In this special episode of Truth About FX, Walter talks about the London Conference, its presenters, and the topics they discussed during the event. Hugh shares his experience as well as a presenter and attendee. They dig into interesting issues and concepts such as trading psychology and the different perspective each presenter shared during the conference.
Download (Duration: 15:43 / 18.0 MB)
In This Episode:
00:44 – great energy
02:13 – Psychology
04:24 – ten speakers
05:25 – go-getter
07:55 – refine ideas
09:33 – technical to fundamental
11:59 – great tip
13:36 – chess champion
14:53 – two-headed
Tweetables:
Start focusing in on the Psychology [Click To Tweet].
If you want a dream, go and get it [Click To Tweet].
Learn to trust yourself [Click To Tweet].
Announcer: Sometimes, forex trading is a wild and wooly place to be. That’s why Hugh is here, to post your questions to Walter, the naked forex guy. Hugh’s got questions and Walter’s got the answers. Here at the Truth About FX Podcast.
Hugh: Hi, Walter. How is it going?
Walter: Great, Hugh. Just came back from the conference and it was great to meet you and all the other traders in the area.
Hugh: Yeah. Finally, for the first time we’ve actually met.
Walter: Yeah, that was good fun. It was actually really good fun. What were your thoughts? What do you think about the conference overall?
Hugh: I thought it was great. I thought that there was such a great energy in the room. There’s obviously a lot of good education but I think just the fact that you’ve got to hang out with traders and quite a few successful traders at that, I think that was the biggest benefit of being there.
Walter: Yeah. It was interesting, actually. I was reading the comments on the feedback. One person said, “It was really great to go to a conference where somebody wasn’t saying, ‘This was my last chance. I lost my house, my wife, my dog and I’ve got to make this work.’”
It was interesting. I haven’t thought of it that way but that was one of the things that came through loud and clear from the attendees and from the surveys that we did after. It’s how people were really impressed with the level of traders that were there and how encouraging they were which is interesting because to me, that said that there’s a lot of discouraging trader groups.
I get that. I’ve noticed that a lot of free forums out there, they’ve sort of devolved into this really nasty name-calling thing.
Hugh: Yeah.
Walter: In the end, it’s always the same like the guy comes in and he says, “Hey, this is a great system. Check it out.” And everyone says, “That’s cool. Let me try it.” “Wow, that’s amazing!” And then in the end, they’re almost like “Oh, you don’t make any money. You’re an idiot” and stuff like that.
Hugh: Exactly.
Walter: It was funny how they always do. Anyway, it was really cool to have a group of people who were looking out for each other and helping each other. It was interesting to me how Psychology came up so much and how a lot of these successful traders that were presenting and in the audience, all really put their finger on the Psychology aspect which I found interesting as well. I didn’t really anticipate that.
One trader that was there who was not a member of the Naked Forex Now Private Forum, he was saying that it was so interesting that all of the presenters… He said to me, “You can really tell that a lot of these presenters are your students, Walter, because so many of them highlight Psychology.”
I never really even looked at it that way but I see what he means. It’s that Psychology can be really important and I find it — in my view — when you get to a certain level as a trader, Psychology is really your focus.
I find it as a progression. You can tell where someone is at when they start focusing in on the Psychology. I can say, “Okay, that person, I can tell they’re more mature trader.” I know it’s a generalization and all that but to me that’s a pretty clear clue when they’re focusing in on Psychology.
They know what they’re doing trading-wise and now they’re really looking to make the next step.
Hugh: Yeah, for sure. That’s a great point and you can really tell the general level of the traders in the room just by that kind of conversation. Are they talking about Psychology or are they talking about entries and exits?
Walter: Yeah. It was interesting how as the weekend went on. It was harder and harder to get breakup the breaks. When we had the breaks for the snacks and things like that, it was harder and harder to get people back in the room because they’re all chatting out in the hall.
Hugh: Yeah, it was pretty cool.
Walter: It was pretty cool. I have to say overall, I was a bit shocked. Overall, I didn’t think it was going to be that good. I probably shouldn’t say that but I really didn’t think it was going to be that good. I really didn’t.
I thought this will be an interesting experiment because we didn’t have any brokers, sponsors. We didn’t have any gurus there who would try and sell anything. They were just traders and they’re just sharing what works for them. I thought it was pretty cool. It was good fun.
Hugh: Yeah, for sure. I used to do some of these conferences for other areas and the first one is always the toughest and it usually bums but this one is kind of the anomaly.
Walter: Wow, that’s cool. That’s cool to hear. So, I was thinking of going through some of the Speakers like going through the speakers here. We had 10 speakers, I was thinking of going through the speakers and just kind of highlighting what was interesting.
If you miss the conference, if you’re unable to make it to London, you can still get the recordings and we’ll link those recordings up in the show notes for this episode so you can get that.
They’re actually… You can get a discount right now so you can link, you can get those recordings right now. I think for the next two days, it’s basically on specials but you’ve got to click the show notes link in this episode.
If you missed it and you want to get the recordings, you can get all of these stuffs that we had at the conference there. So, Hugh, one interesting thing was the first speaker we had was Frank.
Frank was cool because I met Frank way, way back at an FXStreet Conference. I’ve basically… The only conference I ever went to, trading-wise was at FXStreet Conference and Frank was there.
He really progresses as a trader. He’s managing money for people. What I learned from Frank was how if you want to capture your dream, if you want that to happen, just go out and get it.
I mean, he’s a real go-getter. He’s one of those guys who doesn’t say, “Oh, I wish that I could find someone to give me money to trade” or whatever. He takes out people that are going to help him achieve his dreams and he helps them out too. He sees what he can do for them as well.
He had a really interesting presentation where he shared all of these high rollers that he didn’t get invited to in his trading journey. It was really interesting.
Hugh: Yeah. He was just so friendly and so open about everything. I thought that was great and I could see how he succeeds because he does just go and talk to anybody and just say, “Hey, what’s up?” He tries to make a friend and then just see how they can help each other. I thought that was great also.
Walter: Yeah, it’s definitely not a one-way street. He definitely tries to help people knowing that there’s people that are happy to help you out as well. It was sort of a reciprocal thing. He’s done really well since I last saw I think in 2012 or whatever it was. It was a long time ago but he’s really progressed and he’s doing quite well.
We also had probably one of the most interesting ones after Frank was the Goncalo talk. Goncalo from FXStreet presented this idea of an unusual way of looking at trading to say the least.
It was kind of one of those things where people are so used to having a stop loss and having an equity curve and a drawdown and coming out of it, falling back down into a value and back up to a peak.
He redefined everything from people and I thought that was fascinating. I think it was one of those things were you really either connect with it and you think, “Wow, that’s fascinating. I want to test that out and check it out.”
And Goncalo, by the way, had a very simple way of when people say, “How do we test it out?” And he had a very simple way that he shared with us at the event. Like how do you find out if this type of trading works for you?
What was interesting to me was that he basically backwards engineered all of these traders who had won trading contests. He backwards engineered their trades and he also talks to them and he find out that a lot of them had the same mentor.
A lot of them were using the exact same strategy and that’s what he shared at the event. I thought it was a really fascinating style of trading. It’s not for everyone but it was really an interesting way of trading.
Hugh: Yeah, for sure. Interestingly enough, I actually… Back in 2012, I think I actually developed something a little along those lines of what he’s doing. I talked to him about it a little bit and it helped refined my ideas.
It’s something that I started up also but it’s really an interesting thing. I’ve only known maybe one other trader who’s done something similar but then seeing Goncalo doing it right, “Okay, now there’s two people” so that gives you a little confidence too.
Walter: Yeah, exactly. It was really cool. Goncalo actually trades for FXStreet. He is their only forex specialist and he trades money for FXStreet for the company and he does quite well. It was really cool to see him share that with us. That was interesting.
Hugh: Yeah. And you could see his trades on the FXStreet website.
Walter: Yeah. He post them as a Francesc, who’s the Founder of FXStreet. He post it on his twitter account so you can see those, you can follow those. We’ll link that up to the show notes too for you.
Then, we had Enho. Now, Enho is interesting because he is a fundamental trader. He used to trade sort of a breakout strategy that he learned from me and he modified it. Made it his own, made it really sort of an aggressive 10 to 1 reward to risk ratio and now he trades fundamentals which I find fascinating because I just don’t get it but he shared how he does it and it was cool to see some of his trades. He shared some of his life story and how he’s changed as a person.
He’s achieved some of his goals he wanted to achieve outside of trading as well but it was interesting to me to see his trades and why he did what he did for a fundamental point of view. I thought that was interesting.
Hugh: Yeah. And just the fact that he flipped what most people would consider a 100 heat degrees from technical to fundamental trading. For me that was the most important part about his talk.
How he was able to make that shift because he knew himself well enough that he knew that fundamentals was better for him.
Walter: Yeah, exactly. He post some really cool videos on the Naked Forex Now Forum. He shares what works for him and how he sees thing. I think that was really cool, seeing his trades at the conference. He is a great trader. Great guy.
Denis came in and Denis shared with us sort of how he believes in himself and he’s learned to trust himself. For those who don’t know Denis, Denis builds up a reputation by simply posting his trades as some of those signal services where you can link your account up to a webpage through some software and then subscriber can come in and copy your trades basically.
There are many of them out there and Denis uses a few of them and that’s what got him noticed. What was interesting is he doesn’t trade all that often. In fact, a lot of traders who’ve given Denis money, I thought it was funny in his talk where he said a lot of people would say, “Hey, are you on a holiday? Why aren’t you trading?”
Hugh: Yeah, that was funny.
Walter: That was awesome because he just didn’t trade that often but he still makes money. I guess what people don’t understand is you can sit there and you can take 35 trades this week and you can just burn through that and end up breakeven or down a little bit or you can do like Denis and take 2 trades a month and end up 3 and a half percent of the month.
I don’t know. I know which one I would choose. I guess it’s an easy one but some people feel like you’ve got to be doing something if you’re a trader. You’ve got to be taking trades and he was really cool about sharing how he approaches the market.
What he looks for and how he built up his reputation simply by letting people see his trades. What’s happened is he’s caught the attention of investors through his signal’s account and that’s how he kind of build his little, so he trades money for multiple different funds and people basically because they’ve seen his results online.
I thought that was a great way to, for traders out there who were thinking, “Look, I know how to trade now, I’ve burnt through all my own capital. I’m trying to learn this. Now where am I going to get some money?”
Now, that’s a great tip. Go out there, find the Signals Service website like Denis has and I’ll link it up in the show notes here too for you. Do what he does and you’ll grab the attention. If you have a low drawdown and you’re consistent, you will grab the attention of people guaranteed.
Hugh: Yeah. That was a very eye-opening for me and it also helped that he shared every single one of this setup too.
Walter: Yeah, exactly. He was great. It was great for him to share exactly what he does. It’s not complicated guys so that was great. It was great to meet Denis. Denis was a student years and years ago and then he just kind of fell out of radar.
And then, a couple of years ago, he just sent me an email, “Hey, I’m the number one rated signals provider on this website.” I’m like, “What? That’s awesome”. I haven’t heard from him for years and now he’s managing all this money.
Caroline was after Denis and Caroline had a fascinating story. She applied for a hedge fund, she just barely miss the cut. She did really really well applying for that hedge fund. I think they were taking the top 2 or 3 traders and she’s number 4 or something like that.
She was awesome and what was interesting about her talk, I thought, a lot of people came away with was, how focusing in on something, gets you more of that thing. How focusing in on something, you can get what you what if you really on it.
She had a lot of mindset stuff there, some really great examples and a great video as well.
Hugh: Yeah. She shared the story about her son. How his goals to suppose, to become a chess champion so that’s really cool.
Walter: Yeah.
Hugh: What I also like with her was she gave us some insight into somebody who hedges money within a company. Not just for trading, but to just hedge their balance sheet, how that process works and I thought that was really cool.
Walter: Yeah, because she’s done that. That’s kind of how she got into trading. She was basically taking care of risk for a startup company and currency risk and that is how she got into trading….
So, in Part Two of the Podcast, you’re going to hear all about our Resident Bank Trader and how he forced his way into the job. You will hear about the Trading Psychology presentation put on by Alex which was absolute brilliant.
Alex is an excellent presenter and he shared some techniques with our audience. In fact, some that I am still using to this day so, that was great. You’ll hear from Reima and what Reima talked about.
Reima has made the transition from sort of amateur trading dabbler to professional trader and he trades his own money and he does it quite well. He doesn’t even have to spend a lot of time in front of the screen. You’ll hear about how he does that.
You’ll also hear from Adam, our Resident Hypnotherapist. He had a great two-headed presentations. One, we looked at exposing the inner workings of Darren’s trading which is quite fascinating for a lot of people because it’s a completely different to anything you’re going to hear.
And then also, we heard from Adam a really interesting psychological technique that a lot of people aren’t aware of and don’t know how to use. He actually gave us a demonstration.
So, you’ll hear all about that as well in the next episode. Finally, you’ll about what happened with Hugh. It was actually a great thing to see and well-deserved. I’ll just leave it at that but you’ll hear all about that in Part Two, exactly what happened with Hugh and how it was kind of shocking.
We’ll see you in the next episode of the Truth About FX Podcast.
SHOWNOTES
Goncalo Moreira: FXStreet Trader
Denis Switalki’s Signals Service Website: Beta-Trader
2017 LONDON CONFERENCE PRESENTERS
Frank Walbaum: FX Accounts Manager And Trader
Enho Kuo: Fundamental Forex Trader
Denis Switalski: Professional Fund Trader
Caroline Hui: From Accounting To FX
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | RSS