you look at the higher time frame bias and you look at the lower time frame, and then your pricing— you place your pricing somewhere based on the lower time frame, stuff like that. You look for stuff like fair value gaps and stuff. So I think I'm getting it, but like, I just need someone to like basically smack me at the back of my head and say, hey, no, dude, dude, just, just, just lock in. Let's lock in on this, okay? Just forget everything. I'm just— just lock in, bro. Don't, don't, don't try to look into other stuff like Ichimoku clouds and all that bullshit indicators and stuff is like, cause I tried studying ICT's videos. You mentioned him, right? Like, bro, it's like, I mean, I'm getting it piece by piece, but it's like overwhelming. It's like, what the fuck?
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. He was, he was way too many concepts, man. And they all sound incredibly valid, but if you try to put them all together, it's like, yeah, you just get confused, man.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah, man. So it's a great, it's a great program. I look at the, I looked at the Blueprint website, so I'm very interested. So just starting over from scratch and then I'll, we'll keep in touch for sure, man, for the next couple of years up to now, from now and then the next couple of years. I look forward to be part of the gang, so to speak.
100%, man. Looking forward to have you.
All right. Thank you, sir.
Thank you.
Uh, I see that there's a couple, there's a couple of, uh, last people just kind of like having their hands raised. They make a promise that I would not let any questions go unanswered. So me personally. I'm going to answer the last 2 questions and I think I'm going to have to call it a night. Like, laptop almost ran out of battery. That's why I had to move inside and kind of plug it in. So yeah, you are requested for an unmute.
Hey man, I don't mean to take up too much more of your time. I was honestly AFK and I came back and you're still doing this. Holy shit, dude. What the fuck was that guy on? I'm sorry. I'm literally about to buy the blueprint, I just want to make sure it doesn't go away, right? Like, it's not like some shit that ends, you know what I mean? Like, I get the framework and I have it. It's not going to leave.
Yeah, no, no, no, no. Right. Yeah, no, no, no. Whatever is in there, you get to keep.
Yeah, right, right.
Okay.
All right, man, that's all. Thank you so much for all your time. I really appreciate it. And I think everyone else does.
So I'm going to head out of here, but joining up Yeah, Roman, just one final note, man, because I remember you joined one of the calls from before and I remember you asking me a couple of questions and the very next day you got funded.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, bro, I think you have your head in the right place and I'm just really looking forward to seeing how much more like progress you manage to make once you join in. So just really stoked to have you in, man.
Yeah, thank you, man. Thank you, man.
I really appreciate it. Ciao ciao, man.
All right, man. Peace.
All right, Danny, you have been requested.
Oh, thanks, man. Real simple one for you. I was just curious what you tend to be trading in the London session.
Sorry, just say that again. You went a little bit soft.
Oh, sorry. Let me turn this down. Bad background noise. I was just wondering if when you are trading the London session, what you tend to trade, because it's, I assume it's outside of the normal kill zone hours that, yeah, usually, usually preach, sorry, British summertime or GMT would be 12 to 3 and you always operate on EST, which is not 7 to 10. So I was just curious if you ever, say if you're back in the UK and you're trading London session, what assets you tend to trade, assume kind of like 7 to 10 GMT.
Yeah. Yeah, in terms of assets, you can honestly get away with, like, believe it or not, like, I'm gonna use like NASDAQ as an example. Even the NASDAQ has some decent movement during the Asia session where it's like the kind of like polar opposite of where, you know, NASDAQ is supposed to, you know, operate at its fullest. So with London, it's not to say that, you know, you can only trade these few assets because the truth is London is still like a major financial center. Which means that there is going to be major volume coming into the markets in general. It's not to say like, oh, when a trader in the London trading floor goes to the office, he's only going to trade euro, right? He's also probably going to take some positions on NASDAQ or whatever. So short answer is like you can trade anything. If you want a more prop, like we want to like kind of min-max this, I definitely lean towards stuff that operates primarily during the London session. So stuff like EUR/USD and GBP/USD. You have the Swiss franc. You've also got— actually, I think that's the only one today that we trade that is like primarily London. But I would say don't let that be an exhaustive list. You will get just as good, if not better results if you actually try it out on Bitcoin. Like for example, the last 2 to 3 weeks on Bitcoin, right? New York has been absolute shit show, but London's been pretty clean. So like, yeah, you know, honestly, the real answer is like, don't let it limit you. It's still a very major kind of like market timing for all assets. So you can trade anything.
Appreciate that. Are you trading the FTSE very much?
Sorry, what do you say?
Are you trading the FTSE or is the UK 100 much your sort?
Not really.
When you're on this side of the world?
Not really. I'm like, I basically, I've been doing this long enough to where I've kind of settled on like my, the 10 pairs that I actually look at on a daily basis.
Sure.
I don't, I realize I don't really need more than 10. Most of the days I'm not even looking at 10, it's more like 6 or 7. And usually within that I already have a very decent opportunity that I can get. So that's not to say that the index that you just mentioned is subpar or inferior or whatever, it's just you can make anything work. But if I had to give you a tip, like I'd say stick to what I— what we like to call the majors. You've got like EUR/USD and GBP/USD, you've got like the big forex pairs, you know, and like Bitcoin. Like stick to the big pairs for now. Especially when you're first starting out.
That's what I do.
Yeah.
Stick to that and you'll be good.
Cool, man.
Thank you.
And it says it's 7 to 10. If you were to touch a UK session, is it usually about 7 to 10 similar to New York in terms of like 1 hour pre-market, 1, 2 hours post-market open?
I'm not sure. Like, I think you want to adapt this from 2 AM to 5 AM New York time. It's the most accurate timing.
Okay.
Okay. So 7 to 10.
Cool, man.
Thank you very much. Appreciate it.
And, uh, sample off one for sure, man. All right, Carmen, go for it.
Hi Sean, this is Carmen and I've been following you for not too long right now, maybe a month or so, but, uh, yeah, thanks. And I'm trying to learn the technicals still, so I have just decided to give it a go for the, um, Blueprint and I just signed up already. So I'm looking forward. I already scheduled our call for next week. And what I'm looking forward is really, really, because without that, there is nothing like the technicals. Because you say that, yeah, you will do, you will learn the technicals quickly and that's not the most difficult part. But, you know, until I don't have that, I cannot decide what the difficult part is. Because you know what I mean? So, um, yeah, I have high hopes to learn the technicals for, as a, as a starter. You think, uh, you think that, um, you know, via the Blueprint, I will be able to, you know, get the guidance and, and so I can do the studying for, you know, because, uh, there are millions of videos on YouTube and You know, so I could just do, I don't know, 15 hours of studying a day. Um, but still, like you said, you needed 5 years to figure out what, what, you know, to, to, to see what is important or what, you know, to work out your system. And, um, I, I am, I'm that type of person who is also an overthinker, so really I think probably like 24 hours a day as well, because also during my sleep, I dream constantly and there's like no switch off for me. And that's why I'm looking forward to it. So yeah. So if, uh, yeah, so that's why I just wanted to confirm with you, like, if you think it's, uh, for technical, um, you know, people who want to learn the technicals. You know, if I can, you know, learn it quickly, so on with the Blueprint.
Yeah, yeah, for sure. You're definitely in the right place. And thanks for sharing the fact that like you're just kind of like starting as a beginner, which is great.
Yeah.
My suggestion for you is don't hesitate, like with Blueprint or like just in any program in general, I think one of the first videos that you will watch is me literally telling you like, don't be afraid to ask. Stupid questions, because there's no such thing as a stupid question. Everyone at some point was an absolute beginner. And the only thing that will keep you stuck as an absolute beginner is if you refuse to kind of like let go of the ego, which I'm not saying that you have an ego, but like just being able to ask questions because you're already in the program and that means now you have the ability to get the help that you need. So As you're learning through the technicals and stuff like that, if there's anything that feels unfamiliar or just like, yeah, you kind of understand this, but you also feel like you don't really understand this, just shoot a message and make a post on school. And I guarantee you, like, the community itself in the Blueprint will probably be there to answer your question first before I will even get the chance to do it. Everyone's just really helpful because everyone knows how it's like to just be completely fresh. At trading and technicals, which is very, you know, complicated world, right? So that's the only advice I would give you. Like, don't hesitate to reach out if you're a bit shy to kind of post a message on the main kind of like school. That's what I would recommend. You can always reach out to us privately and like we'll make sure like your questions are kind of resolved.
Okay.
And also, and yeah, make sure you join the Wednesday calls with me, like Or even the Sunday calls with Sid, like you get your, like 100% you get your questions answered. So don't worry.
Okay, thanks. I just want to also ask you something because I was watching your YouTube videos lately and you mentioned like which time is the best to trade New York session and I'm not sure which, you know, which time how you call that, time zone you're mentioning. Are you talking like local New York time when you say it or?
Yeah, always. Okay. Any, if you ever hear any traders talk about time or anybody in finance, just assume that it's going to be New York time. That's where everyone kind of has their measuring stick.
Okay. So when you say like London time, then you say just, then you mean like, I don't know, because you mentioned this kill zone. I don't know what is that yet either.
You'll definitely learn in the modules.
Okay, okay, great. Thanks. I'm looking forward to it.
Yeah, looking forward to hearing some. In fact, I'll hold you accountable if I don't see your question, at least like if I don't see a question from you on the community this week, like you're gonna have us come knocking on your door.
Okay.
Okay. Don't worry. I think in the beginning I might be shy, but after that, as more more comfortable I will be, you know, in the knowledge that I gain, the more confident I will get as well to, to, you know, to comment or to ask. Because in the beginning, you know, I'm just asking all these stupid questions, you know, which you say there is no stupid question for, especially for beginners. But for me, it's like, you know, it's like everyone here in the call seemed to be quite experienced, so.
Believe it or not, if you have a question, chances are somebody else has it as well, but they're also afraid to ask. If everyone has the same mentality, like nobody's going to make any progress.
Okay. Yeah.
Just think of it this way. You now have the ability to ask a question and just get immediately like unstuck. And worst thing that can happen for you, especially when you're starting this out, is you learn something and you think you get it. But you actually don't, and you just continue to do it, and you're just going to spend so much time going in the wrong direction. And then eventually when you figure it out, it's like, ah, fuck, now you have to like come back to the starting point and go in the right direction again. So you might as well just—
It is like that though. It's really like that. I know.
Yeah, but looking forward to—
Me too.
Looking forward to seeing you.
Me too. Next week. Take care. Thanks a lot.
All right.
Daniel.
Hi, man.
Yeah, what's up? Uh, good here. So I'm gonna ask a couple questions, or maybe just one.
So I've been trading for the past 2 years.
Yeah.
And, uh, from that past 2 years, I've lost 50% of my portal and then got it back, and then currently I'm on a loss right now. It's more than 50%. So the broker I use, there's this, uh, there is no leverage available, you know. Sometimes people use leverage, right, when they trade. But when I trade, I don't have that kind of features, so it's kind of hard for me to scale up my wins. But yeah, so is there a way like to trade without leverage, or leverage is just the way to scale up your portfolio? Yeah, I think the way that I would explain this is you can definitely do it without leverage, but does that also mean that you're not able to go short? Like, are you only able to buy and sell?
Yeah.
Then I think that is going to be very limiting for what you do as a trader. So much of the beauty of trading instead of investing is that you can trade the market both ways. If you don't have leverage, you immediately, you lose that flexibility to go short. I don't want to say that you cannot make money without leverage, because a lot of people do, but it's definitely more so investing rather than straight up, like, yeah, it's definitely a lot more investing rather than trading. So I'd say if possible, go get yourself onto a broker that actually gives you leverage. Okay, thank you, man. Cheers. Right, guys. Yeah, who knew? I was expecting the cigar to last a couple of hours, ended up lasting 4. Pretty deep call, lots of questions answered. And hope you guys got a lot of value out of it. Like, I know there was a bit of a sales pitch and I know there was, you know, just some, you know, talk about like, hey, you know, you should come work with us. But it's also because I genuinely believe like, we're making a positive impact. And I'd love for you guys to get help where you need it instead of, yeah, just continue to guess by yourself. But outside of that, it was honestly really great to just like hang out with you guys. And I'll definitely try to look this— I'll definitely try to do this more. Like, but in general, yeah, thanks for spending your time with me on a beautiful Saturday. I never take this for granted, which is why I always try to overdeliver on, you know, every single one of these calls that we do do. But yeah, guys, it's been a great call. Um, if you have any questions, feel free to shoot it over to WhatsApp. But if you're not interested, if you're unable to, no pressure at all. But otherwise, have a great day everyone, or a great night. I am gonna head straight to bed. But outside of that, see you guys.










