Original subtitles

Okay, so good evening.

For those of you that are new, quick introduction.

Right, that's me.

I don't normally introduce myself, but I know I got a boost of followers recently.

Probably because I didn't actually open my mouth for most of July, which always helps.

But anyway, I figured it's probably one of the most

outspoken people you're going to hear for a while.

I might as well tell you that I do have experience.

I've been trading, well, since the year 2000, so just over 16 years, made every

mistake in the book, lost a lot of money, made a bit more than I've lost.

Once, cried my eyes out on the bust and morgue after a particularly bad copper trade.

I went full-time in 2007, now trade my own account

and trade for a Chicago-based prop firm as well.

I should add that I do swear a fuck of a lot and sometimes joke about religion.

But I do believe in God, I'm not misogynistic.

Only other thing I'd say is that Jimmy Savile was a sick, sick man.

So that brings me to the hearing now.

I wanted to go through some charts tonight.

But then I thought I'd have a rant because looking at a chart and working out the

best place to buy and sell doesn't make you profitable.

Only one thing makes you profitable, which is execution.

So how you act will determine your success and ultimately longevity in this game.

So I want to dwell on that.

So with that in mind, here is my little checklist to tell if you're a cunt.

Seriously, six steps, not the only ones mine, but six

steps to tell if you're the weak hand at the table.

Let's go through them.

So number one, do you regularly pun to trade with

real money out of sheer boredom due to inactivity?

Everybody does this at some point in their career.

It usually doesn't end well.

But such is the nature of markets that sometimes you

do actually get rewarded for trading like a turd.

And you know, that keeps you doing it.

If you think about it, if you lost money every time

you did something, you'd stop doing it pretty quickly.

But sometimes because you make money doing something dumb, it just keeps you cracking

it over time and it's incredibly insidious.

But anyway, if you are getting into trades with little reasoning other than I haven't

done anything for a while and I'm bored, then that is a problem that should be solved.

And I bring this up because I'm so sick of seeing traders going through their trades

with me and saying, oh, this trade was good and I made four R on this.

And then I gave it all back as the next four or all shit.

And I asked them, why were they in those trades?

And they come up with things like, I don't even know why I was in it looking back on it.

I guess I was just bored.

And that says it all, you know, we're all traders, okay?

And we all want to trade, obviously.

But you have to understand that the work in this job is

identifying, watching and waiting for a prime opportunity.

You know, the sniper theme is getting a little old now.

But, you know, it's as good as any cliche.

So, what I would advise on this is go through your trades and if it's genuinely

a boredom trade that you've made, log the outcome and watch

it over time so that you've got black and white results.

But I would add here that don't talk your book, okay, because this is a mistake as well.

I spoke to a guy only the other day that said they

lost money on a trade they took out of boredom.

And I said to this guy, oh, you mug, you know, where did you get in?

And he said, oh, price broke a decent level on the hourly time frame.

And I saw the market come back into that level.

And the level lined up with the VWAP.

And I thought it was a good chance it would bounce, so I got in.

And I'm like, well, hold on, that sounds relatively calculated to me.

And he said, yeah, but it lost money.

The bottom line is this.

Only you know if it's something you should have done or not.

Only you know if it's a boredom trade, or it's a trade that fit your plan.

But don't be clouded by the outcome.

Sometimes trades lose because that's what happens.

You just get, you know, to use the old poker terminology a bad beat.

So point number two here, have you risked more than

usual because your last few trades were losers.

This is a classic gambler's mistake.

You know trying to take more risk on to make them money back quicker.

Has this ever ended well for anyone?

No, I thought not.

Let's go on to point number three.

A lot of people get this.

This recently bias, something hasn't worked for a few trades.

They stop using it and they look for the next flavor of the month.

I'm not saying stick with something for years and years.

There comes a point where if it's not working and you've been sticking to the

rules and you know you've been executing well, you've got

to knock it on its head and say it doesn't fucking work.

But at the end of the day, a lot of people are way too quick to ditch things.

And sometimes you've got to understand that certain strategies aren't

particularly good in certain market conditions.

But they could work amazingly with other conditions.

And sometimes that's half the game.

You know working out what market phase you're in.

Point number four here.

If you've been around Twitter for five minutes,

you'll know exactly what I'm talking about.

A lot of people out there obsessed with who's making

what and how much percentage return they've made.

Just understand one thing.

Anyone can make 40 fucking percent in a week if they're risking 20% of trade.

No serious trader will ever boast a return like this unless it was a black swan event.

Unless they happen to, you know, for some reason, to

get short the Euro swissi on the day the floor broke.

Unless they were short cable just before Brexit.

You know, something like that.

Yeah, you can come up and you can say I made 40% in a week.

But you've got these cuts on Twitter.

You know, acting like this is a regular weekly occurrence.

And it's the biggest red flag of all that someone is not legit.

And by the way, just a little aside here.

This is a good old 50% here with bundles of money in the background.

And a quote from him on the right.

I won't try and do his accent.

But here we go.

Just because I'm photographed in or next to a certain vehicle wearing an article of

clothing, holding a product, sitting next to what appears to be large sums of money

or modeling expensive piece of jewelry doesn't mean I own everything in those photos.

Yeah, no shit.

So, you know, stop believing these fucking demo ballers on Instagram.

I actually get emails from people, okay.

Saying things like, hey Tom, I just been checking out this guy on Instagram.

You know, the guy that drives the Lamborghini and he's been saying he makes

100 % a week, pretty much week in, week out.

Is this realistic?

How many of these emails can I answer saying, get a fucking grip?

Number 5, have you thought about stopping for the

day after a winner for fear of giving it all back?

What I would say to people here is, is your conviction in your own skill so

low that being up on the days are reason to stop.

I've found, speaking from personal experience here, that with very,

very little exception, days that start out good invariably

get better and days that start out bad invariably get worse.

Okay, so what I'm trying to say there is if my days starts out with a couple of

losers, it's fairly rare for me to get back to break even, let alone to get into profit.

But if my days starts out with a couple of winners usually I go from strength to

strength and I'm going to have an incredibly good day.

So it's quite rare for me to get a couple of trades up and be

doing well and then to give it all back in the afternoon session.

Now, that's just me, but I have found, from speaking

to many people, that a lot of people are the same.

Some days you're just not feeling it and you dig yourself into a real big hole if

you don't stop relatively quickly and other days the market is particularly

conducive for what you're doing or you're running hot and you don't want to stop.

Now, I would say, you know, play to that but naturally this presumes you're not the

kind of turd that, you know, has a winner and thinks he's fucking pulled you to

Jones and starts taking a hand for the shit trades left-right and center.

But as long as you can stay calm and you can execute your edge, don't be afraid,

you know, if the market's rewarding you either held you want to stop early.

I mean, grow a pair of fucking balls.

So, number six, have you moved the stop to break

even for the only reason that you cannot now lose?

I mean, everybody does this, don't they?

Sometimes I think I'm the only one that doesn't.

So, the question I would put out there in relation to this

is, are you trading the market or are you trading your P&L?

It's very, very simple.

People sell a level and the market moves to a

new low, like you can see on the slide here.

And they move their stop to break even, which in this case is the last swing high.

And then the market gets up there and they get stopped out and this happens.

And you say to them, I don't understand, why did you buy back at resistance?

And they say, because I didn't want to lose.

And it doesn't make any sense.

You know, that person is literally moved their

stop there because they don't want to lose money.

But nothing to do with technicals and yet they're

telling me they're a fucking technical trader.

So, I've come to realize over time, as I'm sure many of you have, that markets

often punish those that enter the market at obvious pattern trigger points.

So, for example, typically, if I'm going to sell in an area like this, what I'm

almost always going to do is offset the position and buy back as the market looks

particularly weak.

So as it breaks the low, we're using some of the available liquidity to buy back up

positions and wait and see what happens under there.

Because a lot of the time when the market breaks prior swing lows on momentum,

there is often a stitch up.

Oftentimes, there'll be a squeeze.

It's just enough to try and take out the weak

hands that enter at this advantageous price.

So, you know, for me, I get out and wait and see if we get acceptance underneath

these areas, then you'll find that a lot of the time you can get back in on a retest.

Because, again, what happens here, the infamous break even move, the even if

you sell underneath here, and it does keep going, before long, it's usually going to

come back as the market often does and retest the pattern trigger point.

And again, a lot of these guys that have seen their profits are not going to want

to lose, so they're going to move to break even.

And of course, they're going to be buying straight back into the prior low,

and oftentimes you see the market do this, and then people

whining about how they've got stocked out of break even.

So, think about why you're moving to break even.

I know there'll be times when you can move to break even, then it's fine to do so,

but are you moving to break even just because you don't want to lose money?

And I would say that is the wrong decision to make.

So, now we are going to move on to things I have actually received via email.

These are from people that genuinely want to succeed.

I can tell because they've been at it for months, in

some cases years, and I've known them for a long time.

And that is why I call this little slide soul-destroying snippets, because every

time I read one of these fucking comments, a little bit of me dies, and that's why I

want to try and give this reality check.

So, people say this, I want the big money.

You want the big money, but you've got an account

smaller than Donald Trump's dick for fuck's sake.

I mean, it will invariably mean that you take too much risk and blow the account.

There's no two ways about it.

I did this for years.

I wanted the big money, and it caused a lot of problems in my trading,

and it manifested itself actually in two ways.

The first was that try and make big money, I always bet too large for my account.

And as we all know, if you do that, a string of losers is going to wipe you

out, and you are going to get a string of losers.

It's as guaranteed as fucking death and taxes.

The only people that don't get strings of losers are Twitter traders.

Everybody else that is trading for a living, including the top professional

traders, working for fucking banks, institutions, proffers, hedge funds...

You're going to have strings of losers, several losers in a row.

Sometimes you're going to lose the periods, several weeks in a row.

I know pro traders that have made millions in this game, that

have had periods where they've lost several months in a row.

It happens, but it's like a taboo subject out there.

People don't want to talk about it, obviously, because

it's in a front to your ego, but it will happen.

So, if you get that when you're trading too large, you're going to blow that account.

But the thing is, when I used prudent risk management, and I thought, okay,

Tom, look, you can't go 10% on every single trade trying to build an account

because you're going to blow it all...

You got to do 1% risk of trade, then I found

that I just mismanaged all my winning trades.

The reason I'm mismanaged the winning trades is because I would sit there with a

swing trading strategy looking for my three or four high probability trades a week.

So, day one, I might sit there and I'm watching

the market move, but I don't get a trade on.

Day two, I'm watching the market move, nothing in the morning, in the afternoon,

the trade sets up.

I crack it with my fucking 500 pound account at 1% risk.

I'm basically risking pennies per pit on the trade.

And I get in and the trade works, and it goes up 50 pips, or what have you.

And I look at my P&L, I've made 20 fucking pounds.

And you think to yourself, Jesus Christ, I've waited a day and a half, and I've

made 20 pounds, I'm never going to get anywhere.

And people say, oh, we'll think in percentages.

Think of the percentage increase in your account.

I mean, this is just a thing that people say that has no fucking bearing on reality.

Because it's all well and good to say, think of the percentage return, but we don't.

We look at the money.

And we feel debilitated because we feel like we spend

a lot of time, and we haven't seen a lot of money.

And so, what I would do is I would try and run everything.

And I would say, you know what, at the small size I'm on, I got to run

this fucking 300 pips to make any kind of decent money.

Which means that suddenly, one minute I'm on an hourly chart, the next minute I'm on

a weekly and a fucking monthly chart, trying to find reasons to run that trade.

And all the time I would just see these winners,

come back to losers as I try to run them.

And of course, on top of that, I'm getting the natural losers that occur

on any strategy, so all I'm doing is I'm losing money.

So, I'm fucked either way.

I take too much risk, I'm fucked.

I take prudent risk, I'm fucked.

But it all comes from the fact that you're trading with a small account.

There's two things that you can do.

One thing that you can do that will work, most likely,

is funding a decent size account with meaningful money.

But most people just don't have that money, that they can commit to a trading account.

So, the only other thing you can do is just commit to the long haul.

And it's easy for me to say it, but it's hard, because you've got to start

looking at this business in terms of years.

Okay, not fucking days, not weeks, and no, not even

months before you get what you want to be, years.

If you start with a thousand dollar account, I'm sorry, but you're looking at

years before you're going to be making any kind of decent money.

And people don't want to hear it, but it is true.

It's true.

The other thing I would say regarding the money in

general is stop thinking about the money all together.

Money gravitates towards those who don't dream about it.

I got an email from someone the other day that said, I want to dare to dream.

I want to dare to dream.

Stop fucking dreaming.

Bunch of fucking fairies.

Dreaming all day about being rich.

Oh, wouldn't it be nice if I could afford a

flatland beginning with number plates, ledge one?

No, it won't be nice, because you won't have a fucking time to drive it.

You'll be too busy working to maintain your edge.

If you're new, let me get this straight.

This is insanely hard work.

And you will work until you drop.

You'll probably lose your health.

You'll get fucking back pain, eye strain, headache, stress.

Then there's the money you're going to lose.

The strain on your relationships, as you become gradually more introspective

and moody, with this rollercoaster of a market taking its toll.

And after all of that, you might not make it.

And if you do make it, if you're lucky enough to be one of the few that makes it,

you've got to remember that the market will likely change at some point.

So this will cause you even more stress as you try and keep up with it.

And I'm sorry that a lot of you guys don't want to

hear this, but nobody else is going to tell you this.

And I'm not saying it, because, you know, I don't think you should get

into trading, but I'm saying be fucking real

about the business if you're going to get into it.

And stack the odds in your favor by not wasting time with shit, okay?

Like point number two here.

Point number two.

This is a real email, but I got in the last couple of weeks.

I shit you not.

I'm scouting pound yen for five to ten pips.

It's not easy, because my spread is four pips, but it's going well so far.

How many trades has that guy done if he's saying that's going well so far?

If he's done more than ten fucking trades, I saw my own dick off.

I mean, get a fucking grip.

Scalping the pound yen for five to ten pips with the spread of four pips.

This is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.

I mean, you lift the offer and you're out half to one already.

And a person that sent me this is probably watching

this and thinking this bounty is a fucking cunt.

Well, maybe I am, but I'm just trying to lay it out there, because it's painful for

me seeing people write to me and say these things.

This is another one.

Someone text me this the other day.

I got a loser, but I was getting my hair cut and

couldn't see the charts properly on the phone.

I mean, don't get me wrong.

I actually check markets for my phone.

And, you know, you can use the phone to adjust orders,

but trying to scout whilst in the fucking barbers.

I mean, you'd lose in the head to head with Stevie Wonder.

Get out.

Get out to that person that just said they're using a watch to trade.

What is this fucking night rider?

But you know why people are doing it?

Because once again, they're using Twitter and they're

using Instagram and they're looking at all these ballers.

You're trying to trade pound dollar off their phone.

And they think that's acceptable.

It's not acceptable.

Real traders, professional traders aren't trading off a fucking phone.

Or a watch.

Right, number four.

This doesn't make any sense to me at all.

I will get confident when I'm profitable.

Like, as often say to people, you need confidence.

So I will get confident when I'm profitable.

No, it doesn't work like that.

You have to be confident or at least trade with

confidence to get profitable in the first place.

There is like, this kind of circular logic that you can see on the screen.

So a lot of people say, listen, I'm not confident

at the moment because I'm not making any money.

But I will be as soon as I see results.

And this leads to this.

I'm so unconfident that I keep second guessing myself

on trades and badly managing those that I take.

But hey, shit, I'm not confident, but I will be as soon as I see results.

And it goes round and round and round.

If you procrastinate when you're about to pull the trigger, if you have three losing

trades and you shit yourself and won't step up for

the fourth one, these are all confidence issues.

And it's not going to magically work that one morning you're going to wake up and

you're going to be profitable and brimming with confidence.

You have to be confident first.

I'll tell you that all the guys that I've known that have either got profitable with

or without my help have been extremely confident people.

They've been the people that have been saying, I'm going to make it in this game

and they've put their head down and they've worked hard.

But you haven't been able to knock their spirit.

And they'll be able to go through drawdown and remain strong.

It's not a game for people that are weak.

To be honest with you, the market will take its pound of

flesh, you have to be strong, you have to be confident.

Three stupid fucking mistakes to be making in your trading.

Well, these are probably the most common.

I actually did a peristope on this relatively recently.

But we'll go through them again now.

Number one, letting a bias infect your thinking.

So basically getting hooked on a bias.

So there's nothing wrong with having a bias.

I use one when I trade.

Sometimes I look at the charts and say, right, I've

got a strong feeling we're going to go up today.

And I'll get along and I'll try and hold my long position.

But it becomes a problem when you start talking your book.

You need to watch the price action and watch how it's responding to your belief

that it is going to go up.

So in this example that I've got here, the trader gets long on the break of resistance.

The market makes a double top.

And they start saying something like, ah, it's just going to be a temporary double top.

You know, nothing to worry about.

Then should bounce here off the price support level.

Oh no, it's broken lower.

But don't worry, this is just a flush of those that bought the previous double bottom.

It's going to bounce here.

Actually, once it's flushed out everyone that's long apart from me, because I'm not

a cunt, it'll flush everyone else out, and then it's going to go vertical.

Fucking hell, I can't get out down here.

There's no way I'm losing this much money.

Shit, I'm really doing my ass here.

Fuck, I've got to go out.

And then, of course, the age old classic.

I swear I won't do this again for at least a month.

But again, there's nothing wrong with having a bias, but

you need to make sure that you are watching the market.

And reacting to the price action.

Now, there's a grey line between reacting and overreacting.

You don't want to micromanage a chart.

I saw somebody the other day that took a trade off

a daily chart, and was managing it on a one minute.

You're dense, I'm sorry.

That is just stupid.

I've seen people doing many different varieties of that.

One guy was justifying a trade off a monthly chart that he was looking to run,

but managing it on a 15 minute stupidity.

Absolute stupidity, as far as I'm concerned.

I mean, tell me if you think I'm being harsh

here, but I honestly think that he's stupid.

Maybe it's just me.

But anyway, what I'm saying is that you can't micromanage,

but you've got to generally watch the price action.

On the time frame you've got in and think, is this looking good for my position?

So letting a bias effect you're thinking lead to large

losses, unnecessary losses, and it's very dangerous.

The next one, FOMO.

I'm not even going to dwell too much on this, because I don't understand this.

I like to think that I'm quite understanding of problems in general.

You know, traders can come to me and say, I've got

this issue, and I'll try and help them with it.

But I don't understand FOMO.

I can't even really be sympathetic with FOMO,

which is, of course, fear of missing out.

So, on something like this, in my hypothetical

example here, it looks like it's rolling over.

Trader wants to sell a pullback.

He's praying for a pullback, thinking it's the short of a lifetime.

It's getting away from them.

They're sitting there saying, fuck, fuck, fuck.

There's no pullback.

Look how relentless this is.

It's down 100.

And finally, they just throw in the towel and go bulls deep short.

And, of course, this happens.

Which always happens, when a market is down massively.

And you can't bear it anymore.

Seeing the market that you thought was going to go down,

get away from you and you just steam in and sell it.

And I speak to people all day that can't control themselves.

They're whining like a little bit, right, saying, oh, I miss this 100-tip move.

If only I got it.

Yes, of course.

If only you got it, but you didn't get it.

And then there's a moment silence.

And they say, Tom, do you think it'll carry on?

And you know at this point, they either want to get on board down here with the

momentum or they want to fade it because they miss the original drive.

And I know at that point that they're almost certainly going to get fucked.

You know, it's sod's law.

Fade a strong trend there, you're going to get carted.

If you sell it, it's going to squeeze just enough to take you out.

But I know as well that when people that are supposed to know

their edge are asking me what to do, I really know their fucked.

But going off on a slight tangent here, I know a guy who tries to fade everything.

And that's fine.

I mean, I think you guys saw in the last webinar when

I went over the stats that were sent to me by my...

Prop firm, we get 22 page booker stats every month and all our trades.

And as I was showing you guys, I make all my money fading.

The minute I go with the trend, I get fucked, which is quite weird,

because it goes against what everybody's taught.

But anyway, that's just me and it might not work for everyone.

But this guy that I'm talking about, he tries to fade everything, bit like I do.

But he tries to fade everything, calling it an overreaction.

Sometimes that's going to work.

But like the other day, NFP comes out massively out of line.

Euro dollar starts tanking.

And the market slumps and he's straight on the fucking bid trying to buy it up and

he's getting host and he's going... I've got to buy it here, it's overreacting.

And I say to him, well, what was the figure for NFP?

And he doesn't know.

He doesn't know what the figure is.

Now, you might be sitting there thinking, is that a massive problem?

You know, we trade the price action.

I don't know what the NFP figure is you might be thinking.

That's fine.

But how can you say the market's overreacting if you don't know what the figure is?

This is literally so fucking stupid.

I couldn't even believe what I'm hearing.

How in the name of Christ the Carpenter?

Can you tell if it's overreacting?

You don't know what it's fucking reacting to.

Imagine it like this, right?

If you saw a man screaming and crying in the

street, would you just go eyes overreacting?

Or would you say, I wonder what he's screaming and crying about?

Oh, his entire family just been wiped out in a plane crash.

Yeah, that makes sense.

I'd be screaming and crying too.

Or, oh, his bag just split and he spilt his fucking baked beans on the floor.

I was bit of an overreaction.

And so it just doesn't make sense to me.

It doesn't make sense to be fading everything, calling it an overreaction

when you don't know what the market's reacting to.

Number three, trading your plan.

God, we're all guilty of this.

So a level might break.

Your plan for the day, short this level if it retests.

But it doesn't retest, does it?

And the market's moving down.

And it's about 11 a.m.

You want to get some trades on, moves to a new low here, train continuation.

Short as we break the new low.

Why not?

No.

Fucking market goes straight back up.

And you get your first stop out of the day.

Starts to break long here and you think, right, it's coming back to my level.

I'm prepared to sell that.

I'll be able to make my money back.

But is this an inverse head and shoulders here?

I reckon I might be able to get long here and make some money.

Oh no, it plunges to a new low and you get fucking stopped out again.

Now you're down two for two.

Okay, then the market moves to a third low.

Down through triple bottom support here.

It's got to go now.

It's definitely not coming back to test this level.

So they give it a short and immediately off side we go.

And it goes absolutely fucking parabolic into the level.

And at this point, invariably, absolutely

invariably, because I speak to people all day long.

The person in question will go, fuck this man.

I'm not trading anymore today.

I've done my fucking ass.

I lost three trades.

I completely did the wrong thing at the wrong time.

I got to conserve capital.

And I'm just nervous, man.

I don't want four losers and they stand out the way.

I mean, you don't need me to tell you what happens next because that's what happens next.

So I make this joke on Twitter sometimes that if you want some entertainment,

ask a new trader what their plan is at the beginning of the day,

then at the end of the day, ask them what they actually did.

You'll piss yourself with laughter.

It's really sad, but you'll piss yourself with laughter because they'll have a plan.

And sometimes you'll get a trader that's relatively new, and

maybe he's not that great, but he'll have a fairly good plan.

He's sat down.

He's made it when he's emotionalist in the market.

It's been very quiet in the morning.

He's got a decent plan of where he wants to interact.

If you think he can stick to that fucking plan, you've got another thing coming.

You know, and like I said, you get to the end of the day,

seriously, you feel like some entertainment, asking what he did.

There's no way the trade did his plan.

That's for sure.

And if you ended up making money on the day, it'll have been very lucky.

So I'll give you four things to remember when you trade.

These are not the only four things you need to remember, but there I think four

pretty important things.

You will have heard me talk about all of them before, and you'll probably be bored

with some of the rants I've had about these things before, but hey, the reason

I'm coming back here every week to rant is because people don't fucking listen.

I can sit here and rant till I'm blue in the face.

I'm going to get a handful of emails next week, with

people saying these things that I'm ranting about.

So, these are the four things.

Number one, there is no such thing as a fucking free trade.

I can't bear it, guys.

I can't bear seeing people say this.

I think I will literally shoot myself.

If another bell end tells me that they're plus 100 on a trade, looking for 20 ticks,

and it's therefore a free trade because they're at break even.

No, cunt.

You are plus 100.

And if it comes back on you, you've just lost 100 ticks.

You haven't got a free trade.

How can I tell that even the trader that is doing this

knows that they're being dense, but they won't accept it.

I'll tell you a simple test.

Wait for a trader to say, hey man, I'm rp80

ticks, and I'm just looking for my 100 tick move.

I only got 20 ticks to go, and I'm break even.

Okay, I can't lose now, so I'm just going to let this trade go.

Right, that's fine.

And you'll tell them, well, you're being a bit of

a cunt there, but they'll say, no, no, I'm not.

It's a free trade.

Do this.

Just lean over their shoulder, and close them out of the trade,

and then say, oh shit, I'm so sorry.

Don't worry, it's easy fixed.

Just get back in with your original stop and target.

They won't do it ever.

They will never, ever do that.

Because when they're not in the market, i.e., when they've had their position

closed out, they will look at it logically, and they will

say, what kind of a cunt would now risk 80 ticks to make 20?

Right, what kind of a cunt indeed?

Number two, momentum does not necessarily indicate a force.

This is not fucking physics.

If I had a penny, every time someone bottled a trade, because the market went

parabolic into the level, I swear I'd never need to trade anymore.

People shit themselves for no apparent reason, just because

it's a big green candle coming into their cell level.

I get it, it's a bit nerve-wracking.

It's a bit nerve-wracking when you're new, but as I've said so many times,

it's the drift that you need to shit yourself over.

If that market is just grinding up into your level, you want to be nervous.

But if the market's going absolutely vertical into your level, and you know it

is a good area to do business at, then you need to step in front of it.

The key there is if you know it's a good level.

I don't mean I as a fucking hundred-pip green candle to the upside go balls deep

short, but I mean if you've committed to a good level, don't

be scared because the market's coming into it violently.

Will you occasionally get steam while doing that?

Yes, but you've got to look at the long term.

And I'm telling you, I've probably lost more money in terms of opportunity cost

from shitting myself and pulling orders because

of market volatility than probably anything else.

In my career, and I'm not exaggerating at all when I say that.

So that's why I'm really laboring the point.

And again, I see students writing to me all the time

saying, oh shit, you know, I should never report that order.

Number three, this gets me down quite a lot.

Traders that get very excited with new found profitability.

They said I've been killing it for three months.

Actually, what's happened is that they're profitable in a niche.

So what I mean by that is they've been selling the Euro dollar with no stop.

Euro dollar's been in a fucking massive downtrend

and hemorrhaging every day for three months.

That's why they've been making money, but they've confused that with the fact

that they now think they're a profitable trader because

they're successfully trading a downward trending market.

To make it in this game, you need to be able

to trade in all different market conditions.

That's why I usually say to people, don't worry about how many trades you've done.

People say, I've done 50 trades, Tom, and I'm ahead.

Does that mean I'm a ledge? No, it doesn't.

Personally, if I was going to back you with my capital, I'd rather see 30 trades

over six months than 50 trades over three weeks.

Because it is about different conditions.

I'd like to know that you can hold your own in a trending market, in a sideways

market, in a low volatility market, in a high volatility market, in a market

with big outlier events, like Brexit, like the Euro Swiss floor going,

like a flash crash, something very, very big, a range where

we do 4 ATR in a day and that you're not fucking insolven.

There's nothing wrong with only being able to trade one type of market.

So you might be someone that's great in a trend and you do your arsonist sideways market.

It's better if you can trade all types of markets because the market transitions.

But if you can trade one type, that's fine if

and I mean if you can sit on your fucking hands.

Okay, it's no good if you can't.

If you're a trend trader, you need to be able to step up during the trend and then

be able to recognize this is not a trend, I don't have an edge, I'm not trading now,

I'm going to do my arsonist, most people can't.

Don't get me wrong, if you're a trend trader, you're going to give back some money.

As you realize, hold on a minute shit, we're not in a trending market anymore.

But if you can basically sit on your hands when you know the market is not conducive

to what you do, then this is very good for you.

You find your niche over time, but once you know your

niche, you want to make sure that you play it out.

Number four, and the final point.

You are gambling for a living, don't listen to anyone

that says you're not, you are gambling for a living.

I do get trolled, occasionally on Twitter, I got trolled relatively recently by

somebody that said, no sorry, sorry Dante, we're not gambling

for a living actually because there's no edge in gambling.

Yeah, there is an edge in gambling.

If you have an edge, then you have something that works over time,

but since the outcome of a trade of even a string of

trades is unknown, then I consider it to be gambling.

So I would say to people that are trying to get into this game, try to come from a

position of strength, try to stack the odds in your favor, make sure that you've

got time to commit to this game, make sure that you've got money,

make sure you're not fucking studying for something important in your life,

I had that rant on periscope the other day

about students, you know what I had that rant?

Because of that, that's why I had that rant.

I get irritated with things like this, university, it's the answer to nothing,

it's the answer to fucking nothing when you're selling courses to students,

that's for sure.

Don't get me wrong, okay, don't get me wrong.

I agree that having a degree is not the answer to everything.

I know people that have been to Oxford University, and they have got firsts that

are now working in a fucking coffee shop, earning

seven pounds an hour, but that's besides the point.

University is not just about a piece of paper, it's about a life experience,

learning time management, learning to work independently, surviving, moving out at

home, having an amazing social life, and getting a degree is not guaranteed to

help you, but it will never fucking hinder you, that is for sure.

I haven't heard anyone that has had a degree ever go, oh fucking hell,

I wish I never bothered getting this degree.

So if you're a student, please, please, please, I'll say this one final

time, don't write to me, and tell me that you want to get

into trading, you're going to do your ask with all likelihood.

And I say this, and it came to the forefront, because I got an email from

someone not long ago, that literally sounded like they were about to top

themselves, and they were saying that they had spunked their entire student loan.

They brought an extra 30 grand off their parents and lost all of that, they were so

debilitated and stressed over losing the money that they couldn't concentrate on

their lessons anymore, and their whole life was going down the shitter.

And I basically think that, you know, that's trading

for a lot of the time, it's an all-consuming focus.

If I've been trading whilst having my degree, I've completely done my ask.

I was trading whilst having a full-time job, and let me

tell you, I didn't do my work particularly effectively.

So, I just think that if you want to get into this game, then you want to come into

it when you're a little bit more stable, when you're not studying for something,

when you've got a little bit of money behind you,

when you've got some free time to be able to sit down.

What you're saying, Eric, about going into any business is gambling.

Well, I do believe it is in a way.

I mean, casinos are gambling, but you don't see many fucking

casinos go out of business, but they're definitely gambling.

You or I walk into a casino tonight and walk out with money, they've done their ask.

So, if you've got an edge, then you can take money at the table over time,

but I personally see it as a gamble, and I'm always surprised that some people

don't, but I think it's because it's taboo word.

People don't like to think their career is based on a gamble.

I think it is.

Anyway, ledges, that's my rant for the evening,

and next week we'll get onto some charts.

But, like I said at the beginning, really, these

are the things that will make you profitable.

I see these mistakes time and time again, which is why I flagged them all up.

And, ultimately, me looking at a chart of the euro dollar tonight, and saying,

hey guys, I'm going to buy it here, and I'm going to put my stock there and my target.

There doesn't really mean shit at the end of the day.

It might be a winner, it might be a fucking loser, who knows?

You wouldn't know unless you followed me for

six months, whether I've got an edge or not.

But it's the execution.

It's how you handle yourself that makes all the difference.

It's not whether you call one fucking trade that works.

So, I'm going to leave it there for tonight, and I'm sorry if I offended anybody.

Hopefully I haven't, you never know, probably get a barrage of emails now.

But yeah, thank you very much for coming, and next week we will go through some charts.

But cheers, ledges, we'll speak again soon.