hi Tom thank you so much for the workshop it was really amazing couple questions for you so uh this probably you've you've heard this a lot uh if you had to choose between focusing on trading psychology or focusing on having a concrete Edge on the market uh which one do you think has more impact on short term and long term on the the results of a Trader that's a good question so say that you have a really powerful Edge I I know that you use something called footprint amongst others I use more price action based
but let's say that we have a really good Edge mhm what happens if you don't believe in the edge you know because every strategy no matter how good it is will have periods where it will go through a draw down where it's not working but if you don't have the mental resore to see you through those bad trades mhm well then it doesn't really matter how good the edge is is because at the first sign of a flaw or first sign of failure you're going to bail out so I would rather have a really strong
mindset and then subsequently have to learn a good setup but I think the prerequisite for being a good Trader is to have a strong mind but not all of us are born with strong Minds we're not sometimes our parents would be the first to say oh don't do that don't be so silly you can't do that and so often times when we grow up later in life and we become adults uh you less on me I'm in my 50s you in your 20s sometimes we have to unlearn some of the things that our parents and
our brothers and sisters have told us and we kind of have to almost I invent a new identity I'll tell you something that what not many people know about me is that I left Denmark so that I could actually reinvent myself into who I really am as a human being because in Denmark I was being held back by what my family saw in me what I they thought I should do and sometimes you just got to sing from the heart and trust that what you know in here is right and then say I'm off a
la vista I will see you later I need to be true to me there's someone what said you must follow your bliss and the Bliss is what's inside I know this has got nothing to do with trading but I also don't think that if we don't love trading yeah and we don't act from a place of love I love the process I love Footprints I love price action of what Fibonacci or Bing ja b or whatever we do well you won't last you got to have a love for what we do defin so that's my
answer mindset first technique second but you know can I just add something of course most people get get it the wrong way around most people will say oh no it's all about technique oh you got to have a strong technique but that's why I think most people lose mhm nice okay it's all true also true cuz I see nowadays a lot of uh Traders may be focusing too much on psychology instead and not having an edge in the first place so that's why I'm asking sometimes there can be the opposite problem I haven't encountered that
but you know I think sometimes the pendulum of knowledge will always swing okay you know there was a time when you look at diets then was like no fat diet so we didn't eat any fat but we didn't think about sugar then like no sugar diet but now we're eating a lot of fat and and and meat because that's the ketogenic right and sometimes the knowledge of mankind the pendulum sort of swings and eventually we will settle on the right path definitely definitely so next up uh you talk often about situational analysis rather than technical
analysis and I love that uh so you analyze session by session Market Behavior at the beginning of the session uh I wonder do you use in your process uh volume macros or you're just purely price action based yeah I can answer this very quickly so for example if I could give your uh your your fans an idea of situational analysis and I just want to make sure because it gets a little technical but you have something called the regular trading session which for you in Italy would be 3:30 in the afternoon for the us until
10:00 at night and so if I observe that the Friday regular Trading session if the high during the Friday is not as high as the high in on Thursday the day before then the odds are overwhelmingly high that whatever low you made on Friday will be visited on Monday during the regular trading session that's an example of situational analysis another situational analysis that I have published is that if wedding day is low if wedding day is high is lower than Monday's high then you will see the lows of Wednesday being visited on Thursday with I
think when I did it I had 24 out of 25 was a really quite a mindboggling statistic but it's just that's that's a situational analysis and and for me it's just fun to uncover these uh shall we say idiosyncracies in the market it it also because a Trader I'm not just a Trader I'm also a curious individual and for me the research is every bit as lovable as the actual Act of trading as well especially especially if you got something you think that's going to happen today and I'm you got this game you kind of
excited about oh I'm waiting for this to happen and then it happens and it it plays it out and you walk away a big winner that's a lovely feeling mhm amazing so being a high stakes Trader uh you often talk about how you scale up in a position um do you have also a strategies to scale out of a position as well and if yes yes how no I think it's one of my flaws as a Trader is that I tend to uh I I'm a high stake Trader because my my my stake size alone
is high but I add to my winning trades and not many Traders do that they add to losing trades please don't do that don't do that no please don't do that Uncle Thomas spoken but you can also imagine that if you had bought say the Dax at or the S&P at at 50 and then you add more at 55 and maybe you add again at 60 if the S&P then goes back to to 55 you are break even on the second you're losing on the third and you're winning on the on the first and basically
you're break even now even though technically you should have 10 points and my uh I'm I'm February was a big losing month for me mhm yeah and I have to rethink my strategy about adding to my winning trades because it was the winning trades in February that blew up in my face yeah of course well it had worked in January and December but yeah I guess at times you will just encounter does it does it matter on Market condition do you blame it on Market condition as well I never blame market conditions because you know
we take as Traders and as human beings mhm we take ultimate responsibility for everything in our lives we don't blame our wives or our children or our friends we blame ourselves and we find a way out from that definitely sure still there's you know black swans can happen of course but then we have a stop loss don't we definitely definitely my problem is more of a I'm trying to push the boat too hard and it has spectacularly backfired on me and and I as a responsible Trader I have to go back and review that say
have I done something yeah so anyway okay yes so now into really quick question sure do you think that Banks and instit tions hunt for retail cfds Trader stop losses no please don't now here's the here here's the thing what I want to say to you is this Al you worked on a cfd broker so yeah but BS to that no sorry don't swear onle look uh I did some intense work on the whole conspiracy theory of Institutions chasing yes and one of the things that I use as a resource for my argument against it
is the bis report bis is the Bank of international settlement and in the Bank of international settlement they estimate that retail Traders which basically still you and I definely we make up 5% of the daily volume mhm we are not even small fish we are so insignificant no the real problem is that people like you and and I and everybody else we always place our stop loss above the old highs or below the old lows because that's what we do and we don't have big budgets either so therefore we are easy target of course do
you know what my best friend and Mentor David Paul once said and maybe you should pass that on to your students he said I always like to place my orders where the crowd Place their stop loss definitely isn't that amazing I've heard that quote definitely anyway anyway yes so contrarian kind of mindset is always I think good but getting that into the conspiracy and blaming the algorithm to you know I think the algorithm to that was supposed to be the next question is there one algorithm controlling the market what like a like a big Mighty
yes well if there is yes I have found no evidence of whatsoever amazing because sometimes it's turned on and sometimes it's turned off and you know like I have friends that I really like as human beings yes but I don't like their views on conspiracy theory if I lose I don't blame the market I don't blame some algorithm I blame me definitely definitely 100% agree um last two really quick like this on a scale from 1 to 10 how important is subjectivity for a discretional Trader would you mind defining subjectivity in your like knowing which
a bias yes let's say a bias all right I wish I could send you a chart I actually since I'm sending you my entire presentation anyway I might show it that slide maybe so there's a slide in there that has the data of 30,000 uh obser sorry 30 years of Dow Jones history uhhuh but it's in a bell curve yeah and if it's below it's because the that the Dow has lost for the day compared to the previous day's close and if it's above it's because it's gained for the day compared to previous day's close
that allocation of winning days and losing days over 30 years 7,500 trading days the distribution of winning days and losing days for the Dow Jones index is 49.6 to 50.4 okay basically 5050 yeah it's 50/50 and so having a bias might serve you to calm your own mind but I never trade with a bias I never go in and say I'm really bearish or I'm really bullish I'm going hey let's see what the market will give me and that's why I think mechanical strategies has an edge for me because it doesn't really factor in whether
the market is very bullish or very beish definitely definitely sometimes maybe though it's hard to quantify something things that you are implicitly learning through experience right I agree with you and also I was very careful how I answered I said it's not useful for me yes and I have substantiated why that is but I will bow to the person like you and your performance and if you use discretion well clearly then there's more to the story than just a one-dimensional perspective from me definitely I don't uh I don't use a lot of discretion or Instinct
if if you want I'm very pragmatical and and and mechanical but I think even if you wanted to like use your instinct you should Track Your Instinct and see how it's performs and great comment definitely um so what do you think last question um what do you think about the actual the current retail trading educational back Battleground and what would you change or what are you doing in your uh in your community to to to to bring a better impact on the community well look first of all have you ever heard the expression that everybody
wants to be Shepherds but no one wants to be up in the mountains yeah okay it's a it's a saying that I kind of invented that there's a lot of people who would like to get paid to tutor other people mhm and they safe money in teaching other people and and you know it could be a good business I'm not so interested in teaching people for money not because I would be ashamed of it but because I don't think that I have the necessary qualities to be a good teacher uh on a on a really
granular level I'm better at maybe addressing like 70 people here in Prague and then and then give them the notes so that they can work through it themselves I'm not the one who's perhaps handholding them like a personal coach because personal coaching well I make more money from Trading than I would from person unless you can afford to pay me £5,000 a day which very few people can do anyway but I also am I'm distressed as a as a more mature person I'm distressed by the uh the volume of Deceit that I see MH by
Educators because it feels to me as the qualifying factor for these Educators is to show the world that they have a penthouse mhm or a Ferrari or Bugatti but to me that isn't the deciding factor the deciding factor of whether you really become a successful Trader to me is how do you handle losing because everybody can have good periods but it's usually the the losing periods that will kill you and that I think isn't being expressed at all because most educators will focus just on the winning not realizing that showing vulnerability is actually a strength
that you can own up to yeah I I should have gotten out sooner I didn't it won't happen the next time mhm nice well thank you very much thank you
