The Trader Who Only Uses Naked Charts Yet Makes Millions Rajan Dhall

TITLE: The Trader Who Only Uses Naked Charts, Yet Makes Millions - Rajan Dhall CHANNEL: Titans Of Tomorrow DATE: 2025-12-28 ---TRANSCRIPT--- a professional trader managing over $30 million in capital yet using a [music] strategy so simple he says a 5-year-old could do it. If you do have any psychological flaws, the market will find it. I’ve seen it happen. Whether it be impatience, fearfulness, overaggressiveness, you’re going to have a good day one day. You’re going to have a bad day one day. You’re going to be happy one day. You’re going to be sad one day. If you’re not psychologically wellbuilt to manage these situations, the market will take it from you. Introducing Rajand Dal, a technical analysis lecturer and a professional money manager with nearly two decades of trading experience using a very simple yet effective system built entirely on naked charts. In this episode, Rajan reveals how he generates trade ideas utilizing just two time frames, the risk protocols he uses to keep his draw downs tiny, and how any trader could copy his exact checklist using only a single line on the chart.

Technical analysis teaches you how to be an analyst. Trading teaches you how to be a trader. They’re two completely separate things. An analyst can’t be a trader sometimes. A trader can’t be an analyst sometimes. They’re two different jobs. What is the difference though? If we can break it down to the basic form, it’s like institutional traders are the ones that move the markets. We can’t sit there with our 500 quid a position or whatever it is and think once that’s in the market, it’s going to move the market. It’s not. But when [music] the big boys come in and it starts to break out of a range and it starts to wave, our job is to join that, predict it, forecast it, whatever you want to call it, that’s our job. And we are going to get that wrong just as much as we are going to get it right. The amount of technical analysis that you know and do is not going to help you. What’s going to help you there is your discipline and risk management. That for me is what a trader’s job is. Speaking on taking technicals into a strategy, people usually learn to read price before they learn how to trade. What is that journey or the correct journey to go from analyst to trader? Now I have the luxury of hindsight. I would ladies and gents welcome back to another episode. I’m joined by a nice veteran we have over here. 16 years of marketing experience. Rajan, thank you very much for joining us today. I’m fearful to say he’s now 19 years. I’m older. Yeah. Well, the wiser the wiser you get. Uh I want to kick off right away with the the trinity that is money management, psychology and technicals and these are heavy components uh for anyone’s journey in trading. But how would you rank or prioritize or what is your philosophy on the dynamics of the three? Yeah. So we call it the 33% rule. So it is 33% risk management, 33% psychology and 33% strategy. So that’s that’s how we kind of manage it. I don’t think there is one that’s more important than the other. Uh I think when a lot of new traders come to the market, they think, “Oh, it’s the strategy that makes you money.” I I really don’t think it is. So that’s why we split it evenly between them. That’s I think it’s it’s the best way to do it. I’ve had both sides of the spectum spectrum on the show. And I find sometimes people use psychology as scapegoats. Like I I don’t have a clue on my technicals. I haven’t put the time or effort to solidify it, but it must be my psychology. And it can become an easy way out, but there is truth within it. So if you can help me dance that delicate line of uh coping mechanism or blaming psychology versus no this is where it needs to be addressed. Yeah I think the psychology creeps in in areas that you don’t really expect. So what what I would say to any trader is if you do have any psychological flaws the market will find it and amplify it. That’s what I truly believe and and obviously coaching traders for so long now. I I’ve seen it happen. Whether it be impatience, whether it whether it be fearfulness, you know, whether it be over aggressiveness, however you are at one stage or another. You’re you’re going to have a good day one day, you’re going to have a bad day one day, you’re going to be happy one day, you’re going to be sad one day, you’re going to be depressed. These are all things if you’re not psychologically well built to manage these situations, the market will will take it from you. I believe that the markets can amplify the emotions you already have or large numbers can amplify whatever if you have a bit of greed the market will bring it out of you for example and I found in my own experience that the way I traded in terms of a technical perspective I tried to cater it in a way that would support my individual psychology for example I I learned after a few years that I don’t like seeing a big number in profit and then having a 50% retracement that that retracement portion which might be just a couple days eats me alive and I take irrational decisions Uh, so long story short, but then I ended up being more intraday trader cuz it just I like the instant feedback and it it catered to my personality more. How much do you believe technicals can support your personality type or should psychology be its own thing that is addressed? So the market wouldn’t care about you in that situation, right? It does what it does regardless of whether you’re in it or not. So I would say that statistically if you continuously trade like that in that way and it produces numbers that one trade or that one issue shouldn’t bother you because it’s not anything can happen at any one given mo moment. It’s the sample size that’s important. So let’s say you had that scenario where you have a 50% draw down on a trade. Let’s say for example 70% of them came down to your 50% draw down level but the 30% of them went to 5x 6x after you’re doing okay but you’re not allowing yourself to know that because of the psychology. The psychology is what kills you to find that out and that’s the problem. You mean if people take decisions too early based on psychology% you don’t have a sufficient sample size to find the data of what’s the truth and it’s an emotional decision. Correct. And that’s why day trading has like an allure for the instant feedback like you said. But the issue is in day trading you have less time to make those emotional decisions. This is why day trading is harder than swing trading for a new trader because you’re having to make the same kind of decisions in a fraction of the time. Like for a swing trader, you could have a day, you know, maybe even a couple of days to decide whether you’re taking profit, when you’re going to move your stop, how you going to trail it. But when you’re day trading, you’ve got milliseconds, sometimes seconds to make that same decision, and they’re not going to be the same quality decisions. It takes a lot of training. Yes. Uh on this topic, I didn’t mean to end up here, but kind of swing trading or higher time frame trading versus day trading, scalping. Um so, of course, there is a you can call it decision fatigue or just you got to be on the on the ball on a on a lower time frame trading type. At the same time I just want to talk about let’s say variance or degree of certainty uh linked to time in in the sense of if I enter if I just look at market open on Euro dollar the chances that it will be 10 pips higher and 10 pips lower just that box you could probably call it with like a 80% certainty it will be within that box but then if you ask me where is it going to be in one year compared to 10 minutes you know as time goes on it can go 100 pips down or a thousand pips down or a thousand pips up so duration uh I guess would reduce your confidence in where price could be um would that come into influence when you’re talking about day trading versus swing trading? It does, but it still has the same degree of certainty at the end of the day. It’s still 50/50, right? If we said that 1,00 1,000 or 10 and 10. Mhm. So, it does come into into aspect, but it’s still a coin flip if you’re looking at it in that respect because the variables that we have over a longterm period, there’s a lot more variables over that period of time. You know, Trump elections, you know, power war breaks out. Exactly. All that kind of stuff. But during an intraday trade, we still have variables. Um, but obviously they’re easier to cope with because they were short certain amount of time. So today’s example, you know, there was like some some bombing in Qatar today, but nobody had that on the cards today. I I don’t think anybody would have thought about that. So these things you can’t forecast. See, see what I’m saying? So it’s still there and the ver and the the averaging of that number of the probability of that number is still the same because we’ve chose something that’s equal. Mhm. Just on this topic of probability. So I came across uh this table and you’re probably familiar with it and it was basically the probability of X number of losses in 100 trade sample size and it was win rate against number of losses in a row. Yeah. And for me, if someone was to just ask me blindly, you know, how what’s the percentage chance you have seven losses in a row or six losses in a row in 100 trade sample size, I’ll be like, it’s unlikely. I don’t get seven losses in a row. But the in 100 trade sample size, seven losses in a row, the probability was something like 60 70%. It’s it’s extremely high to the point where it’s like something you have to face at some point in your career, seven losses in a row. uh talk to me about this matrix of probabilities of losses in a row and how you can psychologically adapt or have money management systems in place. So this is something that we we involve and delve into deeply. This is the heart of DND and how we trade. Right? So I I trade the same way every single day. Every single day I take pictures of the trades. They look the same. Everything is the same about it every day. Um on when we started the the company we we u monitored the first up to 400 trades. Yeah. So 400 trading days. I only take one trade a day. Um in those we had eight losses in a row, eight winners in a row. You know through the sequence of the documents where I keep the the records of this, it happened four times over those 400 trades. Okay. That we lost eight in a row. that was the worst winning uh the worst losing streak and the most winning streak consecutive winners and losers in that period of time though it doesn’t account for where you might have three winners yeah one loser and then eight winners or something so then the the compound effect of of that is encountered in that and this is where I think the the consecutive losers and winners thing comes in you have to be prepared I think to get between seven and 14 trades in a row wrong worst case scenario so if you’re trading 1% per trade which is what a lot of the gurus tell you or whatever um you have are you prepared to have a 14% draw down and how will you psychologically react on a 14% draw down so we look at draw down values on worst case scenario basis and normally our traders use a 30 trade worst case scenario draw down 30 where did you get the number 7 to 14 what is that symbolic of practice it’s actually it’s actually real data so uh so it’s it’s simulated data as in like uh data from real markets but then also forward testing data and live trading data. That’s how that’s how we know the answer. And the reason you decided these numbers is because in a one-year sample size uh you will encounter it once or twice. Hence be prepared for that. Yeah. And then but it goes for you as well. Yeah. There’s it’s non-discriminate. So uh it’s absolutely fine if it goes for you or against you. But 1% of your account balance is too high if if that’s what you’re thinking. So, if you’re starting, let’s say, with 100 grand, if we use that for easy maths, and you’re trading $1,000 a trade, are you willing to lose $14,000 and still psych psychologically perform in the same way? Not many traders can do that. And that’s that’s the issue of why a lot of traders don’t make it. Let’s take a moment to talk about a partner of the show, a leading prop firm that is funded. Next, it’s important for me to listen to our community to see who are you working with and how can we make your experience better. And the main feedback I heard is trusted payouts, quick payouts, ability to scale, and affordable prices. And Funded Next has ticked all of those boxes. Not only being a top three prop firm in the industry, but also having on demand payouts. And every 10% you gain on your account, you will double your capital for free. And because in this industry, trust and reliability is the most important factor. An important guarantee that they have is that if you do not receive your payouts within 24 hours, they will gift you an additional $1,000 to your payouts just for being late. So to unlock all of these benefits and work with a leading prop firm in the industry funded next check out the link in the description or use the code to t if you were to put an percentage of draw down that is something that is manageable to absorb and and perform at the same level. Um just so I can help understand we’re assuming seven losses in a row. What percentage risk should we go for? What kind of a draw down you see people easily bounce back from and and then it gets harder and harder thereafter. Yeah. So I so what I normally do is is on total account balance is a 20% draw down divided by 30 trades. That’s what I normally do. Yeah. Okay. So just under a percentage. Yeah. Correct. So So normally 0.5% to 0.75 and then also this can change to summer and winter markets. Summer markets I’ll drop down to like 0.5. Winter markets I’ll do 0.5.3. But when we’re in peak conditions sometimes I’ll put my risk up higher to counterbalance that. So like throughout the summer this summer um I was trading minuscule amounts of money for for my account um just to keep myself sharp and then when September kicks in a lot my risk. Which asset class or where are you noticing the seasonality where it makes sense to modulate your risk based on time of the year? Always equities because like it’s a historical thing. This year was actually very good. August was the volume was decent in August this year but the previous two years it was very poor. So the strategies weren’t working in the same way. And what we mean by that is like because I normally trade around the open, the US open, we wouldn’t see as much volatility in terms of how far things would run around the open in those months. And that just means you’re not going to hit your targets, right, for your for your trades with the same stop- losses? Does does that mean you try a different strategy for this period or just drop down risk and be conservative? Drop down risk and be conservative and also book a holiday for the summer. Okay, that’s it. So I I go away for two weeks every summer. to say pick your battles and know know when to be on. Yeah, this summer like I said was a really good summer and it is unusual for us to have it like this. Um but but in the previous two years our strategies didn’t work as well in the summer as they did in the other times. Uh talking about draw down periods, there is also a conflicting approach you could have where one party may say let me maintain my risk throughout uh let’s say call it 1% risk even during five losses, seven losses in a row. I want to maintain that risk because when I encounter my winning period again, I can recover at the same rate. Whereas others may drop their risk during a losing period for psychology reasons, but then you’re longer in the hole and that might amplify psychology because now you’re 3 weeks or six weeks in the hole. What is your view on that? You’re trading at that time something you don’t know the answer to. So I follow the the rules of the draw downs. So like if you’ve given yourself a draw down level of 20%, you trade the same way until you hit the 20%. That’s my my personal opinion of it. The other thing is is that um a lot of people don’t consider um the percentages of compounding of draw downs. They only consider percentage of compounding of of profits. And to me that’s not great. So like for example, you start an account with 10 grand, you drop it down to five grand because you’ve lost, you now have to make 100%. To get it back to normal. Who who makes 100% in a year, right? This is this is what I find interesting about compounding. It works on the way down in the same way as it works on the way up. So if you’re reducing your position size when you’re losing but increasing it when you’re winning, that makes more sense automatically. Yeah. So if you have levels in which you reduce your position size on your way down, that would be my advice to anyone. So if you started with a 10 grand account, you say, “Okay, well if it goes down to nine grand, I might drop my position size a little bit. If it goes down there, yes, it like you said, it takes you longer to catch up, but the whole point is to stay in the game until you know how to trade properly. Talking on psychology, there’s multiple ways to describe it. Uh, one could be sitting in the emotion until exposure therapy until you’re desensitized to that stimulus and and you can make better decisions. Uh, another one is putting in protocols in place. For example, after x amount of loss, I’ve got to walk away and then trying your best to adhere to it. Another one is when you just go through turmoil, you go on tilt, you know what the right decision is. You’re just and you’re fully aware. You got a trading plan, tick boxes, whatever you choose, but adherence to that psychology becomes the problem to adhere to the plan specifically on that portion. How can you um internalize beliefs that we all know about of what is good psychology, but doing it is the hard part. How can you exercise that muscle a little bit a little bit better of adherence to the plan? I think this is the reason why psychology is important. So I I I trade a professional trader who works at a very prominent institutional organization. He’s a professional trader, has been for 20 odd years now. At the moment, he’s been struggling with with this. So he’s got some problems outside of trading the trading world. Um it’s he’s busy, he’s stressed, etc. He’s come into the office, he’s not trading very well, but then he thinks that because he’s not trading well, he has to catch up. And this is somebody that’s a professional trader that’s been trading well for a very long period of time and it gets somebody like that. So we’re not perfect, right? But what I would always say to somebody is that we have to have a process and a plan for when we’re not perfect because it when it would be it’s not possible just to run at top performance level, you know, all of the time. Look at it the same way as a sportsman. Sportsman’s going to have an off day. So you need a process for that. And whether it be, you know, to to let’s say, for example, if you’ve lost five trades in a row, simulate trades till you get back. Yeah. But this this might not feel right for somebody who’s new to trading because the markets don’t go anywhere. They never go. And if you’re planning on trading for 10 years, that little period is going to be nothing to you. But for somebody who’s new to trading, they might start winning and think, “Oh, I I should have been trading live there.” But that’s the psychological issue, right? So yeah, going back to this, I would I would definitely say depending on each person, especially the tilt thing, everyone’s different. Some people are very dense to their emotions and they might not understand and look and not be able to look from an outsers’s perspective. Some people are able to look intrinsically and work it out. And it really depends on the person when they’re on tilt. I want to I want to pivot towards technicals here and obviously you’re part of a I I didn’t know about this prior, but a prestigious institution for technical analysis, a society. Um, and I guess you train all walks of life from a professional background, university grads and so forth, and you’re teaching them the art of technical analysis. Um, I want to first start off with these guys are usually academics, uh, and and probably high intellectual and so forth, high IQ. Uh, and then you’ve also trained people that in, you know, in a regular community. um what is the difference you notice in the ability to learn or grasp or conceptualize or overintellectualize uh when it comes to trading and and technical analysis? Yeah, so there’s no difference in terms of who can make it and who can’t make it. That’s one thing that I would say. Resources are an issue, right? So if you work for a bank or whatever, you have more resources. But in terms of intelligence, there there’s no difference between the two. That’s the first thing I would say. One thing I would say is that I would in choose an emotionally intelligent person, you know, 75% of the time more than an academically intelligent person. Interesting personally. So like, you know, for example, on the pit days back back in the day, you know, they would choose like market traders and stuff, you know, because they would they have a gut feel. They know when something’s being undervalued, underpriced, or overvalued and overpriced, and that was a good thing for them, but they weren’t always um, you know, academically intelligent. Then we moved over to the quant trading time and all that kind of stuff. I live through that phase and I was saying to to yourself like I had you know a very very top level maths graduate. He had a mast’s a PhD masters learning for his PhD in actual sciences and um he just couldn’t cope with the strategies not working in the same as his simulators as they would in real life and um yes he had in intellect and he developed very good trading systems but he didn’t have the emotional IQ to understand it and that’s where he needed to be traded trained and then um at the society of technical analysis um you know we’ve had people there from you know people that work at gas and power companies to big investment banks to central bankers down to crypto traders. There’s there’s it’s it’s you know anybody can come there to learn about technical analysis. But um it was a really really good experience to basically see because I keep in touch with a lot of a lot of people anyway with their learning and and where they end up working and stuff of who can stay in the market, who can um continue on the path of of trading because we had a brief discussion and I said that technical analysis it teaches you how to be an analyst, right? Trading teaches you how to be a trader. They’re they’re two completely separate things. An analyst can’t be a trader sometimes. A trader can’t be an analyst sometimes. They’re two different jobs. You mentioned a moment ago emotional intelligence. Number one, what do you mean by that? And and number two, how can you specifically train that to get better at it? It’s tough. It’s that’s the tough part because we’re we’re talking a lot about ego, pride sometimes, things like that. So when uh when you’re in your learning phase, um adults, they’re they’re very different learners to children. So it so an adult will come into something automatically wanting to be good at it and get frustrated that they’re not good at something. You can’t expect to be a good trader. No one can when they walk through the door. You’re not. It’s basically even if you have a really good run at the beginning, what happens when you start losing? How do you react? That that’s going to be twice as bad. if you start well, but if you [clears throat] start tough and then you go through the tough period and then you build yourself out of it, you know, in my history of coaching traders, that ends up being better because then they build resilience. Whereas, if you do really well at the beginning and you all of a sudden lose all your money, you have to get grit at a later state after being successful. So, little things like that, they’re always really, really tricky. Emotional intelligence for trading can come down to being impatient and finding out, watching yourself from the outside. is like, why did I get impatient there? When you’re in profit situations and you’re too quick to grab your profit or being too greedy and trying to let it run, you know, moving your stop losses on the downside because you have hope. You know, all of these things or emotional intelligence. Why are you doing these things? How do you analyze yourself to stop? Not analyze the chart. How do you analyze yourself to stop? I’m very interested in the word ego. I want to explore this a little bit more because ego can be selfworth, self-preservation, confidence, and and that can be tied to data. So you like I’ I’ve built my ego in the market because I’ve seen you know I’ve had profit for so long but it can also tip into overzealous and and thinking you know better than the plan and taking intuition too far for example. What does what does ego mean to you and where is that sweet spot to have an ego? Ego is a good thing if it drives you forward. Yeah. And it pushes you to get improve and learn and get better. That’s when ego is a good thing. So like it’s it’s important to care about yourself. Yeah. And um you know even to a certain degree like how you look from on the outside sometimes I think that’s an important thing because you know you don’t want to look like an idiot and you don’t want to be an idiot right so that’s the good part of ego the bad part of ego is that like for example if you’re trying to learn something and you’re like you you’re not honest with yourself that some you’re finding something hard or or something else is everybody else’s fault. Oh, I got stopped by a broker. My spread’s been slipped. You know, everything’s everybody else’s fault and none of it’s my fault. Sometimes that’s ego as well, right? So, they’re things that are going to stop you from learning. They’re going to stop you from looking at yourself and and working out what your problems actually are and blaming everybody else for them. That makes sense. You hinder your own progress. How about identity and and how that comes into ego? Let’s say what I’m referring to here more is um I think it’s that book about habits. Um yeah, Atomic Habits. Atomic Habits. There we go. Uh and he’s talking about the smoker and it’s like if you just the self dialogue you have is I’m a smoke smoker who’s trying to quit. That that’s basically saying I’m still a smoker versus when you rejected cigarettes because I don’t smoke. You you’ve had an identity shift and these guys are more likely to actually quit smoking. Have you noticed anything when somebody is kind of learning to trade on the side as a side hustle? their friends don’t know about it and and it’s just a very small thing. Therefore, there’s not really a cost to give up. You just quickly tried it and you can quickly leave. But the moment you’ve said to your friends and family, I am no trader and and maybe you even gone full-time and you got this identity of a trader and whatever that embodies uh that it forces you to a level where you’re more likely to see it through or more likely to succeed. Any dynamics to that? Yeah. So, if we do a lesson on this now, why would somebody do that? Why would somebody not, you know, why would somebody their self? It’s preservation of your image. Got it 100%. So self-preservation they that’s ego. So they’re already worried about how they’re looking on the outside if they fail. You can’t do this job if you’re worried about failing. Yes. Yeah. We are going to lose 50% of the time I would say and at the beginning if not more than 50% of the time. So if you’re if your ego is hurt by failure so badly, this is not the right job for you. You have to work that out. Right. And you answered it correctly because identification. So we do something where we say well you know oh I’m trying to be disciplined. You’re not trying to be disciplined when you’re a trader. You have to be disciplined when you’re a trader. That’s it. So he’s like oh I’m trying to do this right. Oh I do enter early sometimes. No you can’t like you have to train yourself to I am good at following my process. You write that in your diary. I I I manage my risk. You know they’re the confident statements the fact that you can actually manage to do it. And honestly it doesn’t take a lot. I would say after writing that down in your trading journal about 20 times of doing it, it become starts to become second nature like um you know and when you change strategy that’s also a problem because it’s a confidence thing. You don’t have confidence when you move into something else that it’s working yet. So you have to start that cycle again. So um prior to the Trump tantrum in April, I had a I had an opening uh gap strategy that used to work quite well. Um, it stopped working because volatility was squeezed around the open when that happened. Okay. And I changed I changed something to it after. And because I because it was slightly unfamiliar to me, I found my decision- making to be a little bit more erratic at the beginning. And I had to coach myself into into being, well, no, I’m waiting for this signal. I’m going to be patient. I’m a I’m a sniper, basically. And that’s what I’d wait for now. And now I don’t even think about it anymore. Mhm. For the last two years, a proud sponsor of the show is a topranked leading prop firm, Alpha Capital. And for the years that I’ve been working with them and the thousands and thousands of viewers, you guys that have been working with them through the discount codes of Titans of Tomorrow, it’s clear for me to see why they are top ranked prop firm in the industry. They have also reached a monumental milestone of $und00 million in payouts. And with the multiplestep plans and the multiple package types they have, there’s going to be an option catered specifically for what you’re looking for. So you can buy an evaluation account catered to your needs at the [music] most competitive prices. And with our discount code toot for titans of tomorrow, you’re able to get the most unbeatable, unmatched prices in the industry with a leading trusted prop firm. And with that being said, let’s get back to the episode. Exploring um psychology once more. Of course, there is things you can do outside of the markets uh just in terms of discipline and and the ability to follow the plan, motivation, all of these things. And this can branch off into journaling and and all these other things. Another thing is just exposure. And you don’t have to do all of this meditation, journaling, and morning routines, but the moment you’ve taken 500 losses, that 500 first loss is not going to feel as bad as the second loss. Um, how much of psychological improvement comes from just emotion and exposure to things versus, you know, you got to build habits and routines around it. Yeah. So, I like I think I’ve heard a lot of um people say that, oh, like trading psychology, it’s fake. It’s nothing. like it’s not real, right? I don’t I don’t really believe that because um you know, if we looked at it in the sense of like a golfer putting for example or a tennis player serving, a lot of that is is the same psychology as as trading. So yes, you need to it’s that that’s the fear of failure that we’re talking about there. That that example of 500 trades. If you fear it, yeah, and you’re not you’re not basically accepting the chaos and randomness of the market in that sense, your decision- making is going to be different if you have fear. So, you can’t do anything well with fear. So, going through that process is good in a way because you start to get numb to the to the fear and it will help you. But if you enter a trade expecting to lose, I believe that you’re probably going to lose. So, that’s also a negative thing as well. I like the comparison to sports and you can imagine like a World Cup final penalty versus a penalty in training ground. Uh it’s the fear of the outcome despite the process being the same. You got to kick a ball into a net but that can amplify internal thoughts I guess. So you look at all of the best ones in the world. So let’s take Cristiano Ronaldo. He does the same runup, the same sideep, the same everything. And that’s why he does it. So he’s had psychological coaching for this. Um, and it’s these routines that that take all of the external factors away as much as you can. You can never take the external factors away, but as much as you can. The people if you watch who do sports to do the same thing, they’ve had psychological coaching 100%. Yeah, I saw a clip on this just yesterday. Uh, Jookovic um I guess he has a ritual to bounce the ball prior to his serve and uh I guess I don’t know why he’s it’s probably a mental cue or a trigger to get into the zone, but I guess it was taking him a moment to get into the zone at one point. So he did 50 bounces and he was not going to go until he was ready until he had that whatever feeling. And you also see it with Nadal. He’ll always before he’ll just do these. It looks like twitches. He does the specific wipe in a specific order of the sweats. But I guess it’s to frame you into the zone. I’ll tell you there’s an interesting one. If you watch um film stars when they’re being interviewed on camera on chat shows, they do this thing with their hand and they they’ll tap their thigh. Oh yeah. Same thing. They’ve been they’ve been coached. Their media training. What is going on here? or how can I apply that into my life? So, um I so I’ll give you the example for trading. So, I I will do the same what I call a warm-up routine because I was a sportsman. Same warm-up routine leading into the trading session. So, so 15 minutes before I open the chat room, which is 1:45, make a coffee, listen to the same song, do my my trading meditation, go through the markets in the same way as I do in the chat room, go through the news in the same way as do in the chat room, then I’m ready. So, every day is the same. And that’s the ritual to to get to get through to and how does that benefit you when you do it? It reminds me to perform at the same standard every day. Now, this is what we were talking about is like some days you’re going to have a bad day, someday you’re going to have a good day in the sense that you might have had an argument with your wife, your dog, your cat, whatever. You know, you might have had a bad night’s sleep the day before. But the consistency is important. So you’re never going to be the same every day, but if you consistently try and perform seven out of 10, seven out of 10, seven out of 10, you’ll do well, right? And that’s the point of the ritual and the warm up. And I guess is it serving as a mental cue to leave outside troubles at the door cuz now I’m in this frame to to get into the trading mindset. Yeah, correct. And I don’t know if you follow football, but like um Bakayo Sako who plays for Arsenal, you know, he’s the one that missed the penalty in the final, right? He stood up to take the penalty again. In the news, he was Yeah, he he took a beat. the next round, the next tournament was the Euros and he took the he took a penalty and he scored, right? And you saw like the whole nation like all of his mates, you know, and that was like a big thing because like in trading we have to do that like sometimes, yes, we’re going to screw up sometimes, but you have to have courage, you know, to to get up and and do it again to the same level. there’s so many comparisons and uh I think like with the rise of like kind of automation and AI and stuff there’s still a psychological element to this because it’s people that make those functions that trade the markets. So like I I’ve designed systems like automated systems and stuff like I trade manually but I’ve designed systems. You know it’s still somebody’s brain that’s making those things. So the market is still moving with that psychology of course and it might change at some stage. We don’t know if it is or it isn’t but we’ll trade the same way until it does. How can somebody be better at uh free from outcome or the feeling of because if you to boil down trading psychology is because it’s fear of an undesirable outcome and that can be I’m not making enough money or or just revenge I lost too much money and so forth and the more detached you can be to that the more able you are to trade in a stoic sense how can you improve in that area so this is against all human nature right so if if we can break it down to the basic form of human nature It’s like if you have a blindfold on and you’ve closed all your senses and you’re stepping onto your next step, it’s uncertain if you have all of that, right? That’s the same thing. So, we have to challenge oursel in that same way to it’s the people that don’t care. So, like if somebody’s walking on a tight rope or if somebody’s like a free climber or something, there’s a reason why they’re able to do that. They’ve trained. So like um my mate Steven Goldstein, he uses this analogy whereas a tightroppe walker if it’s like 30 cm from the ground versus a tightroppe walker when it’s 30 ft up in the air, you’re still doing the same skill. Why is it different? That’s the training that the traders need. So so we have to train to deal with the uncertainty and randomness, right? And um the the the key that I use and there’s a lot of tools that I use, but visualization is a very strong one. So before you ever start trading, if you imagine yourself of how you would react emotionally and psychologically in a losing situation and how you would react emotionally and psychologically in a winning situation prior to it happening, your body then takes away some of that uncertainty. You can never remove some of the uncertainty in the markets. You can never remove that. But you can remove it in yourself by thinking and visualizing about how you want to act in all of the possible outcomes. And you do this on a trade- bytrade basis. Yeah. Tricks your brain. That’s part of the the meditation prior to to to trading and it has to be done in the right way like so there’s there’s not you know you have to learn it but it works. Yeah. Very interesting. Um moving into you mentioned uh you have algorithmic trading or you’ve coded algorithms uh versus manual trading yet you choose to continue to be a manual trader. Is the reason for that because there’s always going to be a degree of subjectivity or experience intuition or what is the reason to choose to continue to be manual? So I like trading is well the first reason is like it challenges me every day. So I don’t want to remove that from my life. Um the other parts of it are is that it’s still the same. So like normally when you employ algorithms to do your trading for you, you might have like five running at once or seven running at once. turn off the bad ones, allocate higher to the good ones, and keep switching them around. Still really the same decisions at the end of the day. The performance is still made on judgment that you’re having to make depending on which algorithm that you’re using at that particular time. So, and al also algorithms they stop working after a while and you have to decide you have to design new ones and things like that. So, it ends up being the same job, but obviously the manpower is very different with an algorithm. It’s cheaper. That’s the only plus point honestly that I that I would say it’s cheaper I guess on a fund level. Okay. Uh this brings swiftly nicely into the point of uh managing other people’s capital beyond your own and obviously that can I imagine it amplifies everything uh from a psychology perspective because now there’s more on the line as you ventured into that side for the last few years. Um what have you had to learn or what challenges have you faced in managing others money? Yeah. So I am by nature not a reckless person. So when it comes to like when we got funded by the by the fund that that sent us money in Cayman, right? Um one it was like I don’t want to ruin this opportunity. So that was a big thing for me is like we have staff, you know, we we’re a company, we’ve got traders. Like if one of us does something out of the ordinary that’s not great, you know, it affects other people. They lose jobs, etc., etc. So that was one part. Um, another part is is that, you know, some people find it easier to lose money that’s not theirs, you know, so the responsibility factor that’s also another factor that kicks in. And then um just really performance, you know, like how can you continually perform in the same way that you would with your own money that you would with somebody else. So it was an interesting story. So it was like three years ago and we met um and completely innocuous. I got I got a message on LinkedIn saying, “Oh, look, I’m at the trader show. Meet you.” Blah, blah, blah. Looked at the company, didn’t think too much of it. Had a had a coffee with uh with Adam and we spoke about him trying to fund other companies. It hadn’t gone very well. He said, “Oh, because of that, I’m going to start really low with you guys.” So, he started us with like 25K. Um, and he was like, “If you put your money where your mouth is and it works, we’ll expand this up.” So, did that for about six weeks. Did all right. roughly making about $300 a week over that time. Then did it with 50k. In the 50k we were then started to make between $600 and $900 a week. He was like, “Right, this is actually working.” And that’s kind of where our company was born because there were three of us doing it. So it was myself, James, and Ashen. So DND, so my surname is Darl, James North, Ashen Dance. So that’s where DND came from. And um basically we we built the capital all the way up to like $1.2 million. That’s how it how it started working. And then it was like, well, can we train other traders to join in with us? So, um, as we’ve been coaching traders, we we start to see like, you know, we have a good track record of coaching traders anyway. So, I would say like, you know, the broker statement is like 80 90% of traders lose who come into the market. We work on a on a variance factor of like if we if we get 100 traders in and we can train 50 of them to a good standard, I’m happy with that. you shifted the bell curve quite a bit to be able to do that. That’s the thing. So that’s the that’s what we try and aim for. Our aim is like 50% of the traders we try and train. We want to make sure they’re good. And what we consider a successful trader over annual period would be if they have three consecutive months of profit. So that’s also quite hard in somebody in their first year or in their first couple of years. So so we give ourselves quite a high barometer of what we can do. Um and then there’s the shift over from trading a simulator to then trading live money. And then if you’re trading live money to try and trade big live money, there’s lots of psychological challenges that come across this. So all of this is incorporated into that fact of trading somebody else’s money. Can you do this at the same time? If somebody gives you capital, like how is that person going to react to that capital? I’ve got like 18 year olds on my books, you know, 21 year olds on my books and then like they’re trading with their own capital at first and then we give them money and they’re like, well, how are you going to handle this now? That has to be trained. What was the reason you even chose to take that path as opposed to just continue to trade your own money or utilize the the FTMO type prop firms? Uh why take this route of external funding? Because we want to be like the next big prop firm, right? That’s our goal. So like um if mentioning names like SMB Capital, Millennium, like those guys, Tower Trading, like there’s some really really good examples. Marx in the UK as well. Um where they just started with like five or six traders built this thing up, you know, and then really if I if I got 12 traders that I could trust with risk management, trust with probability factoring and psychological management and all this kind of stuff, that’s a result. Then I am I can trade with them or whatever. I can trust them with the money. We can go out and develop this company. And that’s that’s the actual aim. I’m curious to explore when you’re no longer trading on an individual level, not just capital, [clears throat] but I mean also how in your own sense I trade my money. So it’s my strategy, my thoughts and it’s individual but the moment it’s a team effort with others capital. You can have conflicting ideas uh and you can also be a team about it and then you’re looking for too much perfection. It can be an echo chamber where you all become yesmen to each other’s thoughts and and end up on the wrong side. How do you balance uh trading as a floor where you can also share resources but you can also share problems? That is very true. So like there has been times where like all the traders are in the same live trading room every day and we see that only like three of the stocks are setting up because they’re the only three that are looking good and we’re all of us are in the same three stocks. So it does happen like um but what ends up happening from month to month is that the two traders can trade the same way and have completely different results. So that’s what ends up happening like I’ve not had a problem where two traders monthly P&L has has looked very similar. I haven’t had that yet. So until that becomes a problem I think it’s fine. And on on a I guess a manager level, would you uh try and take down risk if you see the team is overexposed on a on a single position or single idea or you let the probabilities play out? So we’re really good with risk management. So every account that we have has a daily circuit breaker and it also has an account circuit breaker. So let’s say for example, I’ve got 10 traders and I say to them, “Well, you’ve all got $1,000 risk a day.” Okay? If they hit $1,000 risk, the the trading account shuts off. Yeah. Nice. Um if on their accounts they’ve got $20,000 risk, if if they hit $20,000 risk, their account turns off, right? So that’s what organizes this. If they ever go down that front, they have to stop trading. Um and you know, every every company has traders that fall off and traders that do well. So the traders that end up doing well, it’s like an index fund. like an index like the the Footsie 100 is only ever going to get stronger because the losers drop out and new ones come in that bring it up and it’s the same. I want to talk about um I guess most of the traders are men and men are generally competitive. They’re not actually in our company but we’ve got loads of female traders. Yeah. How interesting. I struggle to find female guests on the show. It’s cuz it’s just a very male oriented from us. Very interesting. Okay. How did that come about? cuz that’s not the demographics in the industrywide. How did you end up with more women? So, is it back to the emotional intelligence maybe? No, we’re quite I’m pretty sympathetic to this part, right? So, like we women in our industry and like the female traders that we have. So, like we we’ll push them, you know, to to train and trade well. So, like Mayan is our swing trading guru, our coach really, cuz she’s very very good at swing trading. She’s probably got the highest win rate in our company in general, right? Um, she’s an S personality. So that for us that just means that she’s more on the caring, sensitive, patient part. That’s her character. So, you know, when it comes to presenting when she’s online presenting like at the beginning, like she’s quite calm and quite quiet, but you get to know her. She’s not. So, that’s why I think sometimes that balance comes out. I think you said that the male competitiveness people are attracted to that when it comes to trading but actually there’s important parts of trading that her feminine characteristics are very important for I I see it because women they have a lot of traits over men where they might be more organized more they’ll think things through more often probably more risk averse so there is benefits uh where I was going with that comment was um if I take a loss or if I go through a losing period it’s a very almost a secret I don’t tell anyone and I deal with it myself and maybe because of shame or whatever it just becomes a private affair but in a in that scenario not only the investors would know I guess you as a a manager of the team would know but also that your peers in the team would also know and that can be quite a daunting prospect or how do traders in your experience navigate with losing on on a stage let’s say that’s culture so that that’s what you’re describing is the culture within a company um because we’re so open with our wins and losses every day it we like the vulnerability and um shame we we accept it we have to accept that so if you ever the best person that I can explain for this about is is somebody called Bnee Brown have you ever heard of her she’s an author so she her her she’s a psychiatrist psychologist and her specialtity is embarrassment and shame so I’ve done a lot of research on this subject because I I’ve always wanted a company where it doesn’t matter if you lose So if you if you lose in our company but you’ve done the process correctly, there’s no problem. Nobody cares. But if you lose and you haven’t performed well, that’s when we care, right? So we’re able to lose as long as we lose the right way. So in my trading journal, every single trade is I have a picture of it. Yeah. And I can go back and look for it and say every single day, would I take that trade if it turned up tomorrow? If the answer is yes, I’ve done it right. If the answer is no because of maybe the trend’s not right on the daily or it’s a bit choppy or something like that, that’s something to learn from. But we would want that to run right through our company with everybody that we coach and everybody that we train. It’s a fascinating topic because in general in life when you take a loss, it means you did something wrong and therefore it leaves room for improvement. In trading, it’s a you got to accept that it’s it’s a norm and it’s an inevitability. So what people don’t understand is luck. How much does luck factor in success? So when when I worked at I worked at a gambling company, a sports betting company and somebody came in right and I I’m definitely not mentioning any names or anything like that but they were very very intelligent human being top in this country okay lose money every week and the my my colleagues would come over to me and we would have a chat about it because we have to responsibility to stop them from gambling right and they’ll say well this person’s so clever why do they keep losing money and I said to them do you think having Money and being intelligent have a direct correlation. No way. How many people are rich in this world that are stupid? Yeah. Loads. Yeah. So there’s no correlation between the two. Yeah. In fact, the people that are not as smart, uh, they are more likely delusional, which can take you to activation threshold to take action. Whereas the guy who is thinking too much is just paralyzed and doesn’t take action. There’s a lot that goes into it. Very interesting. Um I I wanted to circle back to the technicals portion because you mentioned there’s a difference between being an analyst and and reading price I guess versus trading. What is the difference there? So um you know in terms of the traders that I currently have I can give you direct stories. So, I’ve got traders that will zoom into a chart, analyze every price tick, you know, look at every indicator, and you know, they’re they’re so intrinsically involved into this that understanding the probabilities, the variances, the psychological factors is not even within their realm because they’re staring at a chart so intently and they’re involved in this chart that they forget all of the things that are surrounding it. And that’s where the balance comes in. Yeah. So if you’ve if your money management is correct, right? If me and you sat here every day and we flipped a coin on the DAX going up or down every single day, we’ll be right 50% of the time. Okay, law will tell us that the law of large averages. But then if we start messing with the asymmetric risk-to-rewards, and I’ve done this with interns, trading interns, and then you then flick a coin, you know, two to one, you only need to win 33% of your trades, right? to to be profitable or to break even at 33% to be profitable is anything above that. So what comes in then is analysis. That’s what’s hopefully going to give you that little edge to take you to 40 50% or whatever. So this has to be trained and anybody that’s directly so involved in looking at the charts tick by tick and why isn’t this working and how isn’t this working? It’s it’s hard for them because they’re whether they may be analytical human beings but it’s hitting them emotionally and they might not know that because they’re ac they’re academics. they’re they’re you know they’re feeling it in a different way to somebody who’s um you know emotionally intelligent. That’s interesting. Uh speaking on just uh taking technicals into a strategy. What is that journey like where you can draw lines on a screen and get an idea of what’s tendencies, probabilities, support levels and all this other stuff. But how how does anyone that has learned because people usually learn to read price before they learn how to trade. What what is that journey or the correct journey to go from analyst to trader? So if now I have the the luxury of hindsight, I was one of those guys. So when I studied it with the STA and study technical analysis, I took every single indicator on four time frames. So I did a five minute time frame, a 1 hour time frame, a daily time frame, and a weekly time frame. And every single indicator that was available to me at the time, I tested them a 100 times on each time frame to work out which was the most reliable indicator. Okay? And that was what I did. um it gave me data which was interesting um but again when I went and tried to apply this I wasn’t ready um psychologically to to feel the results of this I I wasn’t so when I RSI we’ll use this one as an example actually RSI for me is a positive or negative indicator rather than an oversold or an overbought indicator for me if something’s above 50 even if it’s in extreme territory the market’s positive All right. If you trade the retracements of this market, you’re more likely to win than you are selling it when it’s oversold, overbought, sorry. So things like that, you’re taught something there, right? But it might not necessarily be right and you need it for experience, but also you need to to test it. You need to test it. So I would look at it in the sense that like you you develop a strategy, let’s say like that. Every time RSI is overbought, wait for the pull back, try and buy it again. Yeah. So, let’s say that’s just a basic strategy and on swing trading, I can guarantee you that will work. I can actually guarantee it. Then you start off with a simulator, work it out, work out how many consecutive winners and losers you get, practice it over 100 trades, then employ it live, then jot down your emotions while you’re doing it. And that’s the way I would do it now. One strategy at a time. Don’t trade multiple strategies. Yeah. So, you’ve got some focus, journal everything. So develop the strategy, back test it, forward test it, simulate it. That’s only forward testing. Then trade it small, then do it live properly. That would be the the way. A a common bridge that I see a lot of people face and struggle to get over is I’m great at back testing. I’m great at simulators. I’m great at understanding price. But when it comes to live markets, uh I just can’t seem to replicate what I can do on the weekend every weekend back testing. What is that hurdle that people struggle to get over? Because you don’t feel the same emotions on the back testing chart than you do on the on the live market. That’s it. That’s literally all it is. Um the reason why I can say that now is because I’m so detached from the profit that I’m that I win or lose every single day that I I don’t care. It’s like back testing for me now. But at the time when I turn a new strategy live, it’s not like that because my ego is invested on whether it’s right or wrong. Mh. And it’s that. So, so if my ego is invested in me looking or feeling like I need to look smart for this working, I’m going to struggle with the emotions of it at that particular time. And and that’s for me what it is. For somebody else, it might be the money. So they they could be like, “Oh, I’ve spent 10 grand on this course. I need to make sure that I’m going to make that 10 grand, right? This has to work. Otherwise, I’m going to look like an idiot.” That that is what makes live markets tougher than simulated markets. Interesting. Um I I want to get into the technicals we’ve spoken about on a uh traditional sense which is through this society and then what you’re doing in technicals in your own trading. How much does that differ from like academic technical analysis versus practically functioning technical analysis? Yeah. So I don’t describe myself anymore as a as a technical analyst. I used to so we were talking about identity. I used to say oh yeah I’m a technical analyst. I don’t describe myself anymore as a technical analyst. Why is that? Um because it’s got I don’t need it anymore and it’s got so little to do with my trading. It You mean technicals? Yeah. So it’s it’s how I developed the system, but after I developed the system, I don’t need it anymore because it’s my brain and my discipline that’s more important than the technicals when I’m trading it. So it flips after I’ve designed the systems. So um so going back to what we were saying about how this can fit in and how it actually works is that once the systems designed and you know that it works, it’s it’s then parked aside. What your job then is to prove does the system work or not in real time. That’s your your job and that’s only done by performance and by discipline and by by risk management. They’re the only ways that it’s done. I want to say you’re known for having simplified if if I’m to pick a word of simplified technicals, simplified charts, naked charts and so forth. Where does this philosophy derive from? So I’ve I did so much work on the charts with all the indicators and with all of the, you know, the overlays and all this kind of stuff that eventually I didn’t need them on there to know if something’s hit a fib retracement, if something’s hit overbought RS. Is that more cuz you would visually see it and you don’t need the the indicator or Yeah, I would know. You pull up a chart now. Gold, do we need go somebody to tell us that RSI is overbought on gold? We don’t need anything. So like you you slowly start to know this, right? When is that intuition or what is that? Um it’s anal [clears throat] it’s analytical. So then where so then having going back to naked charts, right? it simplifying it in the sense that if something’s trending, your job is to get into that trend. That’s it. So, so if we go from retail traders to institutional traders, right? Institutional traders are the ones that move the markets. Yeah. We can’t sit there with our like $1,000 of a position, 500 quid a position or whatever it is and think that once that’s in the market, it’s going to move the market. It’s not. If we’re having an inside day on the DAX, for example, or S&P or E- Mini S&P, you know, whatever amount of money that we put in for that for it to stay within that range is not going to make a difference. But when the big boys come in and it starts to break out of a range and it starts to wave, our job is to to join that. That second guess it, predict it, forecast it, whatever you want to call it, that’s our job. And we are going to get that wrong just as much as we are going to get it right. That’s our job. Yeah. So the amount of technical analysis that you know and do is not going to help you. What’s going to help you there is your discipline and risk management. So you know we’ve had a really good run in in the markets at the moment. S&P 500, NASDAQ. Yeah. Really Google is killing it right now, right? If we know Google’s the best stock in the world at the moment, right? Our job is to take every pullback, even if we think it’s overextended. We don’t know how far this thing’s going to go. Bitcoin traders, we don’t know how far this thing’s going to go. every pullback you decide how much risk you can manage to put it in there and give it a shot and it could go. That’s our that’s our job. That for me is what what a trader’s job is. I’ve spoken to a variety of guests on the show and a unanimous common denominator between all of them is the emphasis they put on data and actually knowing the inner workings and the insight of your edge and your performance. That’s why I’m proud to bring a partner of the show, Tradzella. The number one journaling, back testing, and all-in-one insight experience created by traders for traders. What Tradezella really gives you is deep insights about your trading that would ordinarily not be visible. Whether it’s through understanding your trade types and playbooks or even insights powered by artificial intelligence through Zella AI. Whether you trade forex, futures, cryptos, the stock market, it all seamlessly connects to Tradzella. So, there is no additional work. You’ve seen me reference it dozens of times and all of the benefits I’ve had in my trading from the insights I found from my Tradzilla. So, join myself and thousands of other viewers of the show. You’ll get the best discount using the link in the description or code toot for titans of tomorrow. Do you prefer trading markets that you can call trending like that that have an inherent appreciation like S&P versus forex which kind of go sideways? Yeah. So they say don’t get emotionally married to a stock or whatever but Apple has been one of my favorite stocks of all time. Okay. Because like regardless of what I did, every pullback I bought on the daily time frame that retraced, you know, let’s say like one standard deviation and a half to two standard deviations for it to go back in that direction. Every one I took for a long time won. So I made a crapload of money on Apple just trading on a daily chart and not doing same thing with the S&P 500. The year before COVID, so 2019, I had eight positions in the S&P 500 that were just running and I was swing trading back then. I wasn’t day trading and I was getting bored because like the I didn’t have any work to do and it was just running. So that was where my writing my analysis career came from. I see because I was trading and I was doing nothing. So I would write articles for companies and stuff like that. So that’s our job like and and so you in in different every day I would say what’s the best trending market every single day I’ll look for what’s the best trending market and and trend can mean a lot of things. How you identifying trend? Is it current momentum? So [clears throat] for us trend is the easiest thing to identify. Is the market making higher highs, higher lows? Okay. Just structure. Okay. Straight. Yeah. Are are the lows getting the wave lows getting higher? Are the wave highs getting higher? Then we look at like look is it above a 21 period moving average on the daily if you want to simplify it. Um and then also you know depending on how much you squash the chart or not is it looking like a 45 degree? Like it’s literally that that simple for me on on a few different time frames. So So if something’s trending, it’s trending well. Now then you have to accept that when your trends finish or they or or they turn or they they’re starting to consolidate that you’re going to lose money. So gold is a massive example because we’ve got a couple of um traders who like trading commodities and gold has been on this amazing run. But prior to this last couple of weeks, we were in that wedge formation and it was tight for a couple months and there were three false signals going to the upside in that formation because, you know, every time it came down, it looked like it was going to try and go again and failed. So, um, one of our traders, I was saying to him, look, I’m avoiding gold at the moment until it breaks out of this wedge pattern. He takes every trend line break that goes in the direction of the trend. So, he had three losing positions before he won this big winning position, but he won this big position. And this is the difference I think between retails and professionals because in those three losing trades he would have lost his risk money which is fine but when he wins the trade that beats those three losing trad a retail trader may think that okay I just need to make back that money I lost on those three losing trades and cut it at that point why bother in the first place. Exactly. And that’s the emotional that’s that’s all this is why I say psychology is important because that’s a psychological decision. Greed, fear, fight, flight, freeze. That that’s what it is there. Going back to how we started the conversation with the trinity. We spoke and we’ve spent about 30% of the conversation on technicals, 30% on yeah uh psychology. I want to touch on the last portion which I will argue maybe is the most misunderstood or neglected because money management can just be like okay I’m going to do 1% risk and then I’ll do a 1 to2 one to three rises or partial and leave it at that. Why is it weighed at 30% of trading as opposed to just an oversimplification? So it would be the same for poker, it would be the same for sports betting. It would be the same for anything. Right? If you’re not staying in this game long enough to see yourself win, there’s no point. Right? So that’s that’s the the thing about the money management side and we spoke about the consecutive losers and winners and that’s very important as well. So understanding the statistics of your money management is you can’t have any of the other two without this and the other two don’t work without the other ones either. So so this this trifecta is is the reason why you have to be balanced on all three. And the way I would say this is if you had a random distribution of data could be anything. So you like sometimes will show people charts of them not knowing what it is and your money management has to stack up in those environments, you know, in like day-to-day environments when you have random data that you don’t know what’s going to happen with your money management has to save you. And that’s why I like those random tests like coin flipping, dice rolling, or whatever because if your money management is not right, you’re not going to take take the winners when it goes your way. money management are we dividing it between risk and profit taking systems or is there more to it? No, that’s the the together. And and which one would you say is [clears throat] more crucial? Because you can argue that the risk side is in your control and the outcome, how far the outcome goes is kind of out of your control. Um, and you can only do something based on data, I guess, because you don’t know the outcome of an individ individual trade. Which one do you give more importance to? Or how do you manage either? Yeah. So, I’m risk averse by nature. I am. So, this is a difficult question because I wish I was like some other traders that I know that when it goes their way, they just really really push it. But I go I’m data driven. So, every single day I take the same type of trade with a two to run risk-to-reward. But what I’ll do is if I’m trading well, I’ll compound on profit rather than compound on trades. What does that mean as re-entries? No. [clears throat] So if so if I have a good month or a good couple of months, what I’ll do is I’ll I’ll increase my position size then because of the profit buffer. Correct. Rather than oh I’ve got a good trade, I’m going to add 20% more into the trade. It math still works out the same after a while. So it’s not it’s not any different. But if you’ve got a good feeling about a trade and you’re in a position of profit, the math dictates that you should put more money in it actually in real life. But but psychologically I’m not great at that. So I don’t do it. I know that about myself. But I have traders like James who can re-enter one position six times until until it maybe falls 15 20% and it’ll cut them all. Right? So I think it’s different strokes for different folks for this particular example. Um but on the risk side nothing ever changes. We do the same thing. You know me if I lose a trade close computer. Done. Right. James if he loses three trades close the computers he’s done. Risk. You have a one strike policy per day. Me. Yes. Okay. But other traders don’t. they have three. You know, it depends who the personality is, but the money will always be the same. So, if we’ve got like $2,000 risk a day, you can chop that up into three trades if you want. I’m taking it all on one trade. Okay? Right? But listen to this. This is a really good example because if you chop it up into three trades, what’s the likelihood that you’re going to win the three trades? And what’s the likelihood that I’m going to win the one? Win all three. Correct. Far less likely. Yeah. Cuz if I’m 50/50, I’ve got a 50/50 chance of winning one trade. you’ve got 50/50 chance across all three trades. And people don’t think like that, right? But this is mathematical. This is statistical analysis, which is why I said I’m not a technical analyst. I’m more I’m more of a statistical analyst. What about just um are you a day trader? Yeah. So I guess you can bring in deviations of like average daily volatility and how far historically speaking for the last month this asset class has moved uh and therefore should I pin my profit around that ATR or should it be just be on fixed r multiples? How do you decide when to do you partial out or is just one to two fixed? No, mine’s one to two fixed. So this is a great question and this is to be honest what people need to be thinking about. So if you’ve got in the first hour of a session the average move of Google for example and all of a sudden one day it’s having a really really good day and it’s moved one and a half times should you take along right this is the issue the answer is going to dictate is no but there also is another answer that says that you never know what’s going to happen so okay we like this it is a conundrum every single day for us genuinely in our trading room so um you know I’d say exceptions don’t define the rule. Like it might be an anomaly day, but can you bank on it being that anomaly day? That’s the thing. Statistically, the answer is no. Because like why have you developed an average? So So Tesla will move like I have not done the statistics at the moment, but on average is $10 a day. Between $8 and $10 a day Tesla will move every single day. If it’s moving well and we get another signal and it’s already at $10, right? Logic dictates you shouldn’t. But at the end of the day, if you’re a 50-50 trader and the setup’s the setup and it’s turned up, you should take it. That’s my argument. It’s like if your setup’s there and you’ve been tracking it and it follows everything and the patterns persisted and it’s there, just just take it. It’s only one trade on one day. You know what I mean? And and when it the reason I’m trying to understand deviations versus fixed R multiples is because it’s the size of your stop loss will obviously dictate the size of your profit level. How how much difference do you have between your stop loss sizes? where it could be like in pips at least like one day is 10 pips, one day is 30 or is always in a tight range. So, um this this depends on the behavior of the the asset we’re trading, right? So, um you know on on something that moves a lot, you’re going to need you are going to need a bigger stop loss. If something that trades often within a tight range, and I feel bad for saying this, but a lot of people trade the asset classes that are the most traded in the world. I don’t think that’s a good idea. So if for example you’re trading ES mini or you know something like that it’s more contained because more people trade it. So something like Tesla will move percentages, right? Something like the ES Mini has a more consistent average daily trading range and it’s less likely to have those explosive amazing breakout days, but Tesla is going to have amazing breakout days all of the time because it’s uncontrollable. So, why are you trading something that limits your potential to an average range? Just to throw it back, um why why then have a fixed partial on something that could break out? Sorry, a fixed profit level instead of a scale out when something can go, you know, leave a runner kind of thing. So, this is what maths is because like for example, if you if you’re trading like me at 2:1 and you’re you’re 50% likely to win the trade at the beginning, right? At 2:1 Yeah. your trade is 66% likely to lose in just basic maths because your stop loss is twice as small as your target. Your target has to go twice as far than your stop loss. So you’re 66 more likely to hit your stop loss than you are to hit your target assuming no break even. Yeah, let’s just say that, right? So bear that in mind. Let’s say you’ve got to 4:1. Yeah. Mathematically, how likely is a trade that has no analysis likely to get to 4:1? Mhm. If your two to one is only 33%, you have to half it, right? Yes. This is the thing about trading. So, what what you got to do when you get there is think, okay, well, it’s gone this far already. Yeah. If I move to break even and I add another trade, I I’m in a better position. That’s what you should be doing rather than taking partials because if you take partials at 2:1, your trade now has to travel twice the distance of your 2:1 to even earn the same amount of money. Oh, very interesting. Very interesting. So, so it doesn’t work mathematically. That’s not that’s not a good thing to do ever, right? So, if we’re if we’re now trading and we’re say, let’s say we’ve done a 50/50 trade, I’ve risked $1,000 to make $1,000. At $1,000, if I move my stop loss to break even and risk another $1,000, I’m at the same risk level as I was at the beginning, but now I can make twice as more money. I see your point. That makes more sense. What is your belief on break even and when is right to do it or if it’s right to do it? Break even is a good factor in certain scenarios. Emotionally, it’s a good factor. Not mathematically. Emotionally, no, I don’t think so. Because emotionally, it’s a good factor. Like, let’s say you’re trading and you’ve got you’re you’re at 1.75 to one. You’re nearly at your 2:1 and you know, if you’re day trading, markets can just reverse on a headline and it can come and take you out, right? That happens a lot. Um, but you then got another trade to take because you’ve saved your risk money. I see that. So emotionally that’s a good job. But actually if you look at your statistics of your trading journal or how you’ve developed a strategy, you have to factor in a break even if you’re going to move it into break even. And I would say more often than not the strategies that I’ve tested and looked at with my traders in my time more often the break even the shift of odds at break even makes your strategy worse. Is that because you’re likely to be wicked out? Yeah, because when are you going to move to break even at 1:1 1.5 to1? What’s your Okay, there’s a variable. Yes, you have to calculate. I I guess if I’m to because I do break even and and at times I’ll break even very aggressively and uh the benefit has brought me I feel is on on high conviction plays there’s no issue but on those let’s say lower conviction plays let’s call it a B+ setup uh I I have a reass reassuring thought that well worst case scenario I can break even quick I take another trade yeah so it’s emotional it’s not it’s not mathematical so I don’t mind it that’s what I mean like I do it like you know because the markets I trade are so fast if if I’m at 1.75 to1 I’ll move to break even because I think look it’s been hard enough to get to this level I don’t want to you know I’d rather take another trade than sit in this one sometimes and I’ll do it but I’ll I have to emotionally accept that. Is there any mathematical benefit in doing a trailing stop as opposed to break even? Yeah, there is. So at your trailing stops you then shift the odds but then you’re you’re you’ve got to work out it’s not a new trade, right? So let’s say for example we start at 2:1. Yeah. And we think oh actually I think this has got more legs in it. I move my stop to break even. Then it goes to 4:1 and I move my stop to break even. Now we need to start thinking about what you were talking about earlier with the ATRs and the average candle size movements. That’s what we now have to start thinking about. So when is realistic time now because we don’t know the future and we don’t know the outcome of anything. This thing could just run off forever. But what’s the likelihood of it running off forever? Mhm. This is this is why I don’t mind break pushing your your stop losses past break even and having trailing stops because you’re accepting that randomness and chaos. You’re accepting that, but also you’re you’re limiting your point to think, okay, well, now if you get to that trailing stop to 2:1, your worst case scenario is okay, it’s set 2:1 now. Best case scenario is it can go for forever. Who knows? You know, you’re accepting that. Yes. Yeah, aside from just uh average daily range um to kind of forecast where price could go beyond your fixed one to two, what about just technicals in terms of uh you got in a higher low and the target is obviously the new higher high and a bullish trend. Uh you’re sitting you know just shy of it and you you’re at your one to two. Uh what about using technicals to say you know what let me hold on further because there’s a high probability we’ll create a new high. Yeah. So I I adapted Elliot wave right. I think Elliot wave had a place a long time ago right? I think in the 70s or whatever, I believe Elliot wave was good. I don’t think it’s good anymore. If you try and give me a weekly chart of the S&P 500 and try and count waves, it’s never going to work for you. So, what we what we try and do is like, look, every time it breaks into a new high, what’s the um average length of an extension on the S&P 500 or whatever, whatever you’re looking at, and that’s the way we work it out. So again is statistically measured but we can say look it’s fair to assume the last three extensions of the highs on the S&P 500 maybe moved let’s say 0.6% or something like that right so then you can then say well I’m going to try and hold this for maybe 0.4 four or something like that. That’s acceptable for me. I’m okay with it. Like but you know like PLTR there are exceptions to the rules, right? But um on average you will know how far an extension moves on a breakout. And I I do believe the fibs so the 127 you know 1618 the golden extension and things like that. I I think they work quite well actually. And I I believe that they’re intrinsically in human nature. They fit in human nature. fib extensions I think work. What is your thoughts on up and cominging traders now and obviously capital becomes a big bottleneck or you can you can learn how to just do 1 2% a month and let the capital do the heavy lifting as opposed to chasing unrealistic gains. Obviously that brings us towards the answer in this day and age which is prop firms which was when you first started not even a reality which is why you’ve ended up in a different path I guess. What is your views on um the new version of prop firms? I really really struggle with it. So, I’m at the prop trading expo in London and um like there’s good and bad parts to prop firms. So, the prop firm model is confusing to me because like if you coming in it’s not real money. Yeah. Something that you’re trading hasn’t isn’t real money, but you’re getting charged a spread and you’re getting charged a commission on something that’s not real. That’s the first thing I that’s immoral to me anyway. But they’re trying to simulate market conditions, so that’s why they do it. They can get away with it. but it shouldn’t be there. If you’re trading simulated funds, you shouldn’t be charged spread and you shouldn’t be charged commission. That’s the first thing I would say. Um, second part about it is that these challenge phases, challenge one, challenge two, whatever. Statistically, again, it’s not going to work like for for the average trader. It’s designed to be a hindrance. Yeah. And again, with traditional uh money management principles that everybody’s taught, it’s not actually not going to work. So, we’ve run mathematical simulations based on a thousand trade scenarios with funded accounts and um like you’re only going to pass an account 30% of the time with a 50% win ratio with a 2 to1 risk-to-reward actually through because of the challenge phases and then if you’re lucky enough to get through to a live phase, you’ve got another phase still to make money on. [snorts] So, I like the fact that it’s giving people an opportunity and I’ve received payouts from them, right? and my traders have and it does work. But one, you’re not trading a real market. You’re taking collecting fees from losing traders, right? That’s how you get paid. The second part about it is that it’s the odds are stacked against you, but odds are stacked against you in trading anyway, right? So, you have to balance that as well. But it’s quite hard I think like they’ve tried to a lot of them have pitched us to open our own funded account, right? rather than a prop fund. And like statistics from what I’ve seen is that like 1% of traders are going to pass challenge one. Then out of the 100% only 1% are going to pass challenge too. And then after that only 1% of them make the money. So it’s very very tough odds for anyone that’s going to do it. Um, but if you are going to do it, and I don’t I’m not trying to take anybody away from it, is work out the probabilities on passing the the individual challenges. Mhm. And that’s when you’re going to This is what this podcast is about is helping traders. That’s how I would help a trader. I would simulate to yourself before you even start. Pay how what the path for passing an account looks like. Mhm. Before you even start, I finally have a special offer to share with all of you from the US or my futures traders, which is over 20% of the listeners of the show. 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If you are a futures trader, do do you think the stats you’re mentioning which are completely true are maybe uh warped reality because because it’s so accessible and it’s $50, $100 for the lower accounts uh that the barrier to entry is so low that it’s now inviting participants into the market that ordinarily wouldn’t if it was just a broker situation or you needed larger deposits before leverage was as it is now. Uh and therefore that if you bring in novice participants, obviously they’re going to fail, but uh maybe I’m I’m just throwing an idea, but maybe the success percentile is equivalent if you’re comparing a broker to a prop firm. Would you compare it to equivalent or or it’s still harder in that sense? I I I think it’s still harder because they have trailing draw downs. Yeah. And some of them Yes. That’s why it’s harder. Yeah. So um but then it’s not your money at that point. So who cares, right? So that there’s the psychological advantage, but it’s that’s the reason why it’s harder when it comes to trading real accounts. Again, um whether they’re synthetic accounts or or real going into the market, real real markets, there’s there’s so many different types of accounts like options trading, you know, like normal cash equities or, you know, trading futures or CFDs or spread bets, you know, they all they’re all, you know, have their advantages and disadvantages. So that’s why I only used to swing trade prior because let’s say for example I’m aiming for 200 points a two point spread is only 1%. But if I’m day trading and I’m aiming for 20 points a two point spread is 10%. Right? So that’s why I wouldn’t day trade. So this is there are advantages and disadvantages to this. So swing trading you can take a spread betting account. I don’t think there’s an issue but the fees you just got to watch out for the fees things like that. As we spend a lot of time on psychology, I want to explore psychology with prop firms because number one, it’s not your money. So that can bring up emotions or a feeling. Number two is the easy reset button. Like if you’re 10% in draw down, you just buy another one as opposed to have to climb your way out. Um but then also it can very easily become gamified and and you just play the riskreward of fees versus payouts and so forth, which is then all is is not real life. Uh have you noticed anything in traders that maybe they end up with bad habits or any observations there? Yeah. Um some people like again it goes to individuals their own psychology. Some people are more tied to whether they can do it. It’s a challenge. It turns into a personal challenge, right? And that’s good. I think that’s an interesting thing because you’re trying to prove to yourself that you developed a strategy that’s worked. I would try and detach it and prove that the strategy works. So, so if something’s not working, I wouldn’t blame it on you. I would say, look, I’ve developed this strategy. This strategy works numerically. Like, let’s see if this strategy works and detach yourself to that. I think you got a better chance of that. So, um, in terms of bad habits, um, yeah, because it’s it’s cheap and it’s easy. But I will say this, and this is a little bit controversial. If you’re gonna spend money on crap anyway, right, and you’re going out and you’re buying things or whatever, like trading, what you doing it for? Is it for entertainment or is it for to make money? If you’re a professional, it’s there. You’re there. You’re going to make a living out of it. You need to make money. If you’re buying these accounts because you you’re entertaining yourself, two different things. That’s very true. And it’s interesting because it ties back to what we were saying earlier about ego and and so forth. when you when you have um the leaderboards, when you have certificates, uh record payout holders, whatever, this is all ego. It’s all like, okay, I have an identity to my parents. I’m I’m a trader now. I’m a funded trader. Here’s a certificate. So, they can feel proud or whatever it is. It’s an interesting wild west we’ve entered in in recent years. Here it is, but then the evolution of this like it’s kind of it’s really hard to work out like you know where it’s come from and how it’s worked. So, so what we do with our traders is we it’s it’s a first risk model. So, somebody comes in with like let’s say $2,000 risk capital, let’s say they’ll we we will 10 times their money. So, they’re trading with $20,000. Yeah. For buying power and stuff like that, but they can only lose their $2,000. This is this is how our traders generally start. But if they make $2,000, we say to them, take your $2,000 out and now you’re fully funded by us. And if you can work on that capital, you earn more and more money. So for every $1,000 somebody makes, we give them another $10,000. That’s how that’s how our system works. So we’ve tried to shift that in the sense that you come in, you put your money where your mouth is. We put our money where our mouth is in teaching you, right? Then if if you get past that risk tolerance, you’ve taken your money out. This this is not you anymore, right? Your your answer to us and your profit split changes. So, at the beginning, if they’ve got risk capital in, it’s 75% to the trader, 25% to us. But as soon as we fully fund a trader, it’s 50/50. We’re now in it together. And that’s that’s how we developed this model. We thought about this model because we wanted like it to be even for the for the traders and for us, but also when they first come in, they have put up their risk capital. So, they deserve to earn more money at that stage. Um whereas with a funded account um like that that trailing draw down when you get into profit and I always say this and I’ll say it on every interview if a trader’s made me a million dollars and they draw it down to 500 grand they still made me 500 grand why am I going to get rid of them you know like that’s that’s the interesting part so if you’re a good funded trader you could probably trade anywhere like it’s so hard there that I think you’ve done a really really good job and you could get a job somewhere trading properly I would say that’s true with the rules you have with S and props is is harder than real life. So when you come to a real life scenario, it’s it should be a lot easier and take your money out and open a real account, isn’t it? And maybe trade them side by side. I had a funny trader and he might listen to this so he will probably laugh at it, but what he would do is he would trade his funded account, but he would trade the opposite position on a live account. So like but he’ll adjust the quantities of it. So basically if he he because they funded the accounts are worth so much money like because of where he got to he got to like 250k if if he lost the money for the account was hedged and he could pay for another challenge. Mhm. Oh nice. Okay. And it was like basically and if he made the money on the big account he was making way more than the money than he he would have lost. Yeah. So little mathematical queries like that, you know, like it’s it’s you have to think outside the box a little bit, but they can end up working. Obviously spreads is a bit of an issue and things like that, but it can end up working. Interesting. Um, on this topic of let’s call it diversification as this example of this chap. Um, this year I took a probably is a concept that is very well understood. is just it was new to me uh where I liquidated probably 90% of my trading accounts uh and just put it into a few stocks around the tariff time into a few stocks into gold into the indexes and uh my my overall risk uh in terms of per trade is the same but obviously I only have 10% of my account size left but I still have liquid access to it if I ever need to but now this dead capital of I wasn’t using the margin I wasn’t using the full 100% of the accounts this dead capital has now become generating me at this you 15 20%. Um, and this has brought me a lot of peace in the market. I don’t have to chase the market. It’s just I feel like a different person and it’s helped me a lot and it just feels more diversified. It feels more sensible and now I’m not forced to beat the market because the market is with me in this sense and maybe overall lifts everything that I’m doing. Um, is this something that you’ve explored yourself or something that you do? Yeah, so we take swing positions or like position trading positions as well as day trading. So like PLTR Palunteer like has been on such a great run, right? Crazy. So when we get the same signals as I use for day trading, I will use for those position trades, but I’ll use it on a weekly time frame, a very long time frame. Okay. So then I will like if something gives us a trigger, put a small amount of money in at the beginning, honestly, like 300, 500 quid position, but only if it goes well, I’ll compound on that position off the money that it’s earning from it. Mh. So this this grows over time and it works quite well. I think you can start like I said with something small and like you said as well a lot of the accounts that are on offer now and this is why I don’t think all of the technological in innovation is bad because a lot of the accounts that are offered are um there’s minimum balance protection or no loss protection on these accounts, right? So you just need the margin in there to buy these trades or whatever you need to do. So, um, if if you would open an account and let’s say, you know, Tesla gives us a new long signal on a weekly chart or something like that, you’re not you can’t go into negative balance. So, it’s literally a one-sided trade apart from the risk that you’ve put in. And that that’s a it’s a pretty decent philosophy and it’s pretty similar to what you did, but you did it on a bigger scale. So, yeah, I I do that. Um, you know, and don’t have traders remorse like, you know, I missed gold this time, you know, don’t worry about it. there’s always things that come, you know what I mean? I think that’s a big thing. Uh, as you approach uh two decades in the market and therefore you’ve seen the social media wild west, the prop wild west and and I guess the evolution of the market. Um, is there any key piece of insight that you’d like to share with someone that’s at their one to three year mark in their career? Yeah, I wouldn’t um so social media is is a positive and a negative thing, but like it’s it’s a minefield in terms of education. M so there are some really good things that you can get off social media but then you have to troll for it to find it and it’s so hard so you know having a good re an educational resource you know is is key I think so finding yourself a reputable resource is is probably the most important thing um in that one to three years you’re going to do well you’re going to do badly but like the likes of Warren Buffett Jim Simons you know These guys were the best traders in the world ever, you know, they they didn’t really make it until year 10, you know, year 12. So, I didn’t I didn’t really make consistent profits in the markets till year four. And then year five, year six, you know, they were consistently profitable. But then when we hit shifts of changing markets, you know, like if you’re expecting to make money month on month on month, it’s not going to work for you. you know, you have to have enough capital to to survive those months. And then lastly, if you are planning to trade full-time, I would always say to somebody, have like a minimum of six months of expenses paid for so you’re not relying on your trading capital to pay for your living because you can get a job in six months or whatever or maybe a year, whatever you whatever you’re comfortable with because you don’t need that pressure on your trading. Trading under pressure is too difficult. It’s not it’s not possible. I’m not I’m not sure. I have seen some traders who have really needed money make it. I have seen some, but it’s a very very low percentage. Rajan, thank you very much for your time. A wonderful episode and a very unique conversation which I really enjoy. So, thank you very much for coming on. Cheers. There we go. Perfect. Boom. Thank you.