Before You Buy a Prop Firm Account, Watch This  Podcast: Find out more about Blueberry Markets – Click Here Find out more about my Online Video Forex Course Book a Call with Andrew or one of his team now Click Here to Attend my Free Masterclass 628: Before You Buy a Prop Firm Account, Watch This In this video: 00:37 – How to pass a Prop Firm Challenge. 00:56 – #1 – Don’t open a Prop firm account right now. 01:45 – #2 – You need a proven and easy to trade strategy. 03:05 – #3 – Trade your own real money account. 04:27 – #4 – Use a VPS and Trade Copier software. 05:54 – #5 – Choose the prop firm account type that suits you. 06:55 – Blueberry Markets as a Forex Broker. 07:10 – Our new look website is now live at www.TheForexTradingCoach.com Today, I’m going to give you my top five tips so that you can easily pass a prop firm challenge. This is a really important video if you’re wanting to make money through trading the forex market. Let’s get into that more right now. Hey there Traders! This is Andrew Mitchem here, the owner of The Forex Trading Coach with video and podcast number 628. How to pass a Prop Firm Challenge. Outside again here today on an absolutely stunning autumn day here in Nelson in New Zealand. And the topic of today’s video and podcast is all about how to easily pass a prop firm challenge. I’m going to give you my five top tips. Now, the first one’s going to really surprise you, because you’re going to be expecting me to talk about some of which prop firms or trading strategy. But my number one top tip to easily pass a prop firm challenge is not to open a prop firm account. Not for now. Certainly, by the end of this, you’re going to know why and when you should do so. #1 – Don’t open a Prop firm account right now. But my number one tip, honestly for now, is do not waste your time. Do not waste your money. Do not pay the prop firm. And if you do that now, if you start now, you’re going to lose confidence. You’re going to lose money. You’re going to waste your time. If you hold off, you are going to pass a prop firm challenge in the end. But if you start straight away, you’re almost certainly going to end up losing your money and failing. So my number one tip is do not open a prop firm challenge right now. #2 – You need a proven and easy to trade strategy. My number two tip is, of course, you do need a good strategy. And now the strategy needs to be something that’s proven. Proven across different markets, different trading conditions, different time frame charts. It needs to be something that aligns with you. Whether it’s the time that you can trade, the time of day, the amount of time it requires, does it actually fit with you? Do you understand exactly what the strategy and the logic is? So that’s really important. But also the key to passing a prop firm challenge, once you know what you’re doing, is not to hit the drawdown level. So you need to be really sure that the strategy and the way that you trade meets their drawdown criteria. So you need to trade with really low risk per trade and have very low drawdowns, and you need consistency in your profitable trades as well. So it’s not just about here’s a wonderful strategy. It needs to be something, you know, if you hit like a 5% drawdown in a day or so because you’re risking too much while you’re going to fail the prop firm challenge, regardless of how good your strategy is. So you need to really focus on reducing risk per trade and knowing what you’re doing, and when to take the trade and how to keep that risk low. #3 – Trade your own real money account. So third thing would be once you have that strategy in place, you need to get on to a live account of your own money. It needs to be your real money, your live account. It doesn’t need to be big, but it needs to be a live account. And the reason is, is that the psychological change between a demo and the live is huge. Now, it doesn’t need to be a massive account. I said it could be like a few thousand dollars, but it just needs to be real money. You need to bring emotions into your trading. You know, when you have losing trades, you’re going to, you know, it’s going to hurt. When you have winning trades, you’re going to feel fantastic. So you’ve got to understand those emotions. But also you’ve got to try and control those emotions so that those drawdowns and those losing trades and those highs from the winning trades become almost neutralized. And I wouldn’t suggest you go to a demo because a demo doesn’t mean anything and demo doesn’t teach you the psychological side of making or losing real money, your money. So tip number three get on to a live account. You then need to also prove that with your live account, you can become consistent. Now you also need to keep that drawdown very low and treat it though it’s a bigger account as well. So show up, be consistent, keep your drawdowns very, very low. And so prove to yourself first on your money that you can trade properly. #4 – Use a VPS and Trade Copier software. The fourth thing you should then do is seek out a virtual server and trade copier software. Now, the reason I say that is because it then makes trading one account or multiple prop firm accounts, whether they be on the demo stage or a live account, different account sizes, different denominations. It makes it very, very easy. Now you think about this in terms of the reality of trading. You’re out there trading your, let’s say, 2, 3, 4 or $5000 account live and you’re saying, well, I’m doing okay. I’ve passed Andrew’s tip number three and it’s all good. The trouble is, if you then start on a $100,000 demo or $100,000 live account with a prop firm, that’s a massive change in your mental approach. So you don’t want to be trading directly on that prop firm account. What I suggest you do is you trade your life master account still, and you have those trades copied behind the scenes automatically onto your prop firm account or prop firm accounts. You know, just imagine you’ve got five prop firm accounts open. You don’t want to be trading every single one of them individually, placing trades, calculating risk lot sizes, entering stops, moving positions, all that type of thing. You don’t want to do that. Trade your one small live account properly, knowing that behind the scenes it’s getting copied through a trade copier software and a virtual server onto your prop firm account or accounts. Behind the scenes makes life so much easier. #5 – Choose the prop firm account type that suits you. And then finally, my fifth top tip, once you’ve done all those and you’ve mastered stage one before, is you do then of course go on to a prop firm account. Now, there are various prop firm accounts out there. And like all things in life, some are better than the worse than others. Some will allow you to go on to one demo and then straight onto live once you pass the demo, some have two stage challenges, some allow you to go straight to live. You really need to figure out what is best for you in terms of the account size, how many accounts you’re going to go through, which prop firms you’re going to go through, etc. like that. I can certainly give you some ideas and suggestions, but really, once you know how to trade, you then need to decide which prop firm account and company you are willing to go with. So those are my five top tips there. And you do all that and you can then start to easy pass prop firm accounts, quite comfortably, like we have so many of our clients doing on a regular basis. Blueberry Markets as a Forex Broker. If you’re out there looking for a good broker, I can highly recommend Blueberry Markets. They have a they also have their own prop firm company as well, Blueberry Funded. But have a look at Blueberry Markets throughout there looking for a good broker. Our new look website is now live at www.TheForexTradingCoach.com And lastly, have a look at our new website, TheForexTradingCoach.com. Our new look website has now gone live. Hope you like the changes and improvements with modernized everything made it a little bit more, sort of, cool looking, you know, it’s more efficient, more information on there, easier to navigate and just a little bit sort of modernized. It kind of needed it. And now it’s had that facelift. So, hopefully you like that. And, if you’d like to join us, of course, you’ll find the joining link on that website. And joining us and learning how to trade properly first is also going to be your shortcut to passing a prop firm challenge, because we have so many people that trade prop firm successfully, because of the way that we do trade and our strategy and the support that we have and the help and longevity and proven strategy across multiple markets and, and such a long time within the markets, you know, we celebrate our 17th birthday, this year in May 2026, in a few months time. So that’s it for now. Prop firms are a great way. They’re a great option of making money. But, honestly, look at point number one, the best thing you can do to start with if you don’t have the other points sorted, is do not open that prop firm account just for now. Get points two, three and four sorted and then go to the live account or the demo account with a prop firm. This is Andrew Mitchem here at The Forex Trading Coach. I see you this time next week. Bye for now! Episode Title: #628: Before You Buy a Prop Firm Account, Watch This Find out more about Blueberry Markets – Click Here Find out more about my Online Video Forex Course Book a Call with Andrew or one of his team now Click Here to Attend my Free Masterclass

 Why Most Traders Are Completely Confused  Podcast: Find out more about Blueberry Markets – Click Here Find out more about my Online Video Forex Course Book a Call with Andrew or one of his team now Click Here to Attend my Free Masterclass 627: Why Most Traders Are Completely Confused In this video: 00:38 – Information overload. 01:29 – AI predications. 01:53 – I know in my head how to trade. 02:47 – News events moving the markets. 03:46 – People switching strategy. 04:54 – Our strategy has never changed in 17 years. 07:39 – Blueberry Markets as a Forex Broker. Do you suffer from information overload? You know, you see signals out there online. You’re not sure what to do. There’s so much information, conflicting information. And you just have complete confusion. You don’t know what to do, when to do it, and therefore you probably either gamble or give up. If that’s you, listen up. The next five minutes is going to be absolutely invaluable information that’s going to help change your trading around. Let’s get into that more right now. Hey there traders. It’s Andrew here at The Forex Trading Coach with video and podcast number 627. Information overload. So today I want to talk about information overload. It’s a big problem that people have. You know there’s so much information out there online. There’s thousands and thousands of indicators. And people seem to think they’re going to come up with the Holy grail of indicators. You know, there’s massive amount of conflicting information with social media signals. And, you know, there’s, other social media, signals saying buy on this pair and at the same time, you’re indicators turning down and therefore you think you should be selling, you’ll see something on YouTube that says buy. You see something on TikTok that says sell and you’ll get something on signal or, you know, telegram that says completely opposite and people just have no idea what to do. And you can see why, because they rely on other people to make that analysis for them, and therefore they really don’t know what they’re looking for. AI predications. And, you know, the, the other common one that I’m seeing now, of course, is AI predictions. And that, again, you know, while in theory and great AI is going to solve all our problems. Look, AI is going to make us damn lazy. We’re not going to have a clue what to do. And if you want to rely on AI, then you know, good luck to you. That’s all I can say for me. And I had this discussion with someone just last week. I know in my head how to trade. To me, as a trader, there is nothing better than knowing in my head and in my heart I can see trades, I can take trades. And I’ve got that information and that powerful information, to be able to do this. You know, for the rest of my life, I want to or however long I want to, and pass that information on to people. And, you know, for people that want to put a bit of time and effort in to figure out this for themselves, then, you know, I think just being able to do this for yourself is massive, and A.I. it’s just not going to cut it. I can’t see it. It’s just not going to have those nuances of those human factors that, you know, we have and can see. Now, sure, I’m not knocking it. And sure there of course there will be a place for it. And, you know, it can help do some analysis in the future and potentially take trades when you’re asleep or those type of things. But overall, I think you still need some common sense and knowledge of trading in order to even use A.I., News events moving the markets. News as well. Of course, that’s causing massive issues with people right now. You know, we’ve got the Iran war going on with the oil price going up one day, crashing the next day up again. And and people think it’s, you know, it’s causing problems. And I get a lot of people say to me, hey, Andrew, what’s happening right now with your trading due to this? You know, this war? And I said, well, nothing’s changed. You know, markets are moving up and down because mostly in the currencies we’re trading pairs. You know, if, let’s say the US is particularly strong, then you might, you know, be buying the GBP/USD, selling the GBP/USD if the US is weak, you might be selling it. You know, it just depends on what’s happening. On that particular day. We, over the last week or two have just had some incredible trades, mostly sort of 12 hour time frames down to two hours. The longer time frames have just been a little bit harder to trade, but that’s just the way the market is right now. But again, it’s understanding what to do and knowing what to do and see a trade take a trade is the crucial aspect there. People switching strategy. So look analysis paralysis causes a problem. It just leads to people to switching strategies. You know, they don’t get a strategy or it’s not working straight away. So they move on to the next shiny object. And that’s a common problem that I see all the time. And of course, what’s that doing? Is it leading to inconsistent trading, lack of confidence, lack of making a decent return. You know, you’re losing money and you know, you your spouse says to you, look, you just wasting our money and it’s just not working. Go and do something else. And and that’s the problem that I see time and time and time again. It’s just such a common problem. And I get it. Well, it’s because people don’t, stop to actually, like, invest in themselves. Through their education or their time into trading, learning properly themselves, developing their own strategy, whatever it might be. And it’s like anything life isn’t that, you know, if you’re going to put some time and effort into it, you’ll probably do quite well if you think you’re just going to wing it and, and fluke it or, you know, find the answer on, you know, on social media, it’s probably not going to be a good long term outcome for you. Our strategy has never changed in 17 years. Why I’m saying that. Well, look, we’re 17 years old here at The Forex Trading Coach. In a couple of months, it’s something we’re immensely proud of. And I just wanted to let you know that in that time, the strategy has never changed. And so when I talk about all these issues of the analysis paralysis, you know, whether it be a war going on, A.I. whatever it might be, and that leads to confusion and conflicting information. And clients don’t have that. You know, we have a massive community of people right around the world in 111 countries, all looking at the same strategy, the same charts at the same time, or helping each other. We post, trades each day, for our clients to follow our multiple time frame charts and so if a client has a question, we answer it and they know exactly. You know what, we know what they’re looking at, and they know what we’re looking at because it’s the one strategy. But when you think about it, how many people out there, can you say that you can find anywhere online? I challenge you to have a look anywhere online that can say, the course that I’m teaching is identical in terms of the strategy, for close on 17 years. That to me says everything it tells me. And it should tell you that what we’re looking for, our strategy is completely, well and truly proven across all markets, timeframes, trading conditions, wars, oil prices going up, oil prices come down, the creation of cryptos, the ability to trade metals and indices, commodities and more forex pairs and it still continues to work. So, I think that really sums up everything you need to know if you’re out there looking for someone to give you some help. Because why would you look anywhere else? Everything that we have, created over those 17 years is there to help our clients, trade easily, to have an understanding of what to do. Sure to use our help, especially at the very beginning when the learning, but over time to become independent, successful forex traders without our help. We’re not interested in having people year after year after year, you know, being handheld that’s not our aim, our aim is to say this is a strategy. It works. Stick with it, understand it, ask questions, use our help. And after a year, you know, six months a year, you’re off doing your own thing and really, you know, progressing well, profiting potentially on prop firms, however you want to go with your trading and, and you, you know, you’re a happy customer. So, that’s it for today. Don’t get confused. Don’t seek out something that works. Get off. You know, the vast majority of the social media and the A.I. and the signals, learn how to do it for yourself if you really want to become a good trader. Blueberry Markets as a Forex Broker. One last thing. If you’re out there looking for a really good broker, I can highly recommend Blueberry Markets over in Australia. They’re, you know, they’re great people. So many, people who. I’ve sent them over to them over the years, and all you get is this consistent feedback. You know, great people, great platform, great spreads, withdrawing funds. It’s just really easy. I withdraw some funds from an account, just on Friday of last week. By Monday, it was in my account, here in New Zealand from Australia. So great people. Have a look at Blueberry Markets as well. This is Andrew here, The Forex Trading Coach I see this time next week. Bye for now. Episode Title: #627: Why Most Traders Are Completely Confused Find out more about Blueberry Markets – Click Here Find out more about my Online Video Forex Course Book a Call with Andrew or one of his team now Click Here to Attend my Free Masterclass

The Psychology Hack Every Trader Needs  Podcast: Find out more about Blueberry Markets – Click Here Find out more about my Online Video Forex Course Book a Call with Andrew or one of his team now Click Here to Attend my Free Masterclass YouTube: Dr. David Bonanno Enroll to Max Discipline Click Here to Learn More About Max Discipline Click Here to Checkout the Book: The Consistently Calm Trader: Master the War Between Discipline 626: The Psychology Hack Every Trader Needs In this video: 00:17 – Talking about mindset in trading. 00:54 – Dr David Bonanno helps traders. 08:02 – Traders issues with over trading and thinking money! 13:24 – Don’t reinvent the wheel. 16:30 – You don’t need a 90% win rate. 21:40 – You have to love the concept of trading. 25:55 – Traditional forum sites don’t work. 27:50 – Be real with your trading. 30:25 – Contacting Dr Dave. Andrew Mitchem Hi everybody. It’s Andrew here at The Forex Trading Coach. Welcome along to another video and podcast. I’m really pleased today to be joined by Dr. Dave Bonanno over in the US. Dave, welcome along. Nice to have you here. Dr. Dave Bonanno Thanks. Yeah. Great to be here. Talking about mindset in trading. Andrew Mitchem Really looking forward to this because quite often in trading we talk about strategy and rules, talking about indicators and charts and things like that. But today we want to bring it back to something that applies to everybody. No matter what type of trading you are, whether your fundamental trade, a technical trade or a mix. And it’s really important that you start to understand, your mindset within trading. And that’s why, Dr. Dave here today is here. And how he’s going to help you and all of us listening and watching with the mental aspect of trading. So, Dr. Dave, maybe you can start about introducing yourself, what you do and how you help traders at that. Dr David Bonanno helps traders. Dr. Dave Bonanno Okay, great. Yeah. So I started off, as a therapist who is really trying to help people with problems, especially PTSD. And most people don’t really know what PTSD is like. If you look it up, there’s no definition. It’s just a list of symptoms. So the way that I define it now is that it’s when you have adrenaline and it just is overactive. And the thing to know is that when you have adrenaline, it makes your logical brain go offline. So I maintain that adrenaline is every trader’s enemy, and it doesn’t mean that you’re in full fight or flight, or that you’re afraid or that you’re angry. It can affect us in a lot of ways that we’re not even really aware of. And so if you like, read other mindset books or listen to other people who talk about the psychology of trading, they talk about changing your thoughts. But what I’m really all about is how to, engage with your subconscious in a way so that it doesn’t contaminate what you’re doing on a moment by moment basis. Andrew Mitchem Interesting. So you’re taking a slightly different approach to it. So on a like just to get it on the beginning, but to give her some right at the beginning on, on a, on a like a practical basis, someone’s out, they’re trying to identify a trade setup or they’re in a trade maybe. What do you do that could help them with those scenarios? Right. So I had this trader named Tony, and he was really successful in his career, and he wanted to gear up for retirement. And he he was a very logical guy and he could understand intellectually probabilities and all that. But when money was on the line, especially when he was trying to scale or even when he was trying to, take payouts from the prop firms, he would find himself just not quite making the right decisions. So of course, he looked at his strategy and and his, you know, technical skills. But I think what he didn’t realize at the time was sometimes adrenaline would get in the way. And and so that could be like if he was putting pressure on himself to provide a financial security for him and his family, or if he couldn’t really accept losses all that well, and I’m not even talking about like, yeah, I’m not talking about like throwing a tantrum or anything, but like, his wife would notice that he wasn’t in a very good mood after he had a red day. And so, yeah, we we needed to look at what was going on for him subconsciously. And, you know, we all could try to think like, well, you know, I’m pretty much in control of my emotions or I didn’t really notice, you know, what was happening for me in the moment. But we’re talking about subconscious stuff. And by definition that’s what we’re not aware of. Andrew Mitchem Yeah. Dr. Dave Bonanno So yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, one of the things I do first is I help people to identify, what exactly is going on for them. And it doesn’t mean, you know, that we have to go back to the past and blame your parents for everything. Like I was taught to do as a therapist. But we use, eye movements, which is, like EMDR if if people don’t know what that is, it’s the most researched, intervention for PTSD that there ever was. And I’m sure you probably even know people who’ve done it. So anyway, that kind of allows us to interface with your emotional brain. So, like, we have two brain systems that are at play at the same time. It’s kind of like two TV shows that are superimposed on each other, and you can’t just ignore one of them and sometimes I yeah. So sometimes our head and our heart is in sync. But a lot of times it isn’t. At least as much as we’d like to think that it is. So yeah, if we can actually like kind of interface with that part of our brain, that’s the part that makes our logical brain go offline. So we still do need that emotional part. Like it’s sort of like, like, you know, when you’re dreaming, then you wake up and your logical brain think so that was crazy. But that’s really because the logical brain was out of the way. And it’s it’s coming on, you know, with your, emotions. So what I’m getting at is, that when you’re able to move your eyes, that’s what allows you to connect with your heart. It’s great for journaling because instead of trying to go back and guess at what you were doing subconsciously, it really kind of helps you to get there. And that’s what we did for Tony. Andrew Mitchem Interesting. And so his results work improved dramatically after some time. Dr. Dave Bonanno Oh, absolutely. Yeah. He’s he’s doing awesome now. He just, showed me a picture of a house he wants to buy in Florida, and, he, he needed to help his parents out. And he, he was putting a lot of pressure on himself that he wasn’t really quite aware of. And that’s going to add adrenaline and, you know, like. Yeah. So like if he if you look at advice from other trading coaches or mindset coaches, they’re like, okay, well you have to control your emotions and you have to use your willpower in order to kind of, push them aside and focus on what you need to. Yeah. And that that can work sometimes, but it doesn’t work all the time. And if you’re telling somebody who’s full of adrenaline that they need to calm down, that’s kind of like telling somebody who’s full of alcohol that they need to be sober. Like it just. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s yeah, yeah, I know I’ve tried. But, Yeah. So I think instead of trying to use your willpower and then blaming yourself when you, when it doesn’t really work, and then people start to go into a cycle. Right. Like they start to doubt themselves and they start to think, well, maybe I’m a weak person or whatever. And really, I think they’re just kind of setting themselves up for failure by expanding, their body and their mind to react in ways that it’s not set up for it. Because once again, like when you’re in fight or flight, you’re but your brain is designed to go offline, like, you know, if you’re if you’re in the forest and you see a bear or something, you’re not supposed to be going through all the, pros and cons of the opposite, like you need to be running away or fighting. It would. Yeah. That’s right. Yeah. So that’s just how we’re built. So. So when we’re training and there’s like, you know, people can follow their rules, fine. If there’s not too much pressure. But when you’re scaling up or when you’re trying to, make this one being trained, you know, that’s going to really help you out. Or if you’re trying to get like a good feeling, like if you’re if you’re a little bit maybe addicted to training, you’re doing it to feel good, then it’s going to backfire. And then the harder you try, the more you’re feeding energy into that negative cycle. Traders issues with over trading and thinking money! Andrew Mitchem Yeah, that’s really interesting. I get a lot of people over the years that come to me and they have this exact issue, and a lot of people, unfortunately, when they get into trading, they they have this mindset. And like I did exactly the same over 20 years ago, you get into it, it’s new, it’s exciting. You think you’re going to make lots of money. Then you start looking at charts and lines and dots and arrows and indicators and you think, wow, this is awesome. I’m good. Look at this. Crosses this. I’m going to buy here, make a fortune. And then you soon realize it doesn’t work. And you then or the other issue I noticed that a lot of people have is they overtrain so much, you know, they want to go down to the very short timeframe charts because they believe the more they trade, their more they’re going to make. And they’re and you used the word just now about being addicted, whether it was alcohol or addicted to things. And I find that so many people have that, that they’re trigger happy. You know, they go to click, click, click, click, click trace and and of course, inevitably it will end up, losing for them. And then their whole mindset starts, that whole self-doubt and, and all they get to that stage where they’ll go. I’ve had so many losing track. This one’s band win and they do something stupid on it all. They they see the best set up that they’ve had all day, and they don’t take it because they’re scared, because they’ve lost so many other traits. There’s all these mix of emotions going on and it results in not being a good trader. Dr. Dave Bonanno Yeah, that’s that’s great. That’s that’s totally what I come across as well. And you know, like when I made the transition to working with traders, it was great because it’s it’s there’s just so much psychology there. Yeah. And and yeah like I think sometimes you know people don’t really want to admit that because they don’t want to be thinking of themselves as like, you know, crazy or whatever. But if you’re like, for example, an athlete who wants to be in the very top of your game, of course you have to work on the physical, but you have to work on the mental as well. That’s right. And so, yeah, if you want to be a trader who’s in the top 5%, who makes money, there’s just no way around it. I mean, nobody’s so good technically that they’re going to be able to cover their emotional mistakes, right? I mean, it’s just like you can’t. So. Yeah. I think, you know, one thing that’s really interesting to me is how the research shows that happy people in general have a less accurate picture of the world than people who are depressed. And the reason I bring that up is because I think we all like to believe that we know what we’re doing and when when somebody is in a situation like you’re talking about, when they get trigger happy, their logical brain is compromised and it’s making it’s making rationales for why they should do it again. Right. Like, oh, well, this it’s it’s got to work out this time. Or like, you know, the gambler’s fallacy or you know, like, like maybe I this time I’m thinking about it correctly or not, or, you know, all the types of things that people tell themselves. And it’s, you know, I think one thing that really happens is when you feel bad about something and, you know, like, it can happen to all of us. Like you could make the perfect decision, but the market just doesn’t go your way. You’ll never know exactly why that was, but because we want to feel in charge, we take on that responsibility and think, well, I did something wrong. And then you can either show restraint and hold back or I think, like most of us, maybe even us men, we want to do something. We want to fix it. Right? So like, it feels so much more powerful to actually be active than to use restraint and just wait for your perfect setup. So I mean, I see this all the time, and yeah, it can be such a slippery slope that when you, if you get, angry or frustrated or anxious or afraid, you’re adding adrenaline to the whole equation, which is going to make you do worse, which is going to just increase your adrenaline as well. And this doesn’t have to happen in just the course of one session. Like I recently talked to a guy who lost $700,000 over the course of three months, and he he just wasn’t fully aware of what was going on for him subconsciously. Yeah. So it’s just that it’s a really hard thing to do. I mean, you know, you could go to therapy and talk about your subconscious all day, but you’re still doing that consciously and it doesn’t really work. But, what I do is I try to be really quick and effective and use these eye movements, and then we just clear things up right away. So like, that’s kind of what happened with Tony as well. So. So I would imagine, Andrew, that you must get frustrated. I would think sometimes when you’re giving people solid advice that they should follow, they know they should follow it, and then they come back to you and they’re like, I just I just didn’t I just couldn’t, right? Like, what do people even say? Don’t reinvent the wheel. Andrew Mitchem Yeah, yeah. No, you’re absolutely right. It it is frustrating because people seem to always want to reinvent the wheel. And it’s like you don’t need to. That’s why you joined us. We have the way it works, I can promise you. Yeah. And it comes along from, I think social media right now is a is a big negative for everything that we have to almost put up with us as people who like to help or coaches. Because they’re out there seeing the flash, Lamborghinis and Ferraris and all the rest of it, and they think that’s how it has to be. I actually say to people, the the honest truth is good trading is boring. And I mean that in a really good and honest way, and that you need to be doing the same thing on a daily basis. And as we’re finding out from our chat, you know, to remove the emotions as much as possible, stick to the principle of what you’re saying. One thing that I am massive on from a practical trading point of view. Well, two things. One, we keep our risk very low and controlled on every single trade. I think that helps massively. You don’t get those huge fluctuations of emotions of those those big wins or those big losses. So I hope, right. It doesn’t matter what the market we’re trading, whether it’s a forex or non forex or it doesn’t matter the time frame or directional stop loss. Every trade has the same low and equal risk. So on the next. Dr. Dave Bonanno I’m sorry I don’t I won’t put words in your mouth. But do you find that people agree with you 100% on that intellectually? And then when they just they’re like, oh, but this, this one looks so good. And then they risk more than they should. Andrew Mitchem And no, they don’t agree. That’s the problem. To start with. They think a lot of people don’t that it becomes, well, some do and some don’t. The ones that don’t, go off and do their own, you know, risk or no risk or stupid risk. And then almost everyone will then come back and go, oh, I realized that what you told me, like, you know, three months ago or six months ago, I should have done. And that’s there almost need to find that that moment for themselves and figure it out for themselves, just like I told you. But I can’t say I told you so, because that doesn’t help right now. But, you know, you can feed all this information to people, and, and some people will still go off and break those rules and do their thing, but the good ones are. Geez, circle back and come back and go, like I, I went off and found some other course and some other strategy. I realized that was rubbish. I realized what I got from you a year ago is really good. And now I’m back doing it and I want to start again. That happens quite a bit. The other thing that I think that helps with the way that we trade is not only is our risk allowing control portray, but our reward is high on our trades. So our profitable trade so that we we kind of step, we have little losses, bigger step, little losses, bigger step. And we we, you know everybody shows this perfect equity. We don’t have that. We have a little low controlled losses. Big two, three four times the risk on a profitable trade. You don’t need a 90% win rate. And the slight issue that some people have with that is that some people want to see that 90% win rate. Andrew Mitchem A lot of people often get caught up with the win rate. And I give them the classic example of a true example. Many years ago, someone had a like a they showed me like a 90% winning system that they had, but they were still losing money because they did not have the the money management. Correct. Right. You know, as a very basic example, let’s say they were let’s say making ten pips on a trade and they made nine trades profitable with ten pips each. So they made 90. But that one losing trade lost 100 pips. So you know, a very basic example. But they they were basically the guy asking a 90% win. Right. Aren’t I good. But I’m losing money. Dr. Dave Bonanno Right. Yeah. And I bet that was kind of attractive to them because you get that positive reinforcement. I mean, like if you’re. Yeah, if you’re winning nine times out of ten, it feels great. And then of. Andrew Mitchem Course you I’m not losing that one damn trader. I’ve lost money. So there’s all these different like, approaches that people have. And that’s I suppose, the exciting thing, from trading, isn’t it, that there’s no one approach that fits everybody. Dr. Dave Bonanno Right. And, you know, I mean, like to, to talk about, what you experience with your clients sometimes when they come back to you and they say, oh, I finally learned my lesson, you know, like, I mean, I have kids and try to tell what to do in the course. They don’t want to hear it. And then I have to just really. Yeah. Just want to make mistakes and hopefully they’ll they’ll make enough mistakes while they’re young and and the, the stakes are still low before they go out to the world. Yeah. Then do stupid shit. Andrew Mitchem That’s right. Yeah. And I suspect that you and me exactly the same. When we were kids. Dr. Dave Bonanno Yeah. Well, actually. Yeah. Geez. Yeah, yeah, I knew everything when I was kid. Yeah. Andrew Mitchem No, it’s interesting that the how, the how the cycle keeps pace going. What question I wanted to ask you, and this is something I’m personally starting to just change my opinion on, is that I always used to say to people, start on a demo account, make the mistakes on the demo account of the platform and the lot sizes, etc. then go to a smaller live account and go bigger when you’re profitable. I’m almost starting to say to people now, don’t spend so much time on demo. Sure, use the demo to understand how a new trading platform, the software works. But I’m finding now that people that go on to a small live account are feeling those emotions like more realistic that you can never get on a demo, how would you kind of approach that? Dr. Dave Bonanno Yeah, it’s not interesting. You could try as hard as you can to recreate a situation like that for yourself, and it’s just not the same. It’s it’s really like professional athletes, you know, they practice, but you you can only practice so much until the game is on the line. And, you know, I think one thing that really happens is that we get into a flow state. So when things are the way they’re supposed to be, it’s kind of like you’re really focused on the charts, you’re really focused on what you’re doing. And then it’s like, oh my God, it’s the session’s almost over. You need to be using your intuition. But if and if you’re overthinking too much, you know, that’s certainly not going to work. But if you’re if you’re also like distracted by your emotions or by, you know, thinking about, oh, what is this going to mean if like if, if, if you win this trade, you know, like I don’t know how much of a sports fan you are, but I can’t stand, sports interviews because they’ll be like, you know, what were you thinking at this point when it happened? And the guys like, I don’t know, I’ll just see the ball hit the ball. I mean, you know, like, that’s really all there is. Yeah. Andrew Mitchem Now that’s. Dr. Dave Bonanno So. Yeah. And. Yeah. And then you know what? I like how you said that trading should kind of be boring. And, you know there’s there’s intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation. So extrinsic motivation is you’re doing something for the reward. And of course you know that’s part of it. Intrinsic motivation is just because you like it. So like if it yeah like if, if you just like trading then that’s great. And if you’re if you’re caught up in the extrinsic, it’s actually not only going to add to your adrenaline, but it replaces the intrinsic motivation. So if I could just give you a quick, quick example, like they had children read over the summer, they tracked how much they did. Then the next summer they paid them to read. So of course you’d think they’d read so much more. But what happened was it became a job for them and that that just took all the fun out of it. So yeah, if you’re too focused on why and why you’re doing this other than just because I like it, I get into a flow state, then I think that’s just, you know, going to mess you up eventually. You have to love the concept of trading. Andrew Mitchem Yeah. That’s interesting because, yeah. No, that’s a great point. I say to people like because of the time zone that I live in here in New Zealand, that the, the forex market opens on a Monday morning for me. It’s your Sunday afternoon in the US and I say to people, I love Monday mornings, you know because most people will have that alarm going. I say It’s Monday. I’ve got this right. Yeah, I’d love it because, you know, up until cryptos came around, we could not trade at the weekends. You know, you just. The forex market shuts at New York 5 p.m. on a Friday and open on the Sunday at 5 p.m.. And, yes, I just say to people I love Mondays. I absolutely can’t wait for Monday morning to come and start trading it. And you’re exactly right. Because unfortunately, again, and it kind of comes back to that social media issue again, is that so many people who are not trading, they discover trading and they see it as their kind of like their ticket out of their life’s financial problems. And and I get that conversation on a phone or an email, you know, with people, non clients, you know, far too often. And, and I say to them look it’s not your, your golden ticket out of financial problems. It’s not going to replace your job like in a six months. Don’t think of it like that. You have to want to have that enjoyment of looking at the charts or reading the news, whichever type of trader you are, and actually doing it. And like challenging yourself, to do well and to figure out what’s happening in the world and all these different facts, you’ve got to actually really get excited by that. If you like that, then you will keep doing it and you’ll be disciplined, and then the money will follow. But don’t just jump straight into it. Expecting to become a multi-millionaire with the thousand dollar account, right? Dr. Dave Bonanno Yeah. I mean, because the fear, like I think people are as happy as their expectations are in relationships or in activities that they’re doing. And yeah, if you’re expecting too much, it’s going to take away so much of your energy and motivation and and to talk to what you had said, like if you just if you like training, then it’s going to that’s what’s going to center you. Right. Because you can’t be up and down with with your emotions and how you feel. And you really have to get into like just the the nuts and bolts of this is the setup and this is my thought process or, you know, the, my intuition and, that’s that’s something I had to learn as a therapist. Like I don’t or as a coach, really, I don’t coach so that I could make people money. I coach because when I get a new client, I’m curious, like, oh, right, what what set of it have problems or issues are coming in to my door and what can we do about it? I don’t wake up like, oh, I’m going to save this person. It’s just more like and then, you know, if the outcome doesn’t go my way, I don’t have to get too upset about it. I mean, of course I care, but yeah, if you’re if you’re a trader and you could ground yourself and remind yourself why you’re doing this and and then also, I think this is a really fine point that people sometimes don’t understand. If you’re trading to feel good, then that’s going to mess you up to like you need to trade because you like it on a deep level and you want to make money. You don’t do it because you know, your wife left you and your dog died, and I just want to get a hit of dopamine. Like, that’s not going to work out, right? Andrew Mitchem Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Right. And another thing, I think it’d be really interesting to hear your thoughts on is one thing I pride ourselves on is not only do we just have one strategy, but we have a massive community and we’re all trading that one strategy. When I started out, it was in, I’m talking 20 plus years ago now. It was in the early days of a couple of trading forums, and you used to go on to these forums because, you know, trading is a lonely business, you know, otherwise, you know, no one understands what you’re doing. Even today and back then don’t forget, that was the dial up internet days. And and the. Yeah, right. Traditional forum sites don’t work. Andrew Mitchem I quite often have to get a connection. Yeah. But, you know, I used to go on to a four on the forum sites and then you’d find a thread, someone created this strategy, and then every time someone would come in and go, I think it should add this indicator, and, and it just blew out into a complete argument and mess. And I realized that when I started the coaching, I didn’t want that situation happening because it frustrated me when I was learning. So one of the things I’m really proud of is our community that we have on our forum site and webinars that we hold everybody, no matter what stage of the like, the journey they’re on. They’re all out there trading the one system, but they’re all out there helping each other. And I find that having that back up, to follow someone, to watch someone to ask someone is such an underestimated part of a trade, a success. Dr. Dave Bonanno Yeah, that’s great. And you’re right, it is such a lonely job. I mean, you’re looking at screens and. Yeah. How is your how’s your spouse supposed to understand really what you’re going through? And of course, they’ll probably get sick of you talking about it too. But, Yeah. Isn’t that such a great feeling is to be able to help each other? And I trust that your people are good at sharing their losses. Right? Because I think, you know, whatever you focus on, you magnify. And if you want clicks, like if you’re an influencer, you want clicks, you’re going to be selling the dream. And it’s really like, I’m sorry to be crude, but it’s kind of like you can go on social media and you just see these people masturbating and and you think like, well, why can’t I do that? And they seem relatable. They’re real people. It’s not like they’re on TV and they’re celebrities. Like it’s real people. And then they only say, you can do what I did if you buy my stuff. But, I hope that in your community, in your forums, like, people are real with each other, right? Be real with your trading. Andrew Mitchem Absolutely. There’s everything on that. And we, you know, just before we started, I just posted two winning trades on the losing trades that happened overnight. And we post all of our trades profitable and not because you can still learn from those. We’re not out there looking like, look at me. All these beautiful profitable trades, all post trades that lose. And you know all we’re going back to is that same thing is that our losses were controlled. But the the setup that we took at the time looked very good. Otherwise we wouldn’t have taken it. And the market, something happened. It didn’t go in our favor. Okay. That’s a shame. We don’t like that. But it’s the way it is. But our loss is controlled and, you know. But then the profitable trades that we have made up for that loss plus more. And so I’m a firm believer and we show everything. And that’s the beauty of posting trades like on a daily basis for people right around the world to look at and follow. And also it teaches them the, the I suppose the discipline of these people who have done this for years and years still have losing trades. And that’s fine to have providing we, you know, you look back and and get you full. You shouldn’t have taken that because of A, B and C, and that’s a lesson. But you know, hopefully we don’t do that very often. But the market sometimes will do what the market wants to do. You can have an A grade setup and it doesn’t work. But and that’s part of the lesson the discipline, the journey. Dr. Dave Bonanno Right. And and it’s really hard I think for a lot of people to be comfortable with not knowing something. So yeah, if if the outcome isn’t what you wanted, it could have been one of a million things. And you can never really. Right. So I mean, of course you’re going to gauge, your outcomes and you’re going to journal and what went right and what went wrong. But it’s every single time you’re really just inferring the probability of what happened. And you don’t have that real solid ground to, to feel comfortable on. Right. Like you’re just always kind of guessing to some degree. And you have to be okay with that. And I think it is really, really helpful to have other people remind you of that because, yeah, we could tell ourselves all day, oh, I’m going to have losses. And you know, I’m not perfect person or whatever, but if you actually have somebody else remind you of that, like, dude, you’re you’re still damn good. You’re still like, you know, the shot good person. Then I think that’s yeah, crucial. It is you. So that’s really cool. Contacting Dr Dave. Andrew Mitchem Absolutely. So, Dr. Dave. How can someone find you? And what are they going to like? What situation scenario are they going to be in to say, I need this, guys, help? Dr. Dave Bonanno Yeah. Great. So I don’t want to sound like anybody has mindset problems, but I do want to underscore how there’s just a lot of things going on that once again, we’re not fully aware of. And it doesn’t mean that there’s anything wrong with you. Anything. So yeah, I’ve worked with a whole bunch of people and some of them had issues in their regular life, and some were really dead end. As a matter of fact, that’s one thing I like about working with traders as opposed to PTSD, because they say if they say, you know, you are who you associate with. I was like, oh my God, I’ve been associating with the most damaged people in society for decades. But so yeah, I love working with traders. You can you can look me up at WB ww dot max discipline.com or we’ll have links. I just published a book on Amazon called The Consistently Calm Trader. And people have been having really good feedback for you there. And, if you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to just give one more tip to your audience, which is the best way to handle losses is not to get upset or try harder, or even to try to ignore how you feel about it. If you can actually be sad. And I know nobody wants to feel sad, but if the market doesn’t go your way today and you can just actually literally feel that like sad about it for even like ten minutes, then you’re you’re not adding any type of adrenaline to the equation and you’re accepting reality as opposed to, well, it shouldn’t happen this way or I should have done this. That’s not reality. If you’re talking about what should have happened and then because you can accept reality, you can move on and, and really come to a, later with a clean slate. Does that make sense? Andrew Mitchem Yeah. It’s a really interesting approach. I like that very simple, but easy to do. Dr. Dave Bonanno Yeah. You got to be sad. Andrew Mitchem Yeah, well, that’s good because not people don’t tell you those type of things go right. Dr. Dave Bonanno Yeah, yeah. Andrew Mitchem Hey what I want to hear I yeah, it’s good. That’s a really good approach. I like it because you have to be able to like, you know, the whole phrase of get back on the horse tomorrow, you know, and and if you’re still angry because of yesterday’s losses or the market didn’t do what I thought it should do, and you’re still, like, venting over that? How on earth can you expect to approach the next trade or the next day with any clarity? Dr. Dave Bonanno Yeah. And you can’t just tell yourself, oh, well, I’ll forget it and I’ll be fine. No, it’s just that’s not the way to go. Like you have to address these things. And so, you know, I don’t know how it is in New Zealand, but here in the States, like, I can’t stand how everybody’s trying to live their best life all the time. And, you know, if you ask somebody how they doing and if they if they don’t say awesome, then you’re like, oh my God. Well what’s wrong? Like what’s wrong with you? You know, like, I mean, I of course, you know, I like about us here in the States that we, we strive we, we have really high expectations. But I think it can really backfire for a lot of people. And then, yeah, if you’re on social media and you’re seeing all these people with their lambos and their, you know, their houses and stuff, I mean, it’s just going to get you down. So, yeah, if you could be sad, you could accept where you are. What has happened, and then you can get right back on the horse and, go where you need to go. Andrew Mitchem Yeah. That’s awesome. Hey, thank you so much today, dogs. I love chatting to you. And I think there’s just been massively beneficial. As you mentioned, we’ll put links to your site on here as well. So anybody can click on that and find out more about what you do. And yeah, thank you for your time. It’s been thoroughly enjoyable and I think it’s been massively helpful for everybody. Thank you very much. Dr. Dave Bonanno I was so glad to hear that. Yeah, it was really fun for me too. And thank you. Andrew Mitchem Awesome. Thank you. Episode Title: #626: The Psychology Hack Every Trader Needs Find out more about Blueberry Markets – Click Here Find out more about my Online Video Forex Course Book a Call with Andrew or one of his team now Click Here to Attend my Free Masterclass YouTube: Dr. David Bonanno Enroll to Max Discipline Click Here to Learn More About Max Discipline Click Here to Checkout the Book: The Consistently Calm Trader: Master the War Between Discipline

Stop Watching Charts All Day (This Is Why You’re Losing)  Podcast: Find out more about Blueberry Markets – Click Here Find out more about my Online Video Forex Course Book a Call with Andrew or one of his team now Click Here to Attend my Free Masterclass #625: Stop Watching Charts All Day (This Is Why You’re Losing) In this video: 00:35 – These things will destroy you as a trader. 01:51 – Mistakes that most traders make during the journey. 02:55 – The perfect chart to trade. 03:46 – Look at 5pm EST for multiple chart opportunities. 05:15 – Don’t burn out. 05:58 – View my Masterclass. 06:30 – Blueberry Markets as a Forex Broker. 07:21 – Contact me for help. If you’re watching the charts all day. Taking multiple trade today and you’re not consistent, then this video is for you. You see, it’s not always the strategy. It’s not your indicators. It’s not your broker’s fault. It’s a screen addiction. So if that’s you, listen up. I’ve got some really good information to share with you. Hey there traders! This is Andrew Mitchem here at the Forex Trading Coach with video and podcast number 625. These things will destroy you as a trader. And in today’s video I’m going to talk about why trading the shorter time frame charts and screen addiction and over trading will destroy you as a trader. It’s going to destroy you in many ways. It’s going to destroy your confidence. It’s going to destroy your time with your family or whatever else you do with your day. And it’s a common problem. You see, the issue is that most people think that they need to be trading all the time, and therefore they get onto the shorter timeframe charts, generally one hour or below. Most people that they’re trading say, 15 minute charts, five minute charts or even one minute charts and it’s completely crazy. And it comes about from that, lack of understanding, that lack of mindset of, of well, the people think that they have to trade more to make more money. And it’s just is not true. All you’re going to do is completely put yourself off trading, tie yourself out emotionally, physically, and you’re just going to end up paying lots of money to your broker because you’re paying lots of entry fees to take trades. You’ll end up doing silly things like revenge trading and, you know, scaling up stupid position lot sizes, etc. and, and just making complete silly mistakes and losses. Mistakes that most traders make during the journey. The good thing is, though, is that we’ve all been there, we’ve all done it. We’ve all made those mistakes. And I’ve been trading for over 20 years, and I can tell you I’ve made every mistake there is out there. The good thing is the solution is fairly straightforward. And it’s generally to get on to the longer timeframe charts. And I would say that something like generally a 4 hour chart or higher, the daily charts, if you’ve been following me for any length of time, have always been my preferred timeframe chart, because it means you just need to look once a day. It doesn’t matter where you live in the world, you can look at your charts. One today. Very easy to do. It still gives you plenty of trading opportunities. You know, the downside with, say, like the weekly charts or the monthly charts, although they can be very, very good, is that, you know, you only potentially might have an opportunity to trade, say, once a week, obviously once a month. And sometimes there may be nothing on those timeframe charts. And so it becomes a long and wait in between trades. The perfect chart to trade. To me, the daily timeframe just offers the perfect mix of everything. It means I can look through so many different charts. I can be very specific. If they say as an example, strength in the British pound, I can then go through and find the best set ups, that are buying the pound against maybe some of the weaker currencies. And, you know, you can look through the charts once a day and make those very, you know, refined, trading opportunities sort of out there you’re not rushing to do things, especially the way that we trade as well when we’re using limit orders as well. And so I just find that that is such a great opportunity to look through forex pairs, non forex pairs as well. Because you know, we look through metals and commodities and cryptos indices etc. like that as well as just the daily charts. Look at 5pm EST for multiple chart opportunities. And the beauty is, is that if you are looking at your charts on the daily timeframe, you can, go through that exact same timeframe and scale down as well and give yourself opportunities on charts such as like 12 hour charts, 8 hour, 6 hour, etc. and they all change over at the exact same time, which is New York, 5:00 pm. Now you will notice that the spreads at that time of the day can be quite large, and so don’t take trades until at least 6:00 pm. Don’t place the trades until at least 6 p.m. New York time. Now, if you’re in, let’s say, Europe, that could be quite late at night for you. That’s fine. Place the trades in your morning. You don’t have to be up at like, midnight to place those trades. Wait till the morning and you’ll find that most times, especially the way that we trade with limit orders, if you’re, say, taking buy limit orders, first of all, you’re looking for the market to first fall anyway before it fills your buy limit order. Now for you in let’s say Europe, when that’s early hours of your morning, you know, sort of breakfast time. Let’s say you can place your trades in and very rare occasion, you’re going to find that the trades taken off without first retracing. So almost no time are you going to miss out on those trades if you take them multiple hours later? Likewise, if you leave this side the world, Australia, New Zealand, you say, well, Andrew, I’m at work all day. I can’t take my trades to 5:06 p.m. at night. That’s absolutely fine. It’s the same time, you know, it’s European morning. Look at taking your trades there. Don’t burn out. So that would be my suggestion. Enjoy your trading. You know, this is why, after 20 years, I’m still loving doing what I’m doing. It’s because one, it works, but two, I’m not burned out by just chart watching and trigger happy on the, you know, on the on the mouse and the keyboard all the time. You place your trades, you know your risk. You know the very worst that you can do per trade because you have control and low risk. You know your profit target, let the market do its thing and enjoy your trading, and you will become far more happier when you’re trading far more profitable, far better as a person because you’re not grumpy, because you had to glue to the charts or the trades are going against you. You’re not stressed, you’re relaxed, you’re enjoying your trading, you’re thinking sensibly, and the results will be far, far better. View my Masterclass. So if you’d like to find out how we do that, I’ll put a link here to our masterclass where you can jump on and, and see what we do. By the way, in, early March, we’re looking at taking on just a small number of extra clients. We got a lot of people joining us in March, but there are just a few spaces available. I’ll put a link, to joining us as well. There’s just a handful of spaces right now as I’m recording this available for the early March intake. So don’t miss out if you’d like to take your trading to that next level and become a good, profitable trader. Blueberry Markets as a Forex Broker. If you are out there looking for a broker, I can highly recommend Blueberry Markets. Their MT5 platform especially just has so many markets on there. As mentioned, forex and non-forex markets and really good tight spreads as well. So I’ll put a link to Blueberry Markets there. If you’re out there looking for a good broker, there’s obviously so many choices of brokers and it can become a bit of a minefield. I’ve dealt with Blueberry for many, many years. Their staff are just incredible. Fund withdrawals at a super fast and spreads and available markets are huge. So spreads are not huge. Spreads are tight, available markets are huge. I just want to get that bit right. Just so I didn’t make any. Yeah. Errors there. Their spreads are really, really good. Lots of markets available. So, have a look at Blueberry Markets as well. Contact me for help. Any questions you have any topics you’d like me to discuss? Forex related to help you out? Just drop me an email. [email protected] I reply to all emails personally as well. I’ll see you this time next week. Bye for now. Episode Title: #625:Stop Watching Charts All Day (This Is Why You’re Losing) Find out more about Blueberry Markets – Click Here Find out more about my Online Video Forex Course Book a Call with Andrew or one of his team now Click Here to Attend my Free Masterclass

The Smarter Way To Pick Winning Stocks  Podcast: Find out more about Blueberry Markets – Click Here Find out more about my Online Video Forex Course Book a Call with Andrew or one of his team now Click Here to Attend my Free Masterclass Checkout the Tykr Platform here. #624: The Smarter Way To Pick Winning Stocks In this video: 00:14 – Sean Tepper – found of TYKR 04:55 – How does this software help? 08:50 – TFTC also helps create successful traders 12:25 – Is social media helpful? 16:20 – Multiple brokers or one? 22:18 – TFTC creating a trading bot program 28:16 – 60,000 stocks analyzed 32:45 – Contact Sean Andrew Mitchem Hello, everybody. It’s Andrew Mitchem here at The Forex Trading Coach. And today I’m really pleased to be joined by Sean Tepper, who’s the founder and the CEO of Tykr. Welcome along. Sean. Sean Tepper Andrew. Good to be here. Andrew Mitchem Awesome to have you. Sean, could you introduce yourselves to everybody and let us know who you are and what you do and what we’re going to talk about? Sean Tepper – found of TYKR Sean Tepper Sure. Yeah. My name is Sean Tepper. I’m the founder of TYKR, as Andrew said. And long story short, TYKRs a platform that helps people buy and sell stocks with confidence prior to that. My background is about 20 years in tech, 15 years investing, and I kind of created TYKR as a solution to a frustration in the markets. Sean Tepper And we could dive into what that frustration is, if you’d like. Yeah. But yeah, I had to create a solution because it was very hard to make decisions when I first got started. And that’s where really TYKR came from. And, but yeah, fast forward to today. We’ve got a little over, 13,000 customers in about 50 countries, including where you’re based. Sean Tepper New Zealand. Andrew Mitchem Oh that’s good. Yeah. So you had 50 countries. That’s a that’s an awesome effort. And, and Sean, I was reading about, you know, you started, on your website says, in, you know, 2011 to 2015, you were trying to figure out what wasn’t there to help you. What did you find back then? Was the biggest frustration that led to TYKR happening? Sean Tepper Yeah. So when I first got started, you know, I think I joined E-Trade. And, you know, there’s so many brokers these days, it’s hard to keep track of. But as soon as I joined, I had no idea what to do next. So I started going on YouTube researching where do you go to invest? Like looking up different investing platforms? Sean Tepper I found a few of our competitors, like Seeking Alpha and Motley Fool, and they do a fine job, but it’s still very difficult to truly know the difference between a strong stock and a weak stock is is very frustrating. And for context, my background is in tech, but to go, layer deeper, it’s actually in process engineering. Sean Tepper Like I’ve worked a lot for GE and Koehler. And the rule is in process engineering, if you have 100 data points, you cannot present that to a customer or an executive. You have to roll it up to ideally a binary decision like yes or no or a traffic light. And I was complaining at that time, like, am I the only one complaining about the fact that there’s no process engineering lens layered over investing like, this is insane. Sean Tepper Like nobody’s making it easy. And that was kind of the green light I was thinking of, like, hey, if I could figure something out here, I think the big solution is a create a process engineering solution in the world of finance and apparently I’m the only one really doing that today, other than the few platforms that say buy or sell. Sean Tepper But I don’t really recommend that. But yeah, that was that was the beginning. And it took about a year to build this Excel sheets. And I give you context here, I found a lot of inspiration from Phil Towne. He wrote a few books on value investing. Do you know Phil Towne? Andrew Mitchem No, I don’t know. No. Okay. Sean Tepper Your your audience may be interested. He wrote a book. One of them is rule one. The other one is payback time. I really provided some. Yeah, yeah. You know, rule one investing, Warren Buffett. We can talk about that. But, yeah, I, I found some of the calculus in his books, put it into Excel, and I ended up coming up with about 50 data points to analyze the stock. Sean Tepper And then on top of that, I created a traffic like rating system where stocks are either on sale, watch or overpriced. That’s green, gray or red. And I used it the next 4 or 5 years on my own, making returns between 15 and 50%, and my returns still fall in that range today. Our customers actually fall in that range as well. Sean Tepper But yeah, I, I wanted to make sure I’m using my own money testing it to make sure it works, not just like four weeks or four months. I went like that over four years. And then it was 2019 was the inflection point when I’m like, I think I’ve got a solution here, but let’s just confirm. Sent the sheet to a few of the retail investors and everybody’s like, I’m not going to use this Excel sheet. Sean Tepper This is insane. You got to create a software. So that right. That was the green light. Let’s go create a SaaS platform. And took a year to build the first version. And the first version was not pretty. But yeah, fast forward to today. That’s where we’re at. But yeah. Andrew Mitchem They Nimrod when you look back on them. Sean Tepper Yeah, right. It was like the, the metaphor I use is it felt like I was building a physical prototype made of like, and duct tape and cardboard. It was not pretty videos. It’s pretty ugly. But you get feedback from your customers and you just keep making it better, and it actually turns into something. How does this software help? Andrew Mitchem So, yeah, awesome. That’s brilliant. So fast forward then to today. Why would someone come and use what you have and I suppose in a practical basis, how does it help them? What are they. What do they input? What do they use to make decisions for them? Sean Tepper Sure. Yeah. So I’ll give you some of the the subjective reasons and then we’ll get into the objective and why that’s actually important to our, our broker partners. But our rating system again process engineering, it doesn’t sound very glamorous, but the concept of making decisions very easy for people, it is very true in most industries. So we we use the process engineering lens. Sean Tepper Plus we take a lot of inspiration from Duolingo for language learning in our opinion. Like what? They’ve got over 600 million users. They’re doing something right. We’re teaching people how to learn a language with these micro learning modules. And I’m like, we need to do the same thing in our platform, but it’s got to be investing focused. So we’ve got these modules peppered around that quickly teaches people how to invest in you put the two together, the rating system, plus the simplified education that helps people. Sean Tepper And it’s not our guarantee, but it’s it’s something we let people know upfront that 90% of customers is actually over 90. But we say 90% of customers that use TYKR are able to go from a beginner to confident an investor in 14 days or less. It’s very quick. Wow. And what does that mean from an objective standpoint? And this is what matters most to brokers, which is most brokers we’re talking to have two big problems. Sean Tepper And number one, very little transaction volumes, like somebody will join on day one and they’ll wait three months or six months or nine months, and then make another trade. And the other issue is the average account size is less than 5000. While with TYKR after five years. Now we’re we track like a lot of data points to see our, investors behavior. Sean Tepper And typically people make 30% more transactions after joining TYKR. And their average account size is about $180,000. So what that tells us is and it tells. Right. So these people are their confidence is skyrocketing and they’re adding more money from their checking account or their savings. So it’s not sitting in a low interest vehicle. So so there you go. Sean Tepper That’s how we’re different. I’ll give you one more way where different in your audience may appreciate this is TYKRs. Calculations are actually open source for personal use. And the SEC really likes that. Like we had an audit done to make sure we fall in that publisher exclusion category. We could talk about that in a minute, but making sure we’re not we’re not giving financial advice, but this firm we’re talking to and we had another we’re actually had two firms. Sean Tepper Take a look. They were both very impressed that we we put those calculations out and I’m like, I’m, I’m actually not concerned anybody’s going to take it because it’s even though it’s relatively simple math, it’s a lot of it. And try to put together in a software what would take you a really long time. So fortunately nobody’s tried to duplicate it. Sean Tepper But the calculations are out there. Andrew Mitchem Yeah, well, for the sake, I was looking on your your purchase, page. Your pricing page. For the sake of $50 a month, you just use it. Wouldn’t you? Rather than trying to reinvent it or. Sean Tepper It exact right at the base price is like, you’re saying 15, 15 bucks a month or 99 a year? You’re right. It’s like, oh, okay. So here’s the here’s the calculations. Yeah. I’m not going to reiterate. That’s where it. Andrew Mitchem Is. I mean in in lifetime working it out will spend $100 a year same. Sean Tepper Same prices Netflix their. Andrew Mitchem Data. Exactly. Yeah a lot more educational. Yes. Sean Tepper Yes. TFTC also helps create successful traders Andrew Mitchem Thank you. So it it sounds like although we’re in, slightly different markets within the overall similar markets now, we have something very similar going on, which is amazing is we’ve never met obviously, before, you know, 20 minutes ago, and that we find that our clients would be very similar to yours. The average forex person’s out there, small account, scared to trade, or they do the opposite and they do silly things and they make us even money and then lose it all, which inevitably happens. Andrew Mitchem And then they blame the break on the market. And that’s where we find our clients are different as well. You know, they have confidence that low risk approach. They they know what they’re doing, what to look for, when to do it. And therefore when they go to a broker brokers out there because, you know, the client’s got a hugely, bigger account and trading more often. Andrew Mitchem So it’s incredible how education and lack of it can affect so many people in this. Seriously. Yeah. It’s crazy. Yeah. Now, Sean, you mentioned, about the no financial advice, you know, situation. And again, coming back, that’s where we’re similar, you know, what’s your take on the no financial advice? Sean Tepper Yeah. So with the SEC, there’s I don’t have the exact, it’s like rule 102-5 or whatever. I’m making that up. But yeah, they’re essentially three rules you have to follow with staying in the publisher exclusion category. And there are companies and there are guys out there, some women as well, that they they get into some some shaky ground or gray areas where they push the envelope and they can get into some some big legal trouble. Sean Tepper So the three rules really go as follows. Number one is all information has to be factual. Like we can’t say like, hey, because I like x, y, z CEO, I think the share price is going to $2,000 a share. That’s crazy. We have to present the data like everything we do is really based off the fundamentals. We don’t cook any books. Sean Tepper We don’t skew the financials. It’s like, hey, here’s the EPS, here’s the revenue, here’s the net income, here’s the debt. Bam, roll it up to our calculations. And there’s your score. Keep it very simple right. Number two is and this is actually pretty easy to follow is we can’t ask our customers their age their risk level when they want to retire and then give them recommendations based on that criteria. Sean Tepper That is described as personalized financial advice. So very easy. Like okay, so don’t ask those personal questions. And number three everything has to be regular. And what does regular mean. It means all information we we put out has to be like every day or every week, which it’s we update our data every day. We can’t do and this is a common problem with a lot of discord and WhatsApp groups. Sean Tepper And so I’ve been told from the SEC, which is pump and dumps, is like, hey, go buy as much of GameStop by Tuesday. And then the very next day, without telling anyone, they’ll go sell a bunch of GameStop or whatever stock they they can come up with. And that is actually a common issue because you can make a lot of money in short order. Sean Tepper So, yeah, no, no irregular posting. It has to be regular posting. So yeah, those are the three rules with the publisher exclusion. And to be honest with you, but actually pretty easy to follow. Is social media helpful? Andrew Mitchem Yeah, yeah. That’s good. Do you find you mentioned on social media type of apps? Do you find that those, causing problems generally for people because they just think they’re going to find something that’s going to solve all their life’s financial problems? Sean Tepper You mean like our customer is going on social media and reading comments. Andrew Mitchem To make sure customers, but just general people out there and in general isn’t there going to find some app and follow something and it’s suddenly going to give them all the magical answers? Sean Tepper No. In general, I think most people are skeptical, which I think is good. They’re not going to like, you know, like, for example, they’re not going to come to tinker right away and be like, oh, this is this is my savior. That’s that’s not the case. We want people to be skeptical. And we always tell people like, don’t like, I’ll talk about Tinker all day, but don’t even take my word for it. Sean Tepper I always say, go to Trustpilot, see what our customers have to say first before you even think about it. And then our model is, it’s a trial 14 day trial. And then we also have a 30 day money back guarantee. So even when your credit card is charged, if you want to refund, we’re not going to fight you on it. Sean Tepper It’s like it’s 15 bucks. That’s right, that’s right. It’s like we’re not going to split hairs on this, but it’s like you want to create a platform that it’s very easy to join is very easy to learn about. You can see what your customers are saying. It’s easy to test drive. Those are kind of the boxes I like to check when I join a platform because I’m using other software to build TYKR, whether it’s a marketing software or analytics or email marketing or whatever, right. Sean Tepper I want those things. So I’m like, I’m going to do the same thing with my own platform. But coming back to the skepticism, I think it’s good. It’s good to have a healthy amount, and it’s good for people to not only, like join TYKR, but go have like join our competitors, see what they have to say. And sometimes you’ll get things to line up like let’s say it’s a stock you really like and you’ve got, you know, TYKR, Motley Fool and Seeking Alpha are all like, hey, this is this is a strong stock, not a buy stock, but its financials are strong. Sean Tepper That creates layers of confidence is how we phrase it. Yeah. Creating those layers of confidence gives people more confidence to move forward. Andrew Mitchem Yeah yeah that’s good. And I noticed also on your on your offer there that you talk about cryptos as well Matt. Obviously it’s the, the big thing that people want to talk about and we’ll see more recently we’ve seen some big drops as well. Yeah. How, how do people finding using your software or on cryptos. Andrew Mitchem Because it’s, it’s like one of the markets that we kind of cross over on. Sean Tepper Yeah. So with crypto we weren’t originally going to add it to the platform, but a few people were like, hey, can you add crypto from a tracking perspective? Now for context, we have three assets in TYKR. We have stocks, ETFs and crypto ETFs. It’s easy to analyze because it’s really just a bundle of stocks. So we analyze each individual stock. Sean Tepper We roll them all up. If it’s let’s say 500 stocks within an ETF. You can create you can calculate what is the average score within come to that on sale watch over priced. But when it comes to crypto as you know there’s no income statement cash flow statement A balance sheet is not a business, it’s just a digital asset. Sean Tepper But again, we had customers that were like, hey, you got a lot of good tracking tools, like you can set alerts on my dates and prices and really anything you want within TYKR. And so they’re saying like, can you add crypto within so we can keep track of all of our favorite assets in one clean location. And my response to that was, oh yeah, no problem. Sean Tepper We’ll add crypto to this tool. But there’s not a lot of analysis you can do there because again, it’s not a business. Multiple brokers or one? Andrew Mitchem Yeah, yeah. Fair enough. And also I noticed that you said about the broker connection. So one of your pricing models, that’s one broker three and five. Correct. What would be the reasons around someone needing, say, three brokers or five brokers as opposed to one. Sean Tepper Yeah. So the reason is typically your employer is going to issue you A41 like here in the states, of course, we get A41KI don’t know, in New Zealand you call it a pension like they do in, Europe. Andrew Mitchem Yeah. Kiwisavers called but yeah it’s that has is our name. Yeah. Sean Tepper Okay. Exactly. So you’re going to have that is going to be one retirement vehicle. And that’s typically set up with like here in the States. The two big ones are typically fidelity and Empower. There’s also Schwab. But then you’re probably going to want to do some trading on your own. So then here in the States some of the popular choices are Robinhood. Sean Tepper You’ve got E-Trade, you know. So there’s your second one. And then sometimes you’re going to have like an inherited account from a family member, you know, that could be on a different account. And if you don’t roll it over to your current broker, well, guess what? You’ve got a third broker sitting in place. But I get this. I’ve talked to people that have they’ve had more than five different brokers on my response. Sean Tepper So that is why. Yeah. So. Right. It’s it’s it seems unorganized. But we created the three tiers the premium premium plus an advanced premium. You get one broker premium Plus you get three in advance. You get five. We usually like 99.9% of the time. We don’t see people with more than five brokers. But like for example, between my wife and I, we have like we have three. Sean Tepper So yeah. Andrew Mitchem Okay. So with this allows someone to make their analysis and then connect directly through to that broker via your software. Is that how it works. Sean Tepper Yeah. Yeah. So yeah when when you join your broker and we’re really good complement to a broker will never replace it. We don’t want to be a broker dealer. That’s a legal name for their business model because we don’t hold any assets. We don’t hold people’s money. We’re just analytics. So yeah, when people join, you can sync up with your broker. Sean Tepper And what that does is it automatically updates your portfolio in TYKR every day. And it’s a much cleaner interface than most brokers out there. I, I’m never going to talk down about brokers, but it’s like their job is to protect people’s money. But when it comes to analytics dashboards or giving, like education or analytics, it’s that’s not their specialty, nor will it really ever be. Sean Tepper So we fill that gap, we complement and we make it easy to see because some people are like, I don’t I don’t actually know how much money I have because the dashboards in my broker’s so hard to use them, like just sync up your account TYKR and it’s going to kind of summarize it for you. Yeah, yeah. Andrew Mitchem That’s interesting. That makes a lot of sense. Makes life easy for people. And also I see that you have a mobile app. So can someone get the exact same information on the app. But they can all the desktop. Sean Tepper It’s pretty much the same experience. We try to release our features, if not the same day within the next week or two. Like if we need to deploy something to web or web app, we try to do the same thing to the mobile, that allows people to write. They can kind of analyze stocks and the gold or standing in line somewhere at Starbucks, whatever. Sean Tepper The mobile app, I will say this has an additional feature, which is the Duolingo inspired learning modules that kind of like swipe right, swipe left type feel. We don’t have that in the web app today, but we’ve had a few people say, hey, can you also add that to web? Well, that’ll come soon. But yeah, it’s pretty much the same experience. Andrew Mitchem And what’s the AI investing helper that’s not like yeah, humming live. Sean Tepper Oh, that could be going live. Well, recording this video is, February 9th. That could go live on the 11th. Okay. So that’s a feature where you can, like, interact with where you’re going to be the first to hear about it here. So it’s it’s an AI tool where you can ask questions like how do I get started? Sean Tepper Or what should I do with my first thousand dollars? Or, what when is the best time to buy or best to sell? You can interact with AI and it’s actually connected with TYKRs, data set, but also the the globe and it’s put a lot of rigor, rigor into place to make sure it’s not giving you financial advice, but it’s really leaning into giving you the data and TYKR. Sean Tepper So it’s for example, if you were to ask it, hey, can you tell me how to value a stock? It’s going to first go to TYKRs data set. And with the education and give you that information. And then some general information. You know that makes it sound nicer. And then kind of spit it out. So yeah, eventually we’ll release in multiple phases. Sean Tepper So the first phase we call the helper, the second phase is the portfolio builder in a will build hypothetical like for example, build me a portfolio of ten strong tech stocks or buy food stocks or car stocks, something like that. Yeah. And of course it’ll say this is not financial advice. This is a hypothetical portfolio. But yes. And then the third phase will be an analyzer. Sean Tepper So analyze my current portfolio. Like what changes would you recommend. And that that’s going to be really, really cool. So with I will say this and then I’ll stop talking. It’s a powerful tool because it can analyze large data sets in a short amount of time. But as we say at TYKR. And this is why when I become self-aware like Skynet, I’m going to be the first one to be targeted. Sean Tepper Right? It’s, it’s smart, but it’s not that smart. So you have to put a lot of rigor in a place, a lot of guardrails, because it can, as you know, hallucinate. Yeah. So we are bouncing AI up against logic and mathematics to make sure it does not say something stupid to our customers. TFTC creating a trading bot program Andrew Mitchem That’s interesting. We’re in the middle of all we’re saying in the middle. We’ve been testing this live for over a year of getting AI to create trading bots for us, and what it’s doing is it’s spitting at a heap of bots and going through, sort of live trading on, on, you know, that are not real money. We’re trading on the money. Andrew Mitchem And then each week, we’re using the human aspect, the common sense and the knowledge that we look at as technical traders to pick which bots we’re going to be running live for subscribers for the upcoming week. And, and we’re finding that that combination of using the AI for that speed and, you know, doing the, the hard work. Andrew Mitchem Yeah. And giving us some information. But like you said, the guardrail becomes the human input in the common sense of what we’re seeing as technically on a chart. There’s no point in, let’s say, say Bitcoin over the last few weeks has been, you know, crashing. So nicely. There’s no point in us selecting bullish, crypto bots for the upcoming week when there’s technical traders. Andrew Mitchem We’re looking at it dropping. So I find that adding a bit of human common sense and knowledge, along with the AI at this stage is a really nice combination. Sean Tepper You got to do it right, and you probably seen the, the bad choices some people have made. If you let I make all the decisions, you can pull yourself into a, really bad situation. Especially. I like what you’re describing with your bots or those bots actually executing trades. Andrew Mitchem They they can, but we are more trying to set it up so the individual gets the alert and still needs to manually go yes or no as well. Good call. Because I don’t want to get into that situation where it’s completely, you know, automated, although a lot of people are want it all automated. My job as someone who teaches people is you still have to have that knowledge first to understand how to run the bots and to make a commonsense decision. Andrew Mitchem Is it making a good call or not? Sean Tepper Yeah, I’m good answer there, because the other hour I was talking to one company that was have was looking to have AI execute trades automatically. I’m like, whoa, what if they just run with the line and it’s like, go right? Like if rapid fire trades for an hour or two, it’s like, yeah, put some people in a bad situation. Sean Tepper So yeah. Andrew Mitchem Anyway, yeah, we’ll avoid that. We’re both avoid that. Yep. Yeah, exactly. I use it for the hard work and still use the brain. And that’s the thing, isn’t it? You know, what you created and what we’ve created. We’re about educating people, empowering people to use their common sense. Because I still think, after all, it comes down to it, there’s nothing better as a human, as an individual to have that, that how and that it’s almost like that feelgood factor that I know I can analyze these markets and make sound decisions and do well, you know, that’s you, you. Sean Tepper You, yeah. You just hit on the, the number one thing our customers care about like in and this will give you and your audience a little moment for me when I first created TYKR, especially the Excel sheet, I was all about getting better returns. I’m like, well, if Warren and Charlie can do it, I can do it. Sean Tepper Well, when I went live, that was my focus. But then after talking to a few customers, I’m like, they don’t agree with that. There’s actually something more important. And fast forward, I probably talked to a few thousand customers by this point over five years, and the number one thing they care about is confidence. Now, having confidence to literally do it on your own. Sean Tepper That is the home run. Feeling that supersedes, you know, getting good returns any day. Like people sleep better at night. Just knowing that, Shawn, I, I can do this on my own. That is what I’m looking for. I’m like home. So we even though the returns in tech are good, like, we actually lean into confidence. Like how do we give people more confidence is actually the bigger priority now. Andrew Mitchem Yeah, yeah, I, I fully get it. You know, we’ve been operating since 2009. Come on, Ryan, the Ryan run around the world in 111 countries and the same thing we we asked people, we, of course, you know, want to know why people join. And then we follow up after three months, six months, year, two years and keep asking people it’s the community and that knowledge of knowing what you’re doing for yourself, to have that control with low risk and, you know, really good outcomes. Andrew Mitchem But up here and then I say to people, trade any trading into, investments is emotion, isn’t it? Your head in your heart. You have to control those two. And what we’re doing is providing platforms or education platforms to allow people to fulfill that, that dream successfully and safely. Sean Tepper Yep, yep. Andrew Mitchem So it’s huge. Yeah. We can have all the AI and all the risks, all the all these flash gadgets, but ultimately it still comes back to that human wanting to have confidence in what they’re doing with their own money. Sean Tepper That’s it. Yeah. Andrew Mitchem And no. And also not just handing it over to someone as well. I think it’s important. Sean Tepper They add it and it’s actually you’re kind of alluding to this. It’s in people’s best interest to let’s say AI does 90% of the work. You want to be the person you want the human being finishing that process? Yeah. Because they, they ultimately it’s it’s better for them from an educational standpoint and from an, confidence standpoint, like they should know what was done. Sean Tepper But now, I control things. I get to execute the trade. Yes. You know, that’s right, that you want people to have that power at the end of the day. 60,000 stocks analyzed Andrew Mitchem Absolutely. And the, your software obviously does a lot of analysis just to give myself and viewers and listeners a ballpark figure. What kind of number of stocks is it kind of looking at and analyzing? Sean Tepper Sure. Okay. Yeah. So we’ve got about 60,000 stocks in TYKR around the world’s. We are up. Yeah. We’re upgrading. They’ll get this in the next month or two. We’re switching our data provider. So we’re going to have in the states real time pricing. You will have 15 minute delay. But then we’re going to have actually I can’t guarantee all stocks around the world, but most that’ll bring us closer to about 75,000 stocks around the world. Sean Tepper And then we’ll also have most ETFs around the world, which I think is closer to about 10,000. I could following in that Bow Wow. Yeah. No wonder. Andrew Mitchem They need analysis software that. Sean Tepper Yeah, right, right. It’s what we do. We run into circumstances when people, you know, they’ll join from a smaller country and they’ll be like, hey, you don’t have any stocks from our country. Winner may arriving. So it’s a lot of those requests and it’s like we knew we had to get to this point eventually. Yeah. But yeah. But then you just give transparency. Sean Tepper We’re looking at Finn Hub is, the data provider that will help us get, the more stocks and ETFs around the world. Andrew Mitchem Wow. So when you see your clients in 50 countries, if, for example, someone was here in New Zealand and they don’t want to be, and 2:00 in the morning to trade the US markets, they could be trading like the Australasian markets. Yeah. So your software. Sean Tepper Absolutely. Yep. Andrew Mitchem Oh, fantastic. That’s really good. Yeah. That, that’s blowing my way. That number. One thing as a currency trader, there’s like about eight main currencies. And so that makes, hence why there’s nothing like this for the forex market. I’m guessing because we can look at charts and read a bit of news and kind of make your analysis voice your, the information. Andrew Mitchem Someone out there with that. Your software is almost got an impossible task. Sean Tepper Yeah. We I was just checking here in tick or how many stocks from New Zealand. We’ve got a little over 187. So, do you know I like the I assume it’s the new New Zealand Stock Exchange. Andrew Mitchem Yes. In Wellington. Nice. Sean Tepper Got it. Do you know how many stocks they have? Andrew Mitchem No. I’m not, I’m purely forex. I honestly don’t know. Sean Tepper Okay. No no worries. But we’ll hopefully fin Hub will be able to get us most from from your exchange. Yeah. But that’s just a good example of like absolutely. You know we again we get a lot of people from random countries like, hey, can you add more stocks from our country? It’s like, yeah, absolutely. We’re we’re on it. Andrew Mitchem Yeah. Well, and also it’s purely that time of day thing, isn’t it. Because the you know, I suppose I get used to forex which is 24 hours a day. It doesn’t matter where you live in your world, you can trade it in cryptos obviously seven days a week now as well. But when you’re talking US stocks, they are, you know, for someone on my side of the world, some quite awkward trading hours. Andrew Mitchem So what you’re providing now would allow me to trade some of the the Japanese stocks, I’m guessing. Oh, and then the Australian ones using the ones now that you mentioned. So you really do open up your product to being truly a global, tool for people. Sean Tepper Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Andrew Mitchem That’s awesome. Sean, anything else you want to add about what we’ve not covered, about what you can help people with? Sean Tepper Yeah. Knowing that you’re more in the trading world and we’re more investing, I have to say this one detail, which is we do have about 10% of our customers are traders, give or take, and they’ll use TYKR as their starting points. You’re like, hey, let’s see. You’ve got like 100 ideas out there. Well, they’ll use TYKR to narrow it down from 100 down to ten. Sean Tepper Yeah. So that’s one main use case. It’s kind of like the short AI, as it’s been described to me. Is the short list creator TYKRs, the short list for like for traders. So so yeah, I want to add that tidbit as some people are like, well I’m not really into best thing. It’s like, you don’t have to be. Sean Tepper You can just use the tool to, narrow down your search. So I’ve selected one use case. Andrew Mitchem Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. That’s kind of how I was thinking about potentially using it as well. It’s like, makes a lot of sense to do all that, that work and get it down to something more manageable. Right? Yeah. Contact Sean Andrew Mitchem And what’s the best way that someone can contact you to find out more, about what you offer? Andrew Mitchem Sure. Well, how would. Sean Tepper They add, two ways to get in touch with, TYKR or myself? You can just go to tykr.com. That’s TYKR, tykr.com. And then, I’m really active on LinkedIn. Sean Tepper, Sean is spelled the Sean Connery way. Andrew Mitchem Yes. This with the voice. Sean Tepper Yeah. I wish I had strong Scottish voice. Yes. Andrew Mitchem Awesome. Hey, Sean, we’ll put links, of course, up here as well. And we will be sharing this in around the website and social media as well, so people can contact you finding a link here as well. It’s been awesome talking to you. I’ve learned a lot about the market. I don’t know a huge amount, and it’s fascinating to hear what you do and how, you know, you going to make it from when you mentioned 60, it still blew me away. Andrew Mitchem That number, from a ridiculous number of, stocks to help to analyze something in a, in a more simplified way. So, awesome to speak to you. Thank you. Your product looks amazing. I will be trying it. And, Yeah, look forward to it as well. Sean Tepper Thanks, Andrew. This is great. Andrew Mitchem Awesome. Thanks, Sean. Bye for now. Episode Title: #624: The Smarter Way To Pick Winning Stocks Find out more about Blueberry Markets – Click Here Find out more about my Online Video Forex Course Book a Call with Andrew or one of his team now Click Here to Attend my Free Masterclass Checkout the Tykr Platform here.

Trade the Markets From Anywhere in the World  Podcast: Find out more about Blueberry Markets – Click Here Find out more about my Online Video Forex Course Book a Call with Andrew or one of his team now Click Here to Attend my Free Masterclass #623: Trade the Markets From Anywhere in the World In this video: 00:27 – On holiday in Christchurch. 00:41 – My trading day remains the same even when travelling. 01:45 – My trades today. 02:30 – Using limit orders to place trades when it suits you. 04:23 – Massive moves in the market. 05:05 – Get on my Masterclass 05:25 – Blueberry Markets as a Forex Broker. Would you like to trade and travel at the same time? There’s not many other opportunities that allow you to make money, carry on with your normal work, and travel. So let’s talk about that really important topic and more right now. Hey there Traders! This is Andrew here The Forex Trading Coach with video and podcast number 623. On holiday in Christchurch. I’m in Christchurch in the South Island here of New Zealand. Been here for a few days with my wife. We went to see a show last night. Caught up with one of our daughters who lives here, and we’re having a great time. Middle of summer. Absolutely beautiful here with the River Avon behind me. My trading day remains the same even when travelling. Now, with being here, trading has carried on exactly the same for me. I’ve just taken the daily chart trades today. It’s just turned 11:00 here, and my trading is exactly the same as if I were at home. And that is one of the beauties of being able to trade properly and to trade the way that we trade. I see so many different people on YouTube and different social media sites where they’re looking for this pattern to happen and they’re looking for this indicator to cross that one and they’re looking at, say, like 5 minute charts and 15 minute charts. And to me, it’s just not realistic. As someone that’s been trading for over 20 years and this year The Forex Trading Coach turned 17 years old, one of the things that I find that our clients love about what we do, and also for myself personally, about what we do, is it’s still thoroughly enjoyable and profitable, but we’re not spending all day looking at charts. My trades today. So right now, I’ve just looked at one daily chart and one 12 hour chart trades at the 5:00 pm New York change of day, which just happens to be 11:00 in the morning here at this time of year. And then that’s it. My trades are done. I will have a look at maybe 5 a.m. New York time, which is tonight. But for people that can’t make the 5 p.m. New York time, it doesn’t matter. Because the beauty of the way that we trade is we are using limit orders. And so you don’t need to be here at this particular time. And when you’re traveling, that is so important because obviously different time zones and you’ve got different events on and things like that. Using limit orders to place trades when it suits you. The way that we trade means that you can put your limit orders on when you get a chance and just leave the trade to do its thing. We have our maximum loss already controlled, so we know the worst that can happen. For me personally, it’s only half a 1% risk per trade, but it also means that if we have a profitable trade on the daily chart today, I’m going to make close to a 3 to 1 return. So in other words, half a percent risk, I will make a 1.5% gain on my account. Now, the beauty of that is you can do that. You can put that across to prop firms, whatever it is that you choose to do, whether it’s your personal account, live account, or prop firm account, and it’s just that one trade taken once a day. And that’s the beauty. For me to trade today, because of course I’d be taking the 12 hour chart trade as well, but I don’t have to place the trades right now. I’ve got hours and hours to place the trades. And so if you’re in Europe, you see how well the changeover of the new day is night time. Well, you can take those trades in the morning. It doesn’t matter. You can say, well, I’ve got work to do. I’ve got things with the family. Take the trades when you get a chance. And because, as mentioned, we use limit orders. And if we’re taking a sell trade where our sell limit is there, the market first needs to move up and that fills the sell limit order. And then we’re looking for the market to move down. Opposite with the buy trade is that we’re looking for the market to first move down. And then the daily chart or the 12 hour chart, you’ve got hours and hours before the market will do that on most occasions. So if you’d like to find out how we do this, how we travel and trade, last year in the US, and this year we’re looking at heading away as well in our winter. And so trading, as mentioned, carries on exactly the same. Massive moves in the market. There’s been some massive moves in the market again this week. So great opportunities to be taking advantage of those moves across the forex pairs, the metals, and the cryptos. We’ve seen huge moves. So it’s been a great week. And nothing better than trading just once or twice a day. Be on holiday, enjoy the great scenery here and the events on in Christchurch. And trading carries on exactly the same. So if you’d like to find out how we can do that and how we can help you to do exactly the same, whether you want to travel or just work or do other things at the same time, that doesn’t mean you’re committed to being glued in front of your charts all day long like so many other people and systems are. Get on my Masterclass Have a look at the link I’ll put here. Have a look at the masterclass that I’ve got here as well. If you’ve never been through the videos and podcasts just like this, the whole library is there, all 623 of them. Blueberry Markets as a Forex Broker. And if you’re out there looking for a really good broker, I can highly recommend Blueberry Markets. Of course, they’re from Australia, but people from right around the world can trade through Blueberry Markets on their MT5 platform. I’ve just taken my trades today on the Blueberry account, and the spreads are exceptional and market execution is great. Everything about them is great. Their customer service is great. Withdrawing funds is super fast and efficient as well. So I’ve put a link to Blueberry Markets as well. And I’m off to enjoy the beautiful sights here in the middle of summer in Christchurch. And I’ll see you this time next week. Bye for now. Episode Title: #623: Trade the Markets From Anywhere in the World Find out more about Blueberry Markets – Click Here Find out more about my Online Video Forex Course Book a Call with Andrew or one of his team now Click Here to Attend my Free Masterclass

Massive Market Moves Most Traders Miss Completely  Podcast: Find out more about Blueberry Markets – Click Here Find out more about my Online Video Forex Course Book a Call with Andrew or one of his team now Click Here to Attend my Free Masterclass #622: Massive Market Moves Most Traders Miss Completely In this video: 00:28 – Massive market moves recently on Metals and Cryptos. 01:08 – Did you miss out on making money from these moves? 02:15 – Why I don’t look at the news. 03:00 – Why trading is not risky. 04:18 – My Masterclass webinar. 04:46 – Blueberry Markets as a Forex Broker. 05:25 – Contact me. We have seen some massive market moves over the last few days and few weeks. Hopefully you’ve gained from those and if you haven’t, you need to watch this video. Let’s get into that a more right now. Hey there traders. It’s Andrew Mitchem here at The Forex Trading Coach with weekly video and podcast number 622. Massive market moves recently on Metals and Cryptos.    Well the moves have been enormous haven’t they. If you’ve been looking at like Bitcoin. Bitcoin was $126,000 just 17 days ago. Then it dropped to $72,000, a huge drop. Did you get some of that? Silver, $121. Just three days ago, then dropped to $71 just in three days. Huge. Did you get some of that? Gold. $5,500 just three days ago. Right now, $4,400 in three days. Again. Incredible moves. Hopefully you got some of that movement. Did you miss out on making money from these moves? And if you didn’t, you need to be asking some questions. Because if you go and have a look at, say, the gold and silver, have a look at the daily chart and you’ll see at the top of a very, very large uptrend on both markets there was suddenly a huge indecision candle. It was the early warning signal for us as technical traders that things were coming to an end. The bullish run was coming to an end and look what we saw. Now, sure, not many people could have seen such a massive drop in just such a short amount of time. That’s not really the point. The point is that if you had seen that indecision candle and you still had some buy positions in, probably a good time to start looking at, getting out of them or closing part of your positions. Likewise, if you’re looking for selling opportunities, well, that indecision candle gave you the first decision or early warning that things were about to tip over. But now here we are just a few days later. Now we’re looking at buying opportunities again right now, today on multiple gold pairs as well, and a few of the silver pairs as well. And that just comes about from understanding and reading candles. Why I don’t look at the news. So if you are out there trying to decipher why these things happen, looking at news, trading and trying to work out all why’s gold and silver suddenly going up and up and up and then suddenly crash? Why is Bitcoin done the same? For me personally, as someone that’s been trading the markets for over 20 years as a full time trader, I don’t look at the news. Yes, I have a look to see what’s happening. I’m aware of what’s coming up, that type of thing, purely for knowledge. But does it influence my trading? Not one bit. The reason is, is I can tell everything I need to know to make good, smart, reliable decisions from looking at the charts now that, is applied across all markets and all timeframe charts, and that is where I think we have such an edge in our trading now. Why trading is not risky. A lot of people will look at those massive drops and go, oh my goodness, you know, that’s so risky. You know, I could have bought silver $121 and then it dropped to 72. It’s so risky. I can’t do that. And the point is, is that once you understand risk and you have low and controlled risk on every trade, you’re not making those massive losses. You know, you just if you know what you’re doing and risk is such an important part of trading or controlling it, both helps your emotions and your bank account. You need to keep your risk low and controlled and equal on every trade. And so all that is happening with those massive drops is it was giving us against the massive uptrends great opportunities to take sell positions on those golds and silvers and bitcoins, etc. over the last little while. Now we’re seeing pullbacks and now we’re seeing bounces at previous lows, and now we’re seeing the candle patterns that are starting to turn bullish in the right part of the chart to give us like opportunities to start buying those markets again and picking up those uptrends that are likely now to follow with the bigger picture uptrend after a pullback. And so that’s what I call a continuation trade. And that’s why right now today we’re about to take some certainly some gold trades and a couple silver trades. Buying them back up again. My Masterclass webinar. So if you’re out there either getting scared of these big moves or not knowing how to take advantage of them, I really suggest that you spend 30 minutes and jump onto my masterclass. I’ll put the link to that here if you’ve not already been on it. And have a look at what we can help our traders with. Whether it’s trading by yourself, trading on a prop firm, whatever it is that you wish to do in order to look after your financial future, but also have the knowledge to know what to do. Blueberry Markets as a Forex Broker. If you are out there looking for a high quality broker, I can highly recommend Blueberry Markets. They’re based in Australia and almost everybody, anywhere in the world can open an account with them. They offer, the MT5 trading platform, awesome platform. You know, Metatrader is still one of the most, popular trading platforms. It’s free to use. Sure. When you get the demo, it’s a bit clunky and a little bit kind of like strange looking, but you add a few templates and a few indicators, like we provide, and everything’s just awesome. Simple to use. And I can highly recommend, the MT5 platform, with Blueberry Markets. And I’ve a link to them as well. Contact me. If you have any questions about today’s topic or any, conversations, topics, questions that you have for me that you’d like me to cover in future videos and podcasts like this, just send me an email to [email protected] And they do come through to me and I do answer them all personally. If you’re out there, trying to figure out when to trade, look at the candle close, it’s the only way you can really trade. If you’re a technical trader. And it just means you know when to look at your charts. And if you’re watching this video, you see the incredible day we’ve got here in New Zealand and the incredible scenery that we have here. You don’t need to be glued to the charts. People that get glued to the charts and look at like, five minute charts and 15 minute charts. Probably not a great idea. Trade less, take high quality trades and enjoy your life. That’s what we do, and that’s what we can help you to do the same. Any questions? Reach out to me and, I’ll see this time next week. Bye for now. Episode Title: #622: Massive Market Moves Most Traders Miss Completely Find out more about Blueberry Markets – Click Here Find out more about my Online Video Forex Course Book a Call with Andrew or one of his team now Click Here to Attend my Free Masterclass

Master Trading Discipline and Consistency  Podcast: Find out more about Blueberry Markets – Click Here Find out more about my Online Video Forex Course Book a Call with Andrew or one of his team now Click Here to Attend my Free Masterclass #621: Master Trading Discipline and Consistency In this video: 00:25 – The mental side of trading well.    00:49 – Tom’s background.  02:40 – You don’t need to be perfect.  06:34 – Ideas for new traders.  09:25 – AI and the future as a trader.  14:25 – Closing the trade early for profit. 16:52 – False results from gurus online. 19:50 – Trading and stress. 23:14 – Andrew looking at D1 charts in a few minutes. 26:25 – People need support and community. Andrew Mitchem Hi everybody. It’s Andrew Mitchem here at the Forex Trading Coach. Welcome to another video on podcast. I’m really excited today to be joined by Tom Winterstein, who is a certified mental performance coach and trader over in the US. Welcome a long time. Nice to see you Tom Winterstein Great. Thank you. Great to be here. The mental side of trading well.    Andrew Mitchem Tom, look, I think we’ve got a lot of great information that we’re going to help people with on this, video on podcast. Because we were just chatting about the mental aspect of trading and how it’s something we’re both huge on, but it’s something that most people just completely overlook in their trading, especially if they’re new. Andrew Mitchem So maybe you can give us a bit of background on yourself and that aspect of your trading and how it’s crucial to someone’s success. Tom’s background.  Tom Winterstein Sure, sure. Thank you. Thank you for that. Well, I’ve spent over 30 years in the markets as a trader, an investor and an educator, and I’ve been focus on, you know, global markets like futures and, equities and commodities, forex and, and even crypto using a price action based approach. But that wasn’t always the case. That wasn’t how I started. Tom Winterstein Like most traders, I went through various different systems, indicators, you know, gurus, signals and stuff and totally ignored, any of the, the trading psychology or mental performance side because I thought I didn’t need it. You know, I could succeed without that. You know, most traders, you know, like yourself and like me have been very successful. We’ve had successful periods in our life and we approach this as something that it’s another thing we can be successful in. Tom Winterstein Although it’s not quite that easy, it doesn’t translate that as well. If you leave out certain parts of it. So what I realized is that most traders don’t struggle because they they lack a strategy. You know, most traders have a strategy. They’re not just, you know, throwing a dart and buying or selling willy nilly. They struggle because their execution breaks down when there’s real money on the line and in their emotions take over the, the class and that that right there, you know, that experience was the shift that led me to focus on building a repeatable performance environment. Tom Winterstein Okay. Right. Hence the mental side of it had to be combined with price action or whatever your strategy or edge was today. My work centers not only in price action, but risk management and mental performance systems that help traders perform consistently, not perfectly, but consistently. And that’s that’s really, you know, the best we can strive for as traders or investors is to be consistent and have a system that that, you know, takes us through the decision making process. You don’t need to be perfect.  Tom Winterstein So in the heat of the moment, those decisions are outsourced to our process. Andrew Mitchem Yeah. Interesting. I like I really like the phrase that you use to that not making it perfect because I think when people get into trading and, you know, they buy a course or they read an e-book, whatever it might be, they see that boring bit at the top that talks about risk management and psychology and mind control, you know, mining everything, the all the important things that we’re going to talk about. Andrew Mitchem But they get that, oh, I don’t need that. I scroll down through the important bit because I want the strategy. And then when they do things like backtesting, they they want the perfect strategy. And and your phrase about it’s not perfect is so true because as we both know, we can see what we think is an A-grade setup. Andrew Mitchem You take your trade and it still doesn’t work sometimes. So that’s just the way of the markets. But not being perfect is something that people, don’t want. They want to be perfect, but they ignore the important and the risk and the micro. Why? Why is that? Why do people do that? Is it just a boring topic? Tom Winterstein Well, it’s many cases. Like even myself, when I was younger, I didn’t know what I didn’t know. Andrew Mitchem Yeah, I know. Tom Winterstein My my background, a formal education is more in, information systems, computer science. Yes. I have a postgraduate degree. I have a master’s degree in business administration with a concentration on finance. But it did teach me about human emotions. When it comes in to to an environment like this. And it’s it’s trading is is pretty much a scenario unlike any others in the world. Tom Winterstein Okay. You know, when it comes down because you have your money at stake and you know, it’s it’s and really we’re performers, okay. And there’s a lot of different roles where people perform. Could be a doctor or a lawyer. Pilot could be a skilled, you know, craftsman, a welder or whatever. Those are all acquired skills, okay. And training is an acquired skill. Tom Winterstein However, when you get into, you know, the actual trading in the heat of the moment, there’s, you know, there’s psychological things beyond or our awareness or beyond our control that we just don’t realize that are taking over. I give you one real simple example and we call it, you know, and this is how a lot of traders will sabotage themselves. Tom Winterstein And we call it the identity gap. And and what I mean by that is, you know, like you mentioned, people will read books, take courses, watch videos, and they’re highly skilled. Okay. But what happens is their performance lags their skill, meaning that they have all these tools, they know what to do, but their performance has has seemingly lagged their skill acquisition. Tom Winterstein And so their subconscious labels them as an inconsistent trader. Yeah, okay. And that’s a really hard label to break because 90% of our overall actions are directed and guided by our subconscious. And that was something that I didn’t really understand. I didn’t want to understand when I was a new trader. I’m like, that has nothing to do with with trading charts, you know, or anything. Tom Winterstein Until I realized and her and I had done quite extensive study under, you know, a high performance psychologist, when the concept was, was approached to me that, hey, your subconscious is getting in your way, but it’s something that can be reprogramed. And what stuck out with me out of that whole sentence was reprogramed because of my computer science backing and like, oh, okay, I need to understand the syntax. Tom Winterstein Tell me the language. What can we do? Are there and there are specific tools to work on. You know how you get in your own way as a trader, you know, without getting and I’m not a psychologist, but but I understand the tools and know how they apply in the trading and investing, world. Ideas for new traders.  Andrew Mitchem Right. Interesting. So someone starting out that’s watching this, you know, let’s say that new ish trader, the difference that we would see as people who help and we’ve been through this ourselves, you know, the difference between a demo account on a live account and people struggle with that transition, don’t they? They, they go, a demo account of making money and I go live and I’m not making money. Andrew Mitchem Why is that? What’s going on in their mind that creates that change? Because in theory, if you’re profitable on a demo, don’t do anything different. And you should be profitable in a life. Tom Winterstein Yeah, well, that’s the theory and the demo, right? Yeah. The demo account can be a trap for many people. Because demo trading doesn’t really prepare traders. And what I mean by that is without emotional consequences, execution habits never fully form. Okay. So there’s no there’s no real risk of, of a consequence in this case. When you trade, you lose money. Tom Winterstein That’s a consequence and there’s no real risk of that consequence. So therefore we don’t develop habits to overcome that potential. And and people will tend to do things in a demo account that they wouldn’t do with their with their live account. Andrew Mitchem Yes. Yeah. Tom Winterstein You and I see that all the time. Yeah. And, and when I first I’ve done it. Andrew Mitchem Yeah I’ve done it. You know years ago. Yeah. Tom Winterstein Right. Right. And I so different when I first started, especially when I first started trading futures, that I felt so different with demo, it didn’t I didn’t think it was helping me. And so I really didn’t trade demo very much to the point was that, okay, even, you know, and this is, you know, before micro contracts, but even with one micro contract, people’s palms will get sweaty. Tom Winterstein And you can you can feel your heart and you can hear your heartbeat and think it was one micro contract in a, in a, you know, on the Nasdaq or the futures or, or if you’re doing, you know, the smallest of contract size in the forex market, it’s just different in a live account than it is demo. Tom Winterstein And so I don’t, I don’t I don’t advocate that people don’t. A demo is a great place to learn the software platform that you’re trading on, you know, so whatever your platform happens to be, because, you know, in many cases, I’ve even recently I make procedural errors on the software. And, you know, sometimes in the heat of the moment when you yeah, you meant to close part of the position and you added to it or vice versa. Tom Winterstein But but demo is a great place to get acclimated, you know, to the software, especially if you’re making a recent change or you’re new to it. Demos are a great place to practice the software. Andrew Mitchem Yeah. And to work out you, you know, you you buy limit as opposed to a buy stop rule. Right? Right. If you see a script or an expert advisor, whatever it is, you use it for that reason. AI and the future as a trader.  Now leading on from that, you know, everybody’s now talking about going to AI. And, you know, I’ve been trying to trade bots for years on MetaTrader and things like that. Andrew Mitchem However, to me, this still whether you want to go that route or not, there’s so much human emotion and common sense and understanding of what that automation is about that comes into it. You can’t just simply go, I’ve spent $1,000. I bought a bot, I plugged it in, I let it go. You just can’t do that, can you? Andrew Mitchem So there’s still even if you go automation or to some degree that’s still the emotions come into it. How does that bot work? Why does it stop working? How do I change the parameters? All those things. Tom Winterstein Right. Yeah. And to me AI is just another tool, like, like an indicator. Yes. Or a strategy or a study or something like that. That’s how I characterize it. And I know people will use the bots and stuff. I personally do not, although I do. I do believe AI has a significant place in trading and investing, but it’s more on the preparation than it is on the execution. Tom Winterstein I still believe it’s best left to a human to execute because, you know, I don’t and I use AI quite a bit, but I don’t know that I can adapt my risk management tolerance. Yeah. And things like that. Now, sure, I can program it to do whatever, but but I like, you know, I like the human element more than I like the AI component for that. Tom Winterstein So I do believe AI has a place in trading and investing, but it’s more in the preparation I believe. Andrew Mitchem Yeah, I agree and and also I think from a mental aspect, if you’re a good trader, there’s nothing more rewarding than knowing that up here you have that information and that skill to do this, to pass it on to other people, whatever it might be. And and if you’re trading is purely to, free up time in your life or to create a financial future, then that that I suppose that emotion of knowing I can do this is something you’re never, ever going to get from relying completely on automation. Tom Winterstein Oh, I know absolutely. And there there’s nothing better than, you know, self-made success, especially when it comes to trading. Yeah. Because it does it does build confidence. But, traders and investors have to be careful that that confidence doesn’t change parameters like. Yeah, okay, well, I’m having a good day. I’m having a good week. I’m having a good month. Tom Winterstein I’m going to size up, you know, and it’s okay to size up, but you really have to have a mechanical process to do this and know some of the things that we advocate inside of our mental performance programs is to keep a trader scorecard. You know, we’re I’m actually documenting and I have to have metrics of success, meaning, before I scale up, I have to have three out of four green weeks before I can move contract size. Tom Winterstein And that’s that’s just a simple example of outsourcing a decision to the process rather than like, hey, I’m having a great day. Let me double down or I’m having a bad day, let me double down that I know the process has to be consistent because, you know, over the long run, that’s that’s what keeps the math and the probability in the edge in your favor. Andrew Mitchem Yeah. Do you find that when you’re helping people and they you start to see them successful, they have very low control risk over, like all trades at that time? You know, and regardless of the pattern or maybe the time frame or in the forex, you know, whether you’re trading the euro, US dollar or whatever it is, they’re trading the same risk per trade. Andrew Mitchem And also they generally have a high reward to risk outcome on most of their trades. Do you find that? Tom Winterstein Well, that’s what breeds success. That’s what’s required to be consistent. But then you know, we talked about trading isn’t always perfect. Yes. You know, and so people will break their rules, from time to time where they will size up, even though they have a written rule, they don’t follow it. And that’s because you have that little voice inside of you saying, oh, just do it. Tom Winterstein Just do it. Yeah, you can do it once. Andrew Mitchem I want to be perfect. Tom Winterstein Right? Because. Right. This is this one will be perfect for the will have an identity. They start to assume the identity of their last trade. And this is another, another thing that can sabotage somebody is, you know, I just I have had a really good trade and and it’s gone. Well, okay. So, I’m going to go trade something else because I’m really smart. Tom Winterstein I’m going to apply what I’ve learned in the Eurodollar over here to some market I’ve never traded before. Yeah, but they’re they’re getting out of their process. You know, they don’t. And it’s okay to do that. But you have to have a structured approach and in a, in an environment to work yourself into that, it’s almost like, you know, you have to be able to reward yourself by accomplishing things that get you to that, to that, you know, milestone that you’d like to do. Closing the trade early for profit. Andrew Mitchem Yeah. Interesting. So there’s another idea that I’ve just suddenly thought of. And again, I used to do this years ago before I understood the importance of risk or trade, is that a lot of people will not trade with the stop loss. Let’s say, or they may not put a profit target in. And why is it, in your opinion, that people find it easy to let a trade go negative and a big and negative in the hope that it’s turning round? Andrew Mitchem But they won’t take the profit on a trade, even though it hasn’t got to where it probably should get to, because they always want to close a profitable trade early and bank that money that like that fear, you’re going to lose out. But when the trade is going against you are happy to let it get bigger and bigger loss because it might just turn around to be smaller. Tom Winterstein Yeah, well, the reason they do that is because they haven’t outsourced their decision making and they’re making decisions on the fly in the trade. Yeah. And you had a set of rules that defined your risk management before a trade ever started. So many things are easy to say and hard to do, but once you put them into practice, you know, for the people that don’t trade with a stop loss or they’ll add to it to a loser or they’ll just let it go. Tom Winterstein What what they’re unknowingly doing is they’re putting the mathematical odds against them. So instead of having a one to 1 or 2 or 2 to 1, 3 to 1, 4 to 1, they now have having a negative to And they don’t realize that over time that math isn’t going to work in their favor. And I see that that’s, that’s a quite common thing with newer traders is they’re like, they’re they’re risking ten to make three. Tom Winterstein I’m like, yeah, well that’s that’s not going to work long term mathematically. You know, I wasn’t a math major, but I understand statistics. And once but once they once you can reveal to them that, hey, that the odds are stacked against you, but then share a process, okay. You know, and this goes back to like, some of the teachings from Mark Douglas. Tom Winterstein You know, any time you introduce something new, you have to give it at least 20 trades in a series. Otherwise you don’t you don’t statistically know whether or not it’s going to work. And so I will strongly advocate for that, you know, okay, let’s let’s work on your order. But we’re going to let it run 20 trades then it value it. Tom Winterstein Let the numbers tell us what to do. Don’t let us, you know, don’t don’t make a decision based on what we think or feel. Let’s let the data tell it. False results from gurus online. Andrew Mitchem Yeah. So is that is that a risk that a lot of people today when we’re getting shorter and shorter attention span, everybody wants to go on Instagram and TikTok and all that. And they see these results because I’ve looked at a few and they go, I’ve made $1,000 on this trade. And then you look like and that looks really, you know, attractive, doesn’t it? Andrew Mitchem And then as an experienced trader, you look into that further and you go, wow, you did risk 50% of your account to get that right. And people don’t see that aspect of it. Tom Winterstein No, they don’t. And the reality is that those people, you know, as as you and I would probably consider, they’re not traders, they’re gamblers. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, they’re they’re out there with a gambling mentality. And, you know, even in the casinos people are going to win sometimes. But even the winners usually stick around long enough to lose their money to. Tom Winterstein Yeah. You know. Andrew Mitchem Hey, you okay? That’s why there was the biggest buildings in America. But I was there last year and saw some huge. Tom Winterstein Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And they’re, they’re building more and more all the time. Andrew Mitchem And there’s only one reason for that. Happy.  Tom Winterstein Yeah. Andrew Mitchem So yeah, in terms of a mindset of someone, why is it that we see and I’m assuming you see the same? I’d certainly say this. Someone’s gone and let’s say paid for course. And they go, I know it works because I’ve seen it work. And it’s been proven to work. And they have they start with like you’re part of a base and a rule. Andrew Mitchem You know, if you understand that phrase, that’s a phrase that we use. You know, they start and they’re all enthusiastic. And then they might have a few losing trades, and then you don’t see them showing up and they go, oh, look at some losing trades. And they’re on to that next shiny object. And I find that really frustrating because it’s from a coach’s perspective, because so many times have had that happen and people then come back and go, oh, I know I joined you a year ago, and I’ve been through all these other courses since, and I’ll come back and I realized that yours was the best strategy, and now I’m on it, and now Andrew Mitchem I’m loving it. And it’s like, you’ve just wasted a year of your time. I know. Tom Winterstein I know, losing. Andrew Mitchem Money, people just chasing the next shiny object. If things don’t go perfect in the first week of month. Tom Winterstein Yeah. And and I have seen that quite a bit myself. It’s like, just almost identical to the way you described it. And really it comes down to education versus conditioning. Because education, education is very important. We have we have to have an edge. We have to we have to have a strategic strategy. But that knowledge or strategy alone does not translate into behavior under stress. Tom Winterstein Right. And that’s the that’s the part that traders and investors don’t understand and don’t realize. Or if they do, they ignore it. You know, just like I did when I was younger is, you know, we as humans behave differently under stress. Trading and stress. Andrew Mitchem Yes. That’s interesting I suppose. I’m not sure if you were, but I fly a helicopter privately. Oh, nice. And, you know, you do those auto rotations and you have those tests, and they deliberately put you under so much stress because especially when you’re training with dual controls in because they almost want to see that person go, oh, I can’t do it. Andrew Mitchem It’s too hard. Stop annoying me. You do it. I mean, where is of course you can’t do that when you’re in charge. If things go wrong, you’ve got to use your mental clarity and go straight an to that process and. Right. And I think that trading is kind of similar. I’ve done a lot of martial arts. I wish I still did it. Andrew Mitchem I’m not fit enough now. But you know, years ago I did a lot of martial arts. Same thing that mental aspect of martial arts. It’s all up here. And for sure, like, if people have these kind of other skills and, and all, they relate to another skill that they have, it would help them to become a better trader quicker. Tom Winterstein Right? Right. And there’s a lot of things. And when I was younger, I was a single engine aircraft pilot. Ryan, as, as, you know, someone that’s never flown a plane or a helicopter may not know this, but everything you do and everything I did as a pilot revolves around a little checklist. Andrew Mitchem Yes. Right. Tom Winterstein A preflight checklist, you know, in-flight emergency fuel. You have a checklist of the darn thing. And I sit right here. I keep my my training checklist right here. My death because I go through it every that’s my I call it my preflight trade checklist. Even though I’m not flying. That’s why it’s. Andrew Mitchem On my wall. I’m looking at it right there. Same thing. Yeah. Tom Winterstein Yeah. And and so that’s, that’s part of, of the, the mental performance environment that we create is, is you have to have, you know, not only a pre trade checklist but I do checklist for everything. Yeah. You know, and and just giving my technical background everything for me needs to be logical. Has to be and doesn’t have to be sequential. Tom Winterstein But there has to be parameters around it. And then there’s you know my my work as a, as a pilot, you know, just translates beautifully into training because you really need you need to have a system, you know, you need to have these parameters. You need to have checklist. And whether it’s I even have a posting, a post trade, you know, checklist of what I do at the end of the day, you know, and and I have, you know, it’s more of a schedule than it is a checklist. Tom Winterstein That’s, that’s governed by rules that during an intraday, you know, time period and you know the you it’s the New York Stock Exchange is open 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m.. But that doesn’t mean I’m sitting in front of my computer the entire time. And so I’ll use analogies that a lot of people are probably more familiar with if they haven’t flown a helicopter or a plane. Tom Winterstein And I’ll ask them to say, you know, have you ever or do you now go to the gym, the work out, you know, you mentioned launch the hearts and they’re like, oh yeah, I work out three times a week. And while I’m like, what did you do? You go to the gym at 930 and then leave at four. Tom Winterstein Oh no, no, I go there, I do my routine and I’m done in an hour. I’m like, well, you can do the same thing with trading. Andrew Mitchem That’s exactly right. Tom Winterstein You can show up to the markets and get your work done in an hour or two, and then be done. Yeah. Even though just because the market’s open 23 hours a day, you know, five days a week doesn’t mean you have to be in a trade just because price is moving regardless of what you’re trading. Andrew looking at D1 charts in a few minutes. Andrew Mitchem That’s interesting because, you know, as we’re talking as we’re recording this, it’s 430 now PM New York time, and in half an hour we’ll be looking at daily charts because obviously they in the forex market, they change over at 5 p.m.. I’ve already been through the daily charts before talking to you, so I know already there’s only one trade that I’m looking at taking right now because of there were gaps yesterday at the beginning, but I already know up here mentally and everything else. Andrew Mitchem I’m prepared for that one trade providing in half an hour it closes correctly. I already know what I’m doing. Place the trade, let the trade do its thing. I’ve got the risk set. I know it’s x percent of my account. If it goes against me, I know the profit target and it becomes. In this case, I think it’s about 2.8 to 1 reward to risk. Andrew Mitchem And I will leave the trade to do its thing. And I find that so many people want to fiddle with trades, they want to interfere or, they, they don’t understand when to trade, and they are simply because I’m on the charts, like right now, you know, I put the kids to bed or the, the program on TV’s finished. Andrew Mitchem Whatever it is, they go to their computer and they go, I’m finding a trade right now rather than the other way round. It’s like the market’s presenting me with a trade. Now I take the trade. Tom Winterstein Right, right. Well, I think, you know, a lot of traders, they realize that discipline matters. But what they don’t realize is discipline fails when they’re forced to make too many decisions in real time. Andrew Mitchem Yeah yeah. That’s right. Tom Winterstein You’ve already got all your decisions made is. Andrew Mitchem Done I know. Tom Winterstein Yeah, but but the majority of people that you and I probably both say don’t do that. Right. And that that’s one of the biggest downfalls is, you know, they don’t have an environment that sets them up for success. Yeah. Andrew Mitchem So in summary then, Tom, what can someone who’s watching or listening to this do in terms of checklists showing up at the right time each day or the same time, depending on the strategy? What kind of like sort of tips can you give someone of what they should be looking at? Tom Winterstein Yeah, so so really they, you know, in addition to having a strategy as they need to immerse themselves into a performance execution environment, you know, regardless of of whose it is or where it is, but without, you know, a performance environment to immerse themselves in, which is going to have things like, you know, trading rules, the pre trade checklists, like we talked about, you know, and just some general awareness around human behavior. Tom Winterstein And we talked about the identity gap or how you resonate. You’re only as good as your last trade. And you know that that types of things and just how the human mind can really sabotage and show up in the markets because, you know, you know, you and I have seen those traders that and they, they, they bought and all of a sudden the market dropped significantly. Tom Winterstein You know, they’re just doing and they can’t they think that the market’s out to get them. And that’s a sure sign of of not being prepared and not being immersed in a, you know, in an environment that set up for success from from a performance standpoint. People need support and community. Andrew Mitchem Interesting. I’ve just written a word down as you were talking there and, and I wrote down support. And the reason I wrote that down is at the end of last year, at the end of 2025, I sent out a survey to non clients. A lot of people and a lot of people filled it in. What surprised me is that one of the biggest things that most people said they were missing was support and community and help. Andrew Mitchem And I think back to when I started back in the days of dial up internet, you know, and probably you might have been the same nobody was there to help you if you said you were a trader. People kind of looked at you like, why don’t you go get a real job or, you know, and and so there was no one to talk to, no one to consult. Andrew Mitchem Forums are generally dominated by the wrong type of people, who don’t really know about trading, but they’re very good at typing. Tom Winterstein Right, right. Andrew Mitchem Regulation. And so again, I think that’s an important aspect of a community of or to be able to contact someone. Do you find that as well people are lacking that. And when they have it, it’s a crucial aspect of their their learning curve. Tom Winterstein Oh, I mean, absolutely. When you look at at a trader, that’s an isolation versus in a performance environment, you know, a performance environment is going to include these singular, you know, routines, feedback, accountability, stuff like that. But isolation is one of the most expensive hidden costs for traders. You know, when it boils right down to it. And so your survey is spot on. Tom Winterstein And and I’m sure that, you know, the yeah, the research and responses that you got would support those statements that. Yes. Andrew Mitchem Yeah. Tom Winterstein You know, performance environment can amplify your success. Whereas trading in isolation can mute your success. Andrew Mitchem Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. And that’s what we were finding. So Tom, how can someone contact you? How can someone find you if they would like to make contact with you? Tom Winterstein Yeah. So. So we’re on the web. We’re at stock chart pros.com. You know, it can be a mouthful, but if you find us, it is, stock chart pros.com. And, you know, in addition to, you know, the price action courses that we have the biggest thing and that you know my push has been around you know, the whole patent pending neuro trading method is to build a performance environment because most traders have an execution gap and most people, they don’t realize they have that gap, or if they realize, hey, I’ve got a performance execution gap, they don’t know how to fix it. Tom Winterstein And so that’s that’s what we provide is, is a system, an environment and a place, you know, in an environment where traders can succeed and we see all different walks of life. You know, they’re not just US based traders. You know, we have traders from all over the world that trade all kinds of different things. Many of them come to us with their strategy and edge, and they know that it works. Tom Winterstein But what they can’t do is perform it consistently. Andrew Mitchem Interesting. Yeah, yeah. That’s fascinating. Well, Tom, thank you so much for being here. It’s really interesting speaking with another experienced trader and someone that puts such a high, you know, influence on the mental aspect of it and low risk and understanding what you’re doing. And showing up consistently. Like you said, we’ve both been through the ups and downs of trading. Andrew Mitchem We both made many mistakes over the years, and we’re both here to be able to. I suppose, pass on that knowledge and help people who want to help themselves to become better traders. So thank you so much for being here. I really enjoyed, the chat with you. Tom Winterstein What’s been my pleasure. Thank you so much. It’s great talking with you. Andrew Mitchem Thanks so. Tom Winterstein All right. Bye bye. Episode Title: #621: Master Trading Discipline and Consistency Find out more about Blueberry Markets – Click Here Find out more about my Online Video Forex Course Book a Call with Andrew or one of his team now Click Here to Attend my Free Masterclass

Why Traditional Investments No Longer Work  Podcast: Find out more about Blueberry Markets – Click Here Find out more about my Online Video Forex Course Book a Call with Andrew or one of his team now Click Here to Attend my Free Masterclass #620: Why Traditional Investments No Longer Work In this video: 00:36 – How can you achieve high returns these days? 01:04 – A massive 0.75% interest rate. 01:50 – Trade results for the week from trading FX. 03:08 – What are your plans for success? 04:00 – Time and financial freedom. 04:26 – The Successful trader coaching program. 04:57 – Blueberry Markets as a Forex Broker. 05:38 – Don’t waste this year – act now! We’re living in a world where high returns are quite difficult to achieve in many traditional markets. And I want to talk about that because unless you’re out there doing something slightly different, you potentially could be going backwards when you add inflation and the cost of living, etc. into the equation. So let’s talk about that a more right now. Hey there traders! Andrew Mitchem here at The Forex Trading Coach with video and podcast number 620. How can you achieve high returns these days? Now I want to talk about inflation. I want to talk about interest rates and returns. And the reason I want to talk about that today is I’ve got a piece of paper here printed out from Lloyds Bank. It’s a bank that I used to use when I was a kid over in England. I still have an account with them, and they sent through an email, which I printed out here, regarding a reduction in the interest rates that they will now be kindly offering me on a cheque account that I still have there. A massive 0.75% interest rate. Now the interest rate has gone from an enormous 1% down to a staggeringly exciting 0.75%. So they’re effectively cutting the interest rate that I’m getting from nothing to even less, but they’re effectively taking it down. You know, they’re taking 25% off of that from 1% down to 0.75. Now, of course, neither of those two rates are very exciting. And by the way, this is up to 25,000 pounds in this savings account. Absolutely crazy. And it got me thinking, because just behind me here — and you’re not going to be able to see it on the charts — it’s only Wednesday morning here and I’m making this video and podcast. Trade results for the week from trading FX. Now, Monday was a public holiday in the US, and so far the market’s been fairly quiet this week. But even so, with the trades that I’ve closed behind me here with very low risk, I’m up 2.9% for the week so far in just two trading days. And the trade that I have open — just one trade — is up 0.5%. So that’s already this week substantially more than they’re going to pay me in an entire year. And as mentioned at the beginning, with inflation and the cost of living — just go out and try and buy something in the grocery store. Well, luckily here we grow as much food as we can for ourselves. But you go out there anywhere around the world. It doesn’t matter where you live. I know what Europe’s like right now. I’ve spent a month in the States last year, and you just see the cost of living. You look at what’s happening to your rates bills, like your insurance. Everything that you purchase just to live is going up and up and up through the roof. Yet interest rates in the traditional sense of investment — like, I know a bank account, that’s not really what you call a traditional investment — but it’s still something that you hope to earn some interest on. After all, it’s your money that they’re using and they’re giving you next to nothing. What are your plans for success? So it comes back to: what are you going to do to change that? Would you like to have the ability to, just like I’ve done here on my trades so far this week, you know, you put those trades open and closed together, pretty much a 3.5% return so far — in just two very quiet trading days. And so would you like to have that knowledge and ability to do that for yourself on a consistent basis? And if your answer is yes, I would — what’s that worth to you? What’s that worth to you in terms of a bit of time and investment in yourself? To have that knowledge to be able to do that. And I think that’s really the question that you need to ask yourself. Are you going to make 2026 the year when things change for you? Or is this going to stay the same as last year and the year before and the year before, when nothing happens and you’re effectively either treading water or going backwards financially. Time and financial freedom. And also time-wise? You know, because we all want time freedom. But of course we all want financial freedom. And you put the two together, and that’s what knowing how to trade properly with a strategy that does not require you to sit in front of the computer here all day. I’ve just looked at the daily charts today on Wednesday. There are no trades today. I don’t see anything. And so I’m not going to take any trades now and even look at the charts now for another 12 hours. The Successful trader coaching program. And so if you want to know how we do that, have a look at the page link that I put here for the course. By the way, we are looking at changing the fee back to what it used to be for the previous 16 years. Right now, as you’re listening and watching this, it is on a small join fee and a small monthly subscription fee. And we are looking at changing that. And there’ll be more about that shortly. So if you want to jump in and take advantage of that lower price right now, I suggest that you have a look at the link that I’ll put here. Blueberry Markets as a Forex Broker. If you’re out there looking for a good broker, I can highly recommend Blueberry Markets. They’re over in Australia. But pretty much anywhere in the world can open an account with them, with a few exceptions — a few countries. And if you’re in the US, I’m sorry, you cannot open with Blueberry Markets, but pretty much everybody else can. And you can look through various forex markets, you know, a huge number of pairs on the charts. Plus, of course, now you have the ability to look at non-forex pairs, the cryptos, the commodities, indices, etc. like that. So it’s opened up a whole new range of markets for us to trade in exactly the same way. And that’s the beauty of it. So have a look at Blueberry Markets and I’ll put a link to them. Don’t waste this year – act now! But I really encourage you to strongly have a think about what you’re going to do. You know, we’re already towards the end of January — this month’s disappearing fast. Do something before it’s too late and train yourself up and see you know exactly how to look after your financial future yourself. We’ve been doing this coming up 17 years this year. Not many others out there can say that. So if you’d like to come on board with us at the same proven strategy that’s been around all those years over all market conditions, do something about it and jump on board now. This is Andrew here at The Forex Trading Coach. I’ll see you this time next week. Bye for now. Episode Title: #619: What It Really Takes to Trade for a Living Find out more about Blueberry Markets – Click Here Find out more about my Online Video Forex Course Book a Call with Andrew or one of his team now Click Here to Attend my Free Masterclass

What It Really Takes to Trade for a Living  Podcast: Find out more about Blueberry Markets – Click Here Find out more about my Online Video Forex Course Book a Call with Andrew or one of his team now Click Here to Attend my Free Masterclass #619: What It Really Takes to Trade for a Living In this video: 00:01 – Summary of the interview. 00:31 – Andrew Mitchem interview with Etienne Crete. 01:13 – What it takes to succeed in the market long term. 04:37– How long will it take to be a good trader? 06:25 – How do you know if your strategy is not working? 10:40 – What time frame charts should I trade? 18:23 – Prop firm advantages and disadvantages. 22:15 – What returns can I make? 27:40 – Mindset of trading. 30:36 – Contact Andrew Summary of the interview. The amount that you make as a dollar value is not important to me. It’s the percentage that you make as opposed to the percentage risk, because you can go on to a prop firm and use their money if you’re good. You know, it doesn’t matter whether I lose $10, $100 or $1,000 if it’s still the same percentage. I’m going to make $30, $300 or $3,000. You know, if it’s a 3 to 1 trade, providing that you get your mindset away from the numbers and you look at it as percentages. Andrew Mitchem interview with Etienne Crete. Something not to do with Andrew Mitchem. And Andrew is a trader that I really admire for his consistency in trading the same methods mostly for multiple decades now, I believe. So it was good to see you back on the podcast. We had a chat a few months ago, I believe, and then you were the very first guest on the podcast. Always kind of welcome back here, which is cool. But tell me what’s going on with you and kind of what you’re up to these days. Yeah. So nice to be here, first of all. And lovely. I think this is our fourth or fifth one. So, really good to be here. Yeah. Life’s good here with summertime over in New Zealand. Markets are good, which is nice. Now we’re, you know, we’re over that Europe to be in the northern hemisphere summer season. Yeah. It’s good. Life’s good, as in very good. Awesome. What it takes to succeed in the market long term I want to address certain topics it’s going to come down to, I believe, is the theme of what it really takes to succeed in the market long term. I know you have students who are very profitable now. Yeah, students who might struggle a little bit. Have maybe a lot of people who will see you, and then they see you trade full time and they kind of wonder why you’re so successful. Can you kind of start to unpack this and kind of figure out, what does it take to make a living in the markets in the long term? Yeah, I think there’s obviously a lot of dedication required to trade and to trade well. A lot of dedication and learning up front. I think one of the things I see that a lot of people today are not doing is I don’t think there’s a lot of people there that are willing to put a lot of time and effort into their trading. And I think as a full-time trader, I’m noticing that’s getting possibly worse. You know, whether it’s a social media thing or people want instant results, I’m not entirely sure what the actual reason is. But one thing I do notice is that people aren’t putting that time and effort in. And if things aren’t going well and they’re not suddenly making a fortune in a month, they give up. But I find from my point of view, from what I can help people with, it’s just being honest with people and saying, you do need to put some time and effort in to do it properly. You can become a full-time trader. Absolutely. It’s not going to be for everybody. You still have to absolutely love it and have that passion to want to do it and to turn up, to expect that not everything’s going to work perfectly. Market conditions are not always going to be great. You’ve got to take losing trades, losing weeks, losing months sometimes, but you’ve got to stick through it and be consistent. And I think that’s one thing I can tell people with my years of experience: that’s how you’re going to get through it. It’s a little bit harder for some people to actually accept that because, you know, when you’re in the middle of a slump, it’s quite hard to see the other side. It’s funny how trading seems to get easier in the sense that you have more information. You have more coaches that can help you how to trade and stuff, but people seem to be putting less effort than before, I feel. Yeah, absolutely. People are not willing to put time in or dedicate some time to try and learn. Look, I’ve got these things behind me here. That’s my new passion, playing guitar. I’m putting daily practice into it. I’m learning to sing. You know, I’ve done the helicopter thing, I’ve done the karate thing, and now it’s this. And I can’t instantly expect to turn up and play and sing and be in a band without doing, you know, several years of time and dedication. And it’s getting better all the time. And you go through ups and downs and it becomes easy, then it’s horrible, then you feel dreadful. And I think that trading is exactly the same, but you’ve got to want to do it. I think you’ve also got to make sure that you’re doing it because you enjoy the trading aspect of it, not simply because you see it as a way to get rich quick or you hate your job. So you think that trading is going to solve all your financial problems. It can do, but you’ve got to give it time. How long will it take to be a good trader? If someone were to ask you, what’s the amount of time it’s going to require for me to just sit in trading, what would you tell them? Can you pinpoint how many years it’s going to take them, or can you just say that it takes what it takes and that’s it? Yeah, I think that you need to dedicate — I mean, I suppose that’s how long it’s going to take you. But if you can give yourself half an hour or an hour a day to learn properly, that would be good. Do your homework on the terminology of trading. You know, when we start talking about limit orders and stop losses and currency pairs and all those type of things, it’s easy because we’ve done it for so long. But if you’re new to it, you’ve got to give yourself — like learning a new language — time to understand that terminology. Then I think you need to find yourself either a strategy that someone else has created, or put some time into observing the market yourself. And when you’re doing that, don’t worry about making money. Don’t even contemplate money. Get onto a demo account, look at charts. So time-wise per day, I think even giving half an hour, an hour a day to learn would be nice. That must be every day. But give yourself like six months. Give yourself a year. Don’t rush it. Don’t expect miracles. If you do it properly and do it slowly, you’ll find that it will come together. And you’ll find that you’ll pick up so much because you’re observing real market conditions without the pressure of feeling that you have to make money from it from day one. Something I see a lot is people that don’t know when to stop learning. Like, of course you should always try to learn and train and always try to become better, but there’s a time where you have to stop learning different strategies, stop kind of jumping between different strategies, and you’ve got to apply what you’ve learned so far. How do you know if your strategy is not working? How do you advise people to know when it’s time to stop learning other things and other strategies? Yeah, that’s an interesting one because you’re right. The issue that people will have after a certain length of time is if it doesn’t work really quickly, they’ll then go back and try and find something else again, back onto a forum, reinvent the wheel. I’ll give you a great example: just this week I had a guy who wrote to me who’s a client from a number of years ago, and he said it didn’t work for me. And I came back to your system about six months ago and I started again. And it’s working and I’m loving it. And I’m doing well. I’m on a prop firm and everything. But a lot of people give up too quick. And I think you need to, once you’ve got something that’s proven — maybe not proven to you, but proven to other people — you’ve got to dedicate some time to forgetting everything else. Because if you get yourself a strategy that has been proven to work, you don’t need to go out there adding to it, and you just need to apply it in real market conditions. You know, I think it’s really important that you do that. And again, like I said earlier, you have to accept that not every trade is going to work, but providing if you’re looking for — like in my example, I’m looking for candle patterns, etc. So providing I’m taking what is a good quality trade at that time, if the trade works or the trade doesn’t work, I can’t help that. All I have to do is go back and look at it and go, at that time, did this trade meet all those criteria, yes or no? If it did and the trade loses, well that’s fine. That’s part of trading. But you’ve got to stick to that system. One of the other things I find I get questions about when it comes to things like that is what time frame should I trade? And when people are new, they naturally want to trade lots and lots of trades. So they go to like one- and five-minute charts and fifteen-minute charts — and look, I did exactly the same years ago. You’ve got to not do that. You’ve got to, in my opinion, get to something longer and more reliable. And then it becomes, okay, so I’ve gone longer, which is the right one? And my answer is it depends because it depends on, one, what type of person you are as a trader, what suits you. But also, like, I could go through like this week and I’ve had lots of daily chart trades. Last week I didn’t have any, but we had lots of, say, four-hour and twelve-hour chart trades. Next week it might be six-hour or the weeklies might be showing. So I like to look at a variety of time frame charts. And I think if you just stick to one, that’s when you run into danger. You know, people will say, “Oh, there’s nothing showing,” or “Every trade I’m taking is losing.” So they give up and then they’ll go and look for the next system. So stick to something, but also be flexible. I just love the daily charts a lot. It’s just so easy to trade compared to what people do intraday and stuff. And I had to slowly move to it over the years. It took me a while to get there, but now I definitely love it. I love this kind of big part of my trading for sure. Yeah, I think with trading — like the two of us have been doing this for a number of years, like a long time — you soon realize that, you know, less is more. Better quality trades, less sitting looking at the charts, higher quality trades, more probability. All those type of things make it really enjoyable because one, you’re actually making money, but two, you’re actually doing less work, or less time looking at charts. And so I think to keep that enjoyment up and keeping fresh and keeping loving doing what we’re doing, I could think of nothing worse than just glued to the charts for like three, four, five, six hours. And most of the time all you’re doing is paying the broker because you end up trading by feel — that you should trade because you’re there. You know, trading what the market’s giving you. What time frame charts should I trade? I think the danger for a new trader going into the charts is like — like I said before this — maybe don’t trade for like a week or something. You want to get comfortable with that. Because eventually trading, no matter what timeframe you trade, could be the lower timeframe or higher timeframe, there’s times where there’s no trade at all. How do you get comfortable with that kind of feeling? Yeah, and that can be hard for people to accept. In our advantage are a couple of things that I can think of, like right now. One, we have access to more markets. So when I started 20 plus years ago, it was just forex. That’s all it was. And there wasn’t that many. Then came more minor pairs, then came like gold or silver against the US. And now over the last years we’ve got a lot more markets. It depends on your broker of course, but I could trade like gold and silver against — like we all see — the kiwi, the pound, the US, the yen, you know, Singapore dollar. Lots of them. I can trade lots more pairs. I can trade cryptos. I could trade metals, indices, commodities. So when I am looking through the daily charts once a day, I now have a lot bigger — like, you know — more charts to look through. So I can be very selective in fine tuning. If we use that, let’s say gold example. Years ago, it was gold/US dollar, and that’s all it was. Whereas I could look at, say, go through all those that I’ve just mentioned. Okay, are gold against the pairs looking the best, you know. So I can be very selective. So, it might only mean I’m taking one or two trades on that timeframe a day, but they’re really high quality ones. And if there’s nothing, then you accept there’s nothing on that timeframe for that day. But the way that I look at charts is at that close of day when I’m looking at the daily charts. At the same time, the 12-hour charts and the 8-hour charts and the 6-hour charts also close, because it’s 5 p.m. New York time. So at that time I can go and look at like three other time frame charts and look for setups. And I think that pretty much means that almost every day we are posting trades that we’re taking and we’re posting for our clients. At that time, even if they’re not on the daily charts. If the daily charts are just really not giving us anything, there might be some on the 12-hour charts that are. So it’s still the same time that you’re looking. It just means that you’re giving yourself a lot more opportunities. Do you feel like forex lost its appeal since you’ve been trading it? Do you feel like less volatility these days and it’s harder to trade, or do you find other markets are becoming more attractive than forex now? Yeah, I could see how people would think that. But also look at it and go, I think forex is possibly even more reliable now. You know, if you look back 15, 20 years ago, the non-farm payrolls — like the US monthly employment figures — the price would spike up three, four hundred pips in like 10 seconds sometimes. And it was really wild. Great if you’re on the trade, but otherwise it could be a nightmare. And so I don’t see those big wild moves any longer. So, you know, I suppose you could say that’s a good and a bad thing. But I do find that sometimes in the northern hemisphere summer season — you know, July or August — sometimes the market goes a little bit quiet. And I have noticed that a few years in a row. But the flip side of that is because on our forex charts — so like I still use MetaTrader, MetaTrader 5 — and I find that because we have those other markets, I’m still trading them the same way. Whereas years ago when the forex market was like really moving, I didn’t have access to those. So I can trade those other metals or, you know, cryptos. And it’s not just Bitcoin and Ethereum — there’s lots and lots of other markets. So I find return-wise it’s still exactly the same. It just means that maybe a few more of my trades are on non-forex pairs. If you want to look back on your trading journey so far, are there a few things you would like to do differently? Are there some things you would change or try to do differently to get the results faster, or to get kind of better results? Not anything major that I can think of. No, not really. One of the things I’ve always been conscious of is not blowing my account. And so to get better results, of course I could risk more, but that may in turn mean that obviously it means I’m risking more. So when I have drawdowns they’re bigger. And that would also potentially disturb some of the way I’m looking at the market, because you become a little bit more cautious. Whereas right now, because I risk very tiny amounts, I see a trade, take a trade. I’m not worried about it. I’m not losing sleep over it. And I think that’s a real important part of trading that, you know, you’ve got to see it, react to it, take it. Whereas if you start risking too much in order to make more, the downside is you either revenge trade or you become very scared and you go, “Oh, I see this trade. It’s actually quite good, but I can’t afford to take it,” or “I don’t want another losing trade,” so you don’t take it — and of course that’s the one that wins. So I’ve always been very cautious of that. Other things I’d change — not a huge amount. I mean, it took me four years to make something that was good. I mean, I would love to have made that quicker, but, you know, that’s the learning process. You can’t really change that unless you’re just doing your homework. It’s just part of learning. It’s a cost of learning, those years. No, I’ve tried like automation. I’ve tried adding extra things. And it always comes back to the way that I sort of traded back then. It’s still the way I trade today. That’s cool. I always tell people the fact that it’s better to aim for lower returns and kind of more consistency, like you mentioned, than trying to look for bigger returns and just having a low-cost equity curve. So, absolutely, you’ve got to try and keep your equity curve relatively smooth. You can’t — like if someone says, “Oh, I’ve had a 50% return,” then you go, well, that’s really good. But then, “I’m risking stupid amounts and I’ve had like a 60, 70% drawdown.” And it’s like, well, that’s not very good. So the actual return is not, to me, so important. It’s what’s your risk as opposed to your return. And as we know, with the ability now to trade on other accounts that it’s not your money — like a prop firm — just being consistent and not having big drawdowns is what they want. And so there are other avenues now for people that, you know, because of course people used to go, “Oh, my account’s only,” you know, I pick a figure, $5,000. “Even if I make 100%, I can’t live off $5,000.” Well, no, of course you can’t. But you still have proven to yourself that you’ve got the ability to make that 100%. So it’s important that you know what I mean. The amount that you make as a dollar value is not important to me. It’s the percentage that you make as opposed to the percentage you risk, because you can go on to a prop firm and use their money. If you’re good. Prop firm advantages and disadvantages. I feel like prop firms kind of encourage traders to just gamble more because they could always go and trade and hope to pass a challenge. And it’s kind of a risk of like, if you do this consistently, then you just end up losing the account. But it’s easier to kind of just take a big trade, hopefully pass or hopefully get a withdrawal, and then you kind of go with that. To me, the aim of a prop firm — the only important thing is not how long you take to pass it. It’s just don’t get to the drawdown. And if you don’t blow the drawdown, you will pass it eventually. And it’s just that most people don’t look at it that way. They go, “Oh, how quick is it going to take me to get to 10%?” And so I can get through the demo onto a live — and yeah, you’re right. If it encourages you to get that gambling mentality, then you’ve got to seriously consider if you should be even on a prop firm. And I think the important thing for people — and I get a lot of emails from people saying, “Look, I failed a prop firm,” and it’s like I get back to them and say, well, have you been trading for six months, 12 months on demo or a live account of your own? And they go, “No, I went straight to a prop firm,” and it’s like, well, that’s a really silly thing to do. You’d be better off spending six months on a demo account and treating it like it’s live, or a small live account of your own, and proving consistency in your results, because it’s going to prove to yourself that you can do it, and then go to a prop. Don’t ever waste your money jumping into a prop firm, because all you’re doing is feeding prop firms more money. And like I said, you’re either going to gamble and fluke it, but that can only happen so many times before you blow it. Definitely. What’s a drawdown you’re comfortable with on your own account? Do you have a certain level, certain percentage that if it’s within check, you’re okay with that? And then if it goes beyond it’s like too much, but on a personal level based on kind of your risk tolerance. Yeah. Personal level, like, if I ever get to a 10% drawdown, I’d be horrified. You know, that’s me. The absolute maximum kind of level. But because I risk very small amounts, I’d need a lot of consecutive trades all to get stopped to get to that level, you know. And with a reasonably good system, you’re going to get some good trades in there at some stage. So the likelihood of getting to that is really quite slim. But it’s because some people will say, “Oh, 10% is nothing.” So I know that’s going to comment below. But I mean, for me, similar for me is 15%. I’m still good with it, but I don’t want to go to like 20%. Like 15% is probably my limit, and I won’t get to that very often. Well, the easy one — and I think we’ve mentioned this on other chats we’ve had — is the one that gets most people. If you have a 50% drawdown, you need to make 100% to get to break even. And most people can’t see that until they stop and think about it and go, wow, that’s quite scary. So that’s why I like to keep risk low per trade, ensure that profitable trades many times the risk are several times the risk. So you have little small losses, big gain; little small losses, big gain. And that way you don’t have to be right all the time because no one’s going to be right all the time. You know, you can accept that things might go against you or your trade’s going really well, and something happens and it gets stopped out. Well, if it does, it’s not killing your account. And mentally it’s not affecting you because your risk is really small. You only need a couple of profitable trades and it’s taking back all those losses and more. And you’re then back higher than when you started. What returns can I make? Right. So you have to kind of get away from that mindset of if I don’t make enough returns, then I won’t be able to make enough money, or I won’t get a platform to fund me, or I won’t be able to get capital. It’s kind of a big thing. It’s like people think you have to have higher returns to be interesting for platforms and investors and whatever, but you could be doing much better with lower returns, correct? That’s right. You just want consistency — low drawdowns and consistency. And I think the issue that I see is a lot of people don’t have the quality of strategy that allows that to happen. You know, to start with, I find a lot of people just don’t have a strategy at all. Then they don’t understand risk management. They have no plan. They really don’t know where they’re putting their stop loss or why. A lot of people seem to put the stop loss and still go back to pips, and they put the same stop loss on every single trade, regardless of looking at the market conditions. So there’s all these things that people do that are real basic, but if you do them wrong, you’re just stacking all the odds against yourself. So again, it comes back to me: get some education, do your homework, do that hard work up front. And if you do that time and hard work up front, then the results will follow. If you expect instant results and you don’t do your homework, you probably only get one result and that’s you’re going to give up or fail. You know what I mean? I saw a comment on our YouTube channel yesterday. Someone said that they took a trade and they put a stop loss, and then they lost $60,000 because of it. So the lesson is, well, next time they won’t use a stop loss because then they won’t lose money. You don’t have a stop loss, no trade. It’s kind of a crazy thing when you think about it. But yeah, kind of like — it’s crazy. There’s a lot of simple things that people could do. It’s like I’m staggered the number of people that don’t understand that if they have a sell trade on, and it’s on, let’s say a minor exotic pair, and the spread widens, then they could get stopped out even though the price doesn’t get anywhere near their stop loss, whereas that won’t happen on a buy trade. And so it’s all those things that when you spend some time in the market, you get to see these things and you’re doing all that groundwork. So you’re not surprised when it becomes real money or bigger amounts of money. Okay. I think this is easy. Is it something you can just learn from courses, or is it kind of things that you just have to learn through being in the market and kind of seeing things happen and kind of seeing where weird stuff happens too? That’s right. Give it time. You know, give it time. You’ll find all these things happen. You’ll go, “Hang on a minute, that price never got near my stop loss and the broker took it out.” And then the natural thing is to blame the broker. But it’s like, no, you were trading the Norwegian krone/Japanese yen, and it was a sell trade, and it was on a one-hour chart with a tiny stop loss, and the spread just took it out. So all those little things — you’re better off making those mistakes on a small account when, you know, financially it doesn’t really matter, but you learn from it. What’s your advice for someone who says, “I want to be able to make a living in the markets”? Is it just about learning a strategy and kind of being good at it, or is there more to it, to making a living in the markets? The strategy is obviously really, really important, but I think you need to also be in the right mental space as well. You know, you’ve got to be consistent. You’ve got to show up consistently. It’s one of the things that I love about the teaching aspect is that I can’t go, “Oh, I can’t be bothered to trade today.” I want to stay in bed, or, you know — I have to show up. And so that’s what you need to do because, you know, you can just imagine that you don’t show up for a few days, and that’s the day when all the good trades show and you’ve missed it. So be consistent, show up, be consistent with your trading, know when to trade. These type of things come into it as well. Because I think you need to stagger things because when you do go to bigger accounts or firms or your own larger account, whatever it is you do, it does affect you because you see bigger losses, numbers-wise. But that’s why it comes back to, for me, it’s a percentage. You know, it doesn’t matter whether I lose $10, $100 or $1,000. If it’s still the same percentage, I’m going to make $30, $300 or $3,000. You know, if it’s a 3 to 1 trade, providing that you get your mindset away from the numbers and you look at it as percentages — that’s the percentage of your account that you’re risking. And it’s all relative. It’s all exactly the same. So I think when you start going live with bigger accounts, that is one thing that can play with your mind, play with your head. But if you understand those numbers and you’ve been through different market conditions of ups and downs, then you just ride it and go with it. But as a person, be consistent. Don’t do dumb things. Yeah. If there’s no trade there, don’t take it, right? If the trade’s there, take the trade. Mindset of trading. Definitely. I mean there’s a whole strategy aspect, there’s a whole psychology of course, a mindset as a whole. Also finances, like how do you structure your account? How much do you put in your account, how much you’re willing to lose? What do your profits do, I think is a point. Do you want to go into that a little bit? More like how you manage finances as a trader, like what things are the case. You’ve got to understand what works for you, you know? What are you comfortable with? I think that’s really important. It’s like, if you suddenly see five trades show, are you going to take them? Are you going to keep your risk the same on all five? Let’s say you risk 1% per trade. Are you suddenly going to put 5% on there because all five look good? Or are you going to select the best one, or are you going to reduce the risk and take all of them? If they’re all related, let’s say they’re all US dollar related, well, quite a lot is the US dollar at the time is really strong or really weak. Moving those pairs. So are you going to accept therefore that all five could go wrong? Or five could work, you know. You’ve got to know what your answer to those questions is before it happens. You’ve got to have that plan. I think that’s really important. What about in terms of capital? Do you believe in putting all your money into one account and kind of just trading it, or do you kind of spread it out and do — you look at investing, you look at trading, you look at different things to make money that’s not all connected to kind of one market? No, I mean obviously the cash flow through your trading’s really good, you know, if you’re good at it. So that’s always a nice thing. But personally, I still, outside of trading, invest in other things. I mean, I hear people that say, let’s pick something else. Let’s say you’ve got $50,000, and they say, “I’ll only put $25,000 with the broker and keep $25,000 somewhere else and just risk twice the amount.” So you hear people doing that, that’s an option. I just think that with the ability to — once you’re good — with the ability to either trade for other people or trade for prop firms, so you don’t need to load up your account with like everything you have. And I also think it’s quite important that you split whatever you trade for your own trading money over several brokers as well. I would do that purely from a safety point of view, you know. Yes, I trade with some very good brokers. Have they ever done anything wrong? No, not to me. Have I ever, in the past, had a broker that suddenly disappeared? Yes. And it hurts. And we battled and battled for many years and ended up with about 80% back after all these legal fees. Like a group of us got together from around the world. But it’s horrible going through it. And you wouldn’t wish that on anybody. So split your account up over a few brokers. Contact Andrew It’s good advice for sure. Where can people find you and connect with you after this podcast? Where can they learn your strategies and your methods and kind of connect with you? Yeah. Well, our website’s TheForexTradingCoach.com. We’ve been around for over 16 years, clients in 109 countries now. So in that time we’ve never ever missed posting our daily trades, our webinars, everything. Our forum site — so have a look at TheForexTradingCoach.com. There’s lots of information. There’s lot size calculators and e-books and free webinars for people to have a look and do the homework. Go on to something like Forex Peace Army and look at the reviews since 2009. You know, have a look at what we do and the due diligence review. Decide if coaching and a strategy is something that you want. Just do your homework. I personally write back to every email that comes through directly to me. You know, we’re real people. I’m sitting here at home, my office. It’s just that my computer screens are just behind me. You know, we’re real people doing this, and that’s why it works. I think we’ve got tutors in London and North Carolina as well. So we’re not just — because I’m here in New Zealand — we cater to people right around the world. Yeah, yeah. Also super active on YouTube. We have a lot of content there and also on the podcast. I believe it’s been good stuff over the years. So yeah, yeah, we’ve got our stuff on all the normal social media channels. YouTube — 616 videos, I think right now to date. You know, so one a week, that’s been going for what, 12, 13, 14 years or so. So it’s that consistency of showing up. But if you go back and watch some of the early ones, the content in terms of like the suggestions — and not so much advice — but, you know, suggestions and things we talk about hasn’t really changed. And that’s, I think, massively important that, you know, we’re not chasing our tail and adding bits to the strategy and taking bits off simply because markets change. The logic, the strategy is identical today than it was 16 years ago. I told you when I started trading and it’s still there, so it’s insane. It’s crazy. I mean, there for a long time. That’s crazy. That’s good. That’s right. And you know, over those years you’re going to get different market conditions and everything happens in the market politically and everything else. And the logic still works, which is the awesome thing about it. Awesome. If people can connect with you, see what you do, and of course, if they want to learn from you, that’s awesome. And your time here, especially the advice, is always a good discussion and we can have a chat next time about trading again. Awesome to see you again. Again, thank you very much for your time. Episode Title: #619: What It Really Takes to Trade for a Living Find out more about Blueberry Markets – Click Here Find out more about my Online Video Forex Course Book a Call with Andrew or one of his team now Click Here to Attend my Free Masterclass