Bernd Skorupinski - #1 Ranked Prop Trader in the World | The Psychology of Winning Traders

I have a corporate background after my studies. I got a corporate job for like a couple of years and I realized the corporate world is not for me because I was a slave of my desk. The reason why I went into trading was not necessarily the money but more about the time freedom. He walked away from the safety of a predictable corporate career and stepped straight into one of the riskiest games in the world. Baron Skoropinski didn't gamble his future. He rebuilt it. When I started trading 13 years ago I put a lot of effort in my trading education. I would always tell people look for something that fits your lifestyle. Day trading is literally like a 9-5 job. So the question is hey can you fit another 9-5 job into your life? The answer is no. That's why swing trading midterm to longer term trades is way more sustainable. With discipline, precision and pure price action mastery he became a trader known for consistency, transparency, and real results. Today he leads online trading campus, teaching thousands to trade with structure instead of hope. I consider trading as the best side hustle in the world. Not in full-time job. People should have multiple income streams and they should keep their job as long as possible. The end game of trading is once you get detached from money. Trading is literally a process game. If you follow the process right every single time, the end result is money. It's no overnight success. It looks easy but it's definitely not easy. So, Baron you make your living trading the markets but your advice is spend less time looking at charts. So what are successful traders doing instead? Well usually successful traders are not necessarily day traders. That's more like I would say a social media phenomenon because on social media everyone is promoting day trading. I'm coming from I have corporate background. So right after my studies I got a corporate job for like a couple of years and then I realized the corporate world is not for me because I was a slave of my desk basically the 9-5 grind. I mean for me it was not a 9-5. For me it was basically 7 to midnight basically almost noticeably but it's time. So I wanted to have more time freedom, more time flexibility. So the reason why I went into trading was not necessarily the money but more about the time freedom. So I quote unquote develop the strategy that I would consider or call set and forget and get a life meaning you spend less time in front of the screen and you still make decent returns in the market. So when it comes to trading we classify it as traders more like as swing trading which is you spend time in trades for a couple of days or even weeks. Why did day trading even become so popular because what you say makes a lot of sense. If you're going to replace your full time 9-5 or whatever 7-11 as some people are working very hard if you replace it with the business or trading or the whole goal in life is freedom. That's what everybody wants. Everybody wants some version of freedom but then they end up making them creating a more complex job and a more time consuming job which doesn't make much sense to me at all because I do know some people that are day traders and it's even worse than entrepreneurs because they can't even go to like lunch without bringing their laptop with them. So where did this whole phenomenon of day trading and being quite literally a slave to your laptop and the markets down to the minute where does that come from. That's a very I think philosophical discussion because I'm also not sure but I think it's about the perception of making quick money and the appeal of hey I can make money a lot of money in seconds or even minutes and this appeals to a lot of younger audience who maybe don't necessarily want to work hard for their money but wants to have like the quick cash out almost like you know last week I was in Vegas for some podcasts it's almost like making the analogy like going to the casino or having the slot machine mindset you know quick money not working hard for their money maybe that's why it's so popular in the social media world especially for the younger audience especially in particular for the younger audience I would say. I'm actually more curious because you sort of you've built yourself as a successful life and business doing things I would say the right way. Did you go through periods of your life where you tried the day trading and the things that were sort of a little bit sold to you like a quicker return. No actually so I'm a full-time trader now since roughly 11 years and I'm originally you might hear that from accent I'm from Germany but I moved to 2009 already so since I live in Dubai since 16 years now and when I started trading and I started trading 13 years ago I was starting yes with a little bit of day trading as well because I had a little bit of time on my hands and I always tell people you can start with day trading if you have the time because it gives you immediate feedback you know you get immediate results and then you know basically because you can create the more basically I'm trying to simplify it now for the audience a little bit the quote unquote the more trades you take the more sample size you have and the more you can you have more sample size more results and then you can tweak on your trading strategy and obviously you have more sample size quicker with day trading because you have a higher frequency of trades versus with swing trading because you have less frequency you have less sample size you it takes longer to tweak your strategy in a general sense right so I went through a period because I had the time I needed I wanted to sample size I put a lot of effort in in my trading education back in the days so I was doing a lot of day trading as well and then I created a certain certain sample size to tweak my strategy but then I used that strategy that I developed kind of moved it into swing trading longer term trading and tweaked it there a little bit as well so it was like a process I would say like anything else in business as well like entrepreneurship but I always tell people don't look for a specific we could because trading we could classify and date let's there's even something else that goes even that is even far like scalping high frequency trading but we don't have to discuss that I would never recommend this to anyone right so let's say there's day trading and there's swing trading I would always tell people look for something that fits your lifestyle because you know people might be drawn towards day trading the quote unquote quick money but they have a full time job they have family they have kids they have hobbies they have social obligations they have life like we all have lives right so it's basically day trading is literally like a 9 to 5 job so the question is hey can you fit another 9 to 5 job into your life most probably for the majority of people the answer is no so don't even go that round right so and don't get disappointed so that's why swing trading or like the midterm to longer term trades is way more sustainable for for for the mass audience how did you so even walking through like sort of your life and you as an example so for somebody who's listening to this they're saying oh I want to quit my job and be a trader how do you actually go through that process like what did life look like set real expectations first of all I would never ever recommend quit your job and become a trader never ever I would say have a used trading is the I consider trading as the best side hustle in the world right and I my I emphasize on in side hustle right and not in full time job so people should have especially in the beginning multiple income streams and they should keep their job as long as possible and use trading as a side income eventually obviously doesn't work from the beginning you cannot make money from the beginning right we are we are we are real here in that podcast right you cannot make there's a there's a learning curve in trading like with any other business in the world because trading is a profession people have to like once they get into trading they have to shift their mindset from hey I'm starting a profession a reprofessional business like I want to become a pilot I want to become a lawyer I want to become an engineer I want to become a doctor whatever it is it's trading is a profession like any other profession so they have to go with that mindset into that venture because hey it takes some time to learn a profession and there's some like in life it's like ups and downs right it takes like it's not a steady learning curve it takes it's ups and downs so they have to approach it with that kind of mindset and well and then it's basically just takes time like anything else in life right and they have to have these realistic expectations as well maybe actually be helpful before we speak about too much but maybe it's good to actually define some like different things when it comes to trading so when somebody's first getting into the world of trading what are the different options like what are the different things they can actually think about because I guess where you start which is safest is just like the Warren Buffett version of investing where you just at least you you you you you can start with like a Vanguard ETF or some sort of like fund and then the next level would be like picking stocks and then the next level would be I guess then is the next level like swing trading where there's actually some paying attention to the market as opposed to just setting and forgetting it for years like what are the levels to this game yeah what is the levels in general I would always say the the foundation is always learn about trading in general about investing or trading because well I would never ever recommend for people to take some money and put it into any kind of market or financial investment when it comes to the markets without having any real skill or knowledge and what I mean is like specialized skill and specialized knowledge about the markets so there's always you always need a foundation without foundation the likelihood that you might lose all your money because you don't know what you don't know right and you're not skilled it's very very high so regardless of where you start whether you want to just pick some stocks or buy an ETF or really want to be more active in the market you need to skill and you need to specialize knowledge otherwise it's very likely to backfire well I think we even we even saw this last week even saw this last week yes it's a lot of crypto people getting wiped out because of their leverage on and and that's the problem right and that's why trading and I say it's funny because I said that yesterday in the podcast as well that's why trading has such a bad rep because people think trading is super risky because they hear these horror stories last Friday the market was super volatile especially in crypto and people because they're in crypto leverage they lose all their money and stuff but you know what because I don't and it's the problem the market is so accept the market is accessible for everyone and since the market is accessible for everyone and it takes you 60 minutes to you know to open up a brokerage account you use your debit visa card to deposit some money and then you place a trades you don't know shit yeah I know you don't know shit but you consider yourself a trader because you have placed a trade right but is this really like is this really the definition of a trader because right you have definition of engineers definition of lawyers definition of doctors definition of whatever of any profession but when it comes to trading the problem is that in trading there's no real accreditation system there's no real certification system everybody can go out and sound smart about trading and talk about trading trading and people are less smart and and think this person sounds really like articulate so let's follow this guy and he could be full of shit and that's the problem when it comes to the market because when you do it professionally trading I would say it's less risky than any other profession in the world why because if you do it professionally you can always determine your risk you can always determine what you want to risk per trade if I say now on this particular trade regardless by the way whether it's a leveraged market non leveraged market this doesn't make any this doesn't make any difference in on any trade that I take leveraged or non leveraged I as a trader professional trader determine how much money I want to risk per trade whether it's like five bucks five hundred bucks fifty million bucks anything in between that's the maximum amount I can lose I determined that amount for every single trade and a professional trader does that and if you don't do that you're not a professional as simple as it gets well no so when I was sort of researching like who you are as a person and going down the rabbit hole I didn't realize how bad this industry was like I mentioned before I kind of see some people because I see them on Instagram and I talk about trading and whatnot but it's not like my main thing so I don't know it super well I know investing because I invest myself I don't teach it I just pay attention and I've all I actually love what you said how if you are going to be like successful as an investor you have to learn one thing better than anything else so whether or not it's like real estate it could be crypto could be stocks could if you know one thing better than anything else there's a better chance you're going to be successful at that thing so I love that you said that but I didn't realize how bad trading was so I didn't realize that this industry is bad notorious for fake screenshots like unverifiable claims people that are hiding their results and then I understood how you operate and I don't even know what this really means but this 120 documented FTMO leaderboard entries and all these other sort of signals and proof points that you do what you say you do so maybe give people who aren't aware of what the trading world is like what some of the reality is is unfortunate as it is so they're like sort of like they have a little bit more caution when they follow people and then also speak about how you operate so that they can understand like what a legitimate professional trader does and what they should look for if even if they don't follow you what just to make them aware yeah well we could go down that rabbit hole it's like you don't even want to know how shady that business is but you kind of awesome you stated it already in a way that there's a lot of you know people fake screenshots they fake trading statements because there is as I said there's no real accreditation system behind like there's no there is in general no third party that verifies you as a trader like as an kind of overarching authority in a way that hey he is he can classify himself as a trader and then that's why he can teach other people or that's why he can make comments about the markets or give like trade ideas or a financial advice doesn't necessarily exist in the trading world and that's why I would say bad people trying to take advantage of that so but I would like to speak more about how I operate and when that I also realized that there is a lack of transparency when it comes to trading and trading education and you know who is quote unquote allowed to speak about trading and not so I venture into prop trading beginning of 2022 I'm sorry mid of 2022 explain what that is exactly I want to that so probably of course I explained that because people on this channel obviously might not know what prop trading is prop trading stands for proprietary trading so these are proprietary trading firms who can fund you as a trader with capital meaning the biggest obstacle that people usually have when it comes to trading space so it's lack of capital right because if even if I have even if I have ten thousand dollar in my trading account and for trader you know what to make one to five percent a month is like realistic reasonable like one to five percent so if I make one percent on a ten thousand dollar account per month it's like a hundred bucks it's not necessarily life changing it's not a lot that's not a lot so you need a lot of capital to make decent return because realist we we have to talk about realistic returns is to one to five percent so now because of in recent days we have AI we have machine learning we have technology being way more advanced than back in the days there's something called proprietary trading firms that can fund you as a trader and they fund you two hundred thousand dollars three hundred thousand dollars four hundred thousand dollars can you can scale with multiple prop firms they can fund you up to one million dollars and you can trade with their money so they just obviously usually how it works they don't just you know here they give you the money here take it and trade no it's like almost like a driver's license that you have to pass some tests beforehand it's like you trade the markets and if you can like if you can achieve certain percentage gains in like a certain period of time then you're qualified to become a funded trader to get the get the funds so you have to pass these tests they call it evaluations and if you pass these trading evaluations you can get funded x amount of dollars now if you get funded four hundred thousand dollars for instance now one percent a month makes a big difference much more than your ten thousand yes it's not a four thousand dollar and four thousand dollar one and by the way one percent a month is more than realistic if you're like a scale trader only one percent right and then if you make like four thousand five thousand six thousand dollars a month with a funded account well that's a big makes a big difference for the general person right but does that not does some of that money not go have to go back to the and that's it let me yeah exactly I want to do perfect perfect that you ask because you know now people might think whoa I'm trading so much money what if I lose money now obviously you cannot lose everything but whatever you lose you don't have to cover it you don't have to pay for it because the firms the firm is covering it all right so you cannot lose any of your own capital and if you gain money if you make like if you make like let's assume you make one percent which is on a four hundred thousand dollar account is four thousand dollar usually the profit split is between 80 20 80 20 so 80 percent goes to the trader and 20 percent goes to the firm usually right so then it's basically about 20 percent from of four thousand dollars what is it is eight hundred dollars so three thousand two hundred goes into my pocket and eight hundred goes into the firm's pocket I understand so when it comes to prop trading there's literally no downside so usually I would say hey what sounds good to be true is to good to be true but but when it comes to and prop trading is really a game changer however as I said well when it comes to prop trading you still need one thing and this is skill yes and this is skill otherwise it's like it doesn't help you in any way shape or no because no firm would ever lend the money to somebody who's unskilled because of the huge liability no because you have to make the test usually the test yes exactly you have to test and and that test you can repeat as many times as you want but well you will never pass the test and you will never get to a repay out if you're not a skilled trader so you still need to learn the skill how to trade but when it comes to the obstacle of hey I don't have money that obstacle doesn't exist nowadays anymore because you have the prop firms who can fund you if you're skilled trader so you're as a trader nowadays your primary goal is to look to become skilled as a trader and then you can utilize prop firms to kind of leverage capital and scale your capital and go from there which is amazing that's why you know I also want to say I'm not affiliated to any prop firms whatsoever I was never affiliated to anything else I just I'm having my own business and stuff but I I feel like I'm a prop trading ambassador because it also changed my life because when I started I didn't know anything about prop trading even I was like in 2022 when people first showed me hey look look at look at these websites these are prop firms I was like I'm not sure this sounds so sketchy how can this be real well I think the way that I think about it is if you're for example just to draw a parallel if you're going to real estate there's investors that have money but they're not looking for real estate deals all day they have people who invest in real estate for them so if you're good at investing in turning a profit and generating a return on real estate they have capital they give you I assume it's a very similar mentality with these prop firms they're looking for skilled people that can get some sort of return exactly and this is where this is where the money there's lots of money in this world but yeah lots of but I think that that's where I mean if you have the skill set then you can then you can take somebody's money you be a steward of that person's money and you generate a return for them like that exactly so then I went into prop trading 2022 and back in the days I had already you know a lot of years of experience so for me to pass these tests was pretty easy you know this chain and then I got funded I got funded first two hundred thousand dollars and then I got funded four hundred thousand dollars at some point in time I was funded for point two million dollars even with all these prop firms together scaling but you know talking about your initial question the FTMO is FTMO's the biggest prop firm in the world then you know I was then once I was funded I received payout monthly payout after payout and you know they have these leaderboards where the best traders show up with the best returns on a week daily weekly monthly base so after like one and a half years then in the beginning of 2024 I was awarded for the SD all-time record holder for FTMO with 120 leaderboard appearances and in total until beginning of 2025 275 thousand dollars of payout based on that four hundred thousand dollar account that's amazing and what what makes you better what what makes you what makes you able to like is it the mindset is it the strategy I mean obviously the skill is the obvious answer it's it's the obvious answer and the simple answer there are nuances to everything obviously but I would say it's just my skill that I've developed over the years and usually in this business there are a lot of young people and they just don't have they can't just don't have the experience and the skill that I have just yet and I went and that's why I just said I went into prop trading in 2022 and I had already close to I don't know seven eight years of full-time trading experience so for me it was like you know like okay I'm I was already formula one driver metaphorically speaking so I was just sitting into another car and driving it you know safely whereas when somebody's new to that or has like little experience getting into formula one car they're going to crash the car continuously you know do you think that there is if you were going to boil down your experience outside of just putting in the reps is there something that a successful trader the way they think or the way they operate yes you know I I always like to say the end game of trading is once you get detached from money you get detached from the money because trading is literally a process game you follow process a certain process that is repeat that is objective and that is repeatable and that process you follow for each and every trade it's a repeatable process it's it's quite boring to be honest it's boy it has to it has to be boring and you know the result is the money so if you follow the process right every single time the end result of following the process correctly is money so money can never be in front of the entire equation money is always at the end of the equation you know the process comes first so I I felt like once I slowly got in the beginning and I get it we are all also in for the money it's part of the game trading is to make money but you know once you in the beginning when you're very money centered very money focused you're chasing the money and then you're making also bad decision usually because you're acting emotionally based on fear or creed or whatever but once you establish like really a trading strategy it's it's called a trading strategy which is then basically following that process that process is your trading strategy that you have written down in your trading slash business plan because you're running a business in this case so you have to have and then again I'm asking people hey you're a trader so do you have a trading plan meaning a slash business plan but all the best ones were all the best ones would have exactly because this is where you write down needy greedy your trading plan your rules basically do follow your process when so when you work with them like these prop firms before you even get so say for somebody who's starting out with trading so you were you focus on swing trading you obviously have your trading strategy this trading strategy yields x percent per month in returns this is and you've passed all the tests now you have the prop money and somebody's just getting started they want to get to where you are which is obviously 11 12 13 years of experience but they want to do they want to get to where you are in the quickest way possible so do you recommend a certain kind of asset that you invest in do you recommend swing trading as sort of like the least stressful form of trading like what are sort of like the the main things that they should focus on out of the gate so that they don't maybe waste as much time getting to where you got yeah that's a different that's usually a difficult question because these days it's you know you have to imagine when I started off like 13 years ago the world looked different especially when it comes to the online social media trading space I call it there was much less noise these days it's so hard right I mean if you just if you just type into Google learning how to trade or how to learn you know how to trade the amount of information you get it's like information overload so it's really difficult for people to I I don't want to get started these days I'm glad that I'm like already that but that's why there's no real answer to that what I what I so what I tell people is don't focus like you don't focus on one asset like I consider myself a multi asset trader trading forex futures and stocks so everything so there's something like called the power of correlated markets right multi as you have multi asset correlations stocks impact equity indices equity indices impact crypto and you have like currencies the dollar impacting all the other currency like it's like it's all kind of correlated in a way you see you see these patterns across all these different assets yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah it's very predictable on a longer term horizon so that's why I I would not focus necessarily on specific asset classes but on more like learning the skill meaning the strategy and the strategy should be applicable on all asset classes this should not be a strategy that because these days you see on social media hey the strategy is only applicable on one single market which is then usually for me it's already red flag because if you have a strategy that strategy should work on just any chart on any market that you look at so you can objectively analyze the market you could you should even like okay I don't even know I just see the chart I don't even know what market that is could be could be Bitcoin could be the Dow Jones could be euro but you can objectively analyze the market and anticipate with a very high probability what is about to happen next in in the in the near future without even knowing what it is exactly without even knowing that it is and that should be your strategy should be capable of doing exactly that so make sure you learn the right strategy and everything else is then just coming on top right but the foundation it's like a house of cards right your foundation is basically your strategy you you building your skill and that should be like correct everything else is if you bid on a faulty strategy and a bit on a faulty you know based and it just needs to fall apart is there any other benefit outside of capital so unlimited truly unlimited upside if you know what you're doing and you have the skill set there's limited downside because the firm covers the downside if there's a lot of tests understood is there benefit outside of capital that working because again like I would actually ask like is there a certain point when if you do make enough money does it actually make sense for you to keep borrowing from a prop firm for capital or does it make sense for you to just like go it on your own I know I mean you can do both in parallel as well right then you scale even more it's all about scaling capital at the end of the day but you know for me as because I consider myself also an educator online educator I'm I'm in the social media space educating people for me it was actually when I went into prop trading it was more about it was not about the money it was more about hey there you get like third party verified results so you get literally and if you go on my social media you see these payout certificates in this case FT out certificates where you have a QR code on it you can scan it on the phone and then you get let on another website from FTMO and see if this is real if it's real so then it's third party verified so for me it was always like as an educator as we established in the beginning there's no real certification accreditation system overarching you know system that can verify that your trader or not you need to if you're like an ethical person you need to find ways to verify yourself so I saw this kind of wow cool I get these payout certificates every other month and they have like these QR codes their third party verified by this company so this verifies me as a real trader because I can literally I'm like quote unquote the needle in the haystick because I can have these certifications that others don't so for me it's like okay this is like my proof my way to show transparent results in a way to have like okay look I have that hardly anybody has that as well so you know it sets you apart it sets me apart really how bad the industry is it's so few people are the legitimate it's even worse but I don't want to scare the people here because obviously there's also no but you're giving people ways to verify yeah yeah you're giving exactly and that's so that's so good so don't just trust any kind of hey because what people do they take them mobile they show it into the camera look how much money I made this is like you know the young audience on social media look how much money I made today I bought I buy this new car now and so don't believe in this kind of nonsense right get find traders who have some verified documents results maybe from prop firms author party companies whatever it is but find something that is legit and don't fall which was like some simple screenshots quick question what's your go to when you got 10 minutes before a meeting or a workout for me it just used to be whatever I could grab which usually meant skipping meals entirely or just grabbing something that left me crashing an hour later because it was just full of garbage that's why I'm partnering with fuel this black edition ready to drink is a complete meal so it has 35 grams of protein six grams of fiber 35 essential vitamins and minerals it is no sugar added gluten-free under five bucks I always keep a few of these in my fridge and honestly it's solved the whole back-to-back meetings go go go non-stop no time to eat problem super well and this one's new for me it's fuels daily greens I had the blueberry this morning honestly first impression it was way better than I expected it's developed by registered nutritionist and dieticians there are 42 vitamins minerals and superfoods only 25 calories four grams of fiber and just one gram of sugar I throw one back first thing before my morning calls every single morning look if you're running a business time is the most valuable asset fuel makes healthy eating simple and they also just launch the target source nationwide you can get it everywhere try both products today with 15% off your purchase for new customers with my exclusive code scott at fuel.com slash scott try both products today with 15% off your purchase for new customers with my exclusive code scott at cott at fuel.com slash scott use my code fill out the post checkout survey to help support the show that is fuel.com slash scott they really make healthy living case amazing even if you're on the go healthy eating healthy lifestyle doesn't have to taste bad it doesn't have to suck net sweet is a success story partner now what is a future hold for business if you ask nine experts you'll get 10 answers bull market bear market rates are up rates are down at the end of the day it just be easier somebody invented a crystal ball but until then over 43,000 businesses a future proof themselves with net sweet by Oracle in number one AI cloud ERP that brings accounting financial management inventory and HR into one unified platform here's what I love about it instead of juggling multiple systems you get one source of truth real time insights and forecasting that actually let you peer into the future with actionable data when you're closing your books in days instead of weeks you're spending less time looking backwards and more time focusing on what's next whether your company's earning millions or hundreds of millions net sweet helps you tackle immediate challenges while seizing your biggest opportunities if I needed this product in my business this is what I'd use it's a game changer for business visibility and control if you want to see how AI can transform your financial operations download the cfo's guide to AI and machine learning for free that's net sweet dot com slash scott clary that's net sweet dot com slash scott clary net sweet dot com slash scott clary swing trading so explain what this is like what's the time horizon that you play with so I'm trying to do this as to explain as simple as possible we already established their trading is being categorized in scalping which I would never recommend high frequency trading you have day trading where you execute on also quote unquote smaller time frames where you look at five minute charts 10 minute charts 50 minute charts where you execute in a minute in that minute and you know trades last maybe for maximum 60 minutes maybe between five minutes to 60 minutes a very short period so very short time horizon like within the day you you literally close your trades on the same day right and then you have swing trading where I for myself but I'm now a professional trader I analyze the markets during the weekend the markets are closed and then I make my setups my trade my trade watch list so to speak the markets that I'm interested to trade and then when the week starts whether it's Monday Tuesday I can place these trades in advance so the market is not the market is basically so when I want to let's assume like I'm trading equity and you see so let's assume I'm trading stocks apple so I'm highlighting in area where it's like oh if price comes down here I want to buy apple but only if price comes down here I want to buy at a quote unquote discounted price for me right if price never comes down here I never going to buy apple but if price comes down here to that certain area where you find hey this is a discounted price so to speak I want to buy apple right so I can set these trades in advance right that's why I call it set and forget and get a life so you set these levels in advance these trades in advance and then you see if the market's gonna play out or not and if it doesn't and it doesn't move in that direction then you don't lose anything I don't lose anything and even if I lose something because you have as a professional trader every trade consists three elements you have an entry point where you enter the market a stop loss which is your safety net and this is when I say trading is a is trading is always calculated risk is less risky than any other business because the difference between so the gap between entry and stop loss this is your risk so and you define that risk you define how much risk you're gonna take am I gonna take a thousand dollar risk on this trade am I gonna take five thousand dollar risk on this trade am I take 50 bucks risk on this trade right any number you define so if it hits your stop loss if you were proven wrong because trading is about also being wrong right um then it hits your stop loss but you predetermined the amount you're gonna lose then you move on and you move to the next trade and the third element of a trade is your target so if it goes into a discounted price if you buy it and you were right it goes into your target you make X amount of profit right we call this again we could go deep into this rabbit hole risk to reward proposition you always try to make for every dollar you risk you try to make two bucks so you have a one to two risk to reward proposition in trading and if you do this this is a weekly where you look at the markets how many how many bets are you making so how many ideas do you have yeah so yeah exactly and this is depends on the market and then as again you on the on the new place your trades um and then you really throughout the week you basically need again as a professional if you already skilled yeah right yeah we talk about me as a skilled trader and you know what you're looking for exactly so it takes me it takes me then you know during the day 15 to 30 minutes maximum I don't even see an hour because it never takes me an hour on a daily basis to kind of follow up with my trades look at the market what's happening and that's it right very it's not a lot of time and that's why it's exactly so with this kind of trading approach as a professional right obviously again if you're new to it you need much more screen time you need to learn right nobody can take away the screen time we talk about me as a professional it takes literally no time at all during the week to do like sit in front of the screen and really actively trade it's basically just following up right and this is what I also firmly believe in because this gives you so much time freedom and flexibility I yeah that's amazing and and sometimes people criticize they say yeah but you barely have any trades but when you say like a day trader who trades maybe takes five to ten trades a day versus me who takes one or two trades and then people have that preconceived notion about higher frequency of trades equals more money right more trades makes more money that's what people might think but it's actually the opposite more trades usually because you take lower quality of trades you make more human mistakes you actually usually what I've seen based on my experience more trades results in losing more money actually in the opposite because also here when it comes to trading the only variable that people also usually don't understand the only variable that is important is scaling capital that's why also when it comes to trading trading is one of the only business in the in the world where you if you want to make more money you don't have to invest more of your own time because the only variable is scaling capital you have to imagine the strategy the foundation the way how I execute is always the same the only thing that changes is my capital so it's leverage it's the leverage exactly right so that's why it's trading is that's why I consider trading the best side hustle in the world because it never requires more time to make more money it only requires what more capital and you can get more capital through propped firms these days people people seem to they just rush they rush but this the mentality these days they just rush because there's so many different shiny objects that people on social media dangle in front of them and I think they just get overwhelmed and they just try they try everything they lose money it's not for me yeah and they blame everything but themselves that's a problem yes there's so many that's a big problem it's a huge problem there's so many words associated with trading so there's futures there's using leverage like not financial leverage but they're using like leverage on the money that you have there's options there like simplify it what are all these different things there's futures like what are all these different things that people are trading what should is this stuff that's just more confusing than anything like there's something to just focus on to start because all these different like asset classes but then there's different ways to look at every single asset class and I think again for the average person it gets very overwhelming yeah it's very overwhelming I mean I when I started trading I started trading stocks first for one stocks are easy it makes sense so yeah so very easy very easy so right and then I was introduced to futures and when I was introduced to futures all of a sudden I was so you can trade these markets right you can trade leveraged markets now I was then realizing wow why did I ever trade at stocks because this is so much more efficient to trade any less capital and I can make the same amount of gains and again we talk about calculated risk so the risk doesn't make any difference whether I trade non-laveraged market or leveraged market you as a trader should always you should always in advance how much money you risk on a particular trade I hope we established this by now for the audience so really leverage is not a deal breaker at all leverage is actually helpful because leverage can help you you know trade with less money and make the same same returns so leverage should be your friend not your enemy if you if you do it right so then I was introduced to futures and then in the futures market you can trade all these markets like equity indices right Dow Jones NASDAQ S&P Russell you can trade commodities precious metals gold server and so on and so forth and you can trade agricultural products corn soybeans weed like it's it's it's crazy and you can trade currencies as well the euro dollar index the Mexican pays or whatever you can trade literally all the markets in the world with futures so then I was and I was like okay why did I ever trade at stocks if I can trade futures right so then I was trading with my whole life futures so I consider myself actually a futures trader but then I because of prop trading because prop trading is very popular in the fx space in the Forex space Forex in general has a bad also bad rep because it's unregulated and usually a lot of scams happened in the Forex market but the problem is that it's not the market it's it's not the markets fault it's the people's fault all the time so don't blame don't blame fx fx it's not the the black sheep here it's just a market it's just a it's just a asset class exactly like nobody says stocks are scam right well they they might be even what I got more scam because they can be you know manipulated by a single individual because they're the volume is not so high then as opposed to like a currency currency exactly not a single person can manipulate it but we have seen that stocks can be manipulated by single people so powerful people so don't blame the market as scammy blame the people behind who like offering certain products so it's just another asset class so and and then obviously I went into because fx by the way fx is not necessarily only Forex you can also trade equity indices in the fx base you can trade even stocks in the fx base you can even trade you can trade all the markets that are inside the stock market inside the futures market in the fx base fx stands just it's just the umbrella for then you have derivative market and and and can prop trading be applied to actually also help me understand the thing what's it between leverage and prop trading because there is a difference well no no because prop trading is um so usually prop trading you have you have futures prop trading you have fx prop trading trading can apply to anything prop trading can apply to anything even to there's even like prop trading firms that offer just it's just for stocks trading right so prop trading is just the umbrella and then you just put the asset below and then you trade you do like futures prop trading fx prop trading stocks prop trading but the concept is usually similar or the same and usually all these are leveraged markets tennis all leveraged markets so when when there's news headlines like people in crypto get wiped out because they're over leveraged what did they do wrong they bet their house on it so they said they said I want leverage I want because I just I've only really learned about this in the past week and it's like I want five x 10 x 20 x 100 x leverage so I've learned that you have your you have your capital and then you leverage your capital but if it if so it can go unlimited upside but if it goes down too much or so it's very simple like if in the fx base you have firms that let's you have a one to 100 leverage right meaning you have a thousand dollars you buy like they call it one lot or one contract depending on what asset class you're trading and then you're controlling a hundred thousand dollars of capital with like a thousand dollars of your own money right so you used that one thousand dollars of your own money as a deposit and you can control a hundred thousand dollars of capital now and people play this game imagine you have a fifty thousand dollar account and then you have 100 x 100 x leverage like imagine you can how much you can control and then people just risk too much money so they risk too much of their own money exactly so then it's very simple exactly but then it's very easy because then they don't have proper risk management in place they don't have these stop losses in place they risk way too much money then they have in their own account as a deposit on a simple trade because they hope in their mind hey I bet all that money it just has to go a little bit into my direction and I make like two three four eggs on a single trade in like in a quick period of time it's uneducated greed wrong mind it's everything because leverage is then different than prop trading because prop trading you can't lose your principle I'm assuming if it goes down to a certain point but like well you can lose then you will lose the account you will lose you will lose the account right if you if you if you so so now if you use leverage with your own capital and you use leverage unresponsibly you basically can wipe out your account in seconds minutes days and it's very likely that eventually right we call it the beginner's luck phenomenon it's like you're lucky one you're lucky twice you're lucky three times but eventually it would bite you in the butt and you will you know lose everything like what happened with crypto exactly and prop trading you use also the same principle leverage but you don't use your own capital so the only thing that can happen is you well you're gonna lose your your account that you paid the test for right you don't lose anything from your own hard earned capital when you on the weekend you're looking at what you're gonna do for the week what are you looking at that retail trade like retail investors maybe they miss like are you looking at what Trump's saying are you looking at because this is what seems to move markets now it's just the chaos but you seem to find a way to and that's again it's a very preconceived thought and it's a myth as well by the way like because if I let's assume because we established or I said I tried to establish that we're following a process and the process has to be repeatable and objective now if I look what Trump said is that repeatable is that objective not at all not at all right it's the exact opposite of what I'm trying to convey what I'm trying to do with my what I'm doing with my strategy so I try and I do this quite well I really I don't know anything about what's ahead I'm really like shutting down my doors my ears I'm not listening to any outside noise I couldn't care less I only try and I'm only what I'm doing is what what is in front of my screen analyze what I can objectively analyze on that particular market and again this is I don't want to go too deep into this rabbit hole because again this might be overwhelming the people especially for the people who have maybe never seen a chart or never really analyze something but I like to combine something that is called I call it a two step mechanical process I look at fundamental uncertain fundamentals to create a market bias to be like whether I'm biased bullish or bearish and once I'm like bias in a market fundamentally I use technical so a chart itself to time my market to place my entry stop loss and my target very smart and this is so this is like listen again I'm probably one of these people that just invest casually but I still understand because I you know sometimes I live on Twitter and I see what people are talking about and I still understand that people like look at how charts are trending and they try and sort of map out where it's going to go into the future so there's validity to this and this is what you're looking at as opposed to reading news or listening to what Trump saying or wondering what's happening in Ukraine like you are not paying attention to that I'm not paying attention at all to that not at all I don't even sometimes know what's going on I don't want to even know because it could like even subconsciously maybe it probably could your human in human exactly influence you know my decision making so I'm trying to really I'm never watching news don't look at headlines I'm trying to at least and just do you know my thing because it's proven to work right and I'm trying to convey this message because people sometimes say yeah the market is moving now because he said that he tweeted that and this because this and that is happening no the market is moving for way other reasons because not somebody tweeted because there's other factors why a market is moving and not because a random guy okay not random but because a guy is tweeting something this is nonsense when when you look at the biggest misconception you mentioned this is one of them but other big misconceptions that people have about trading they're very basic misconceptions like you need to be you need to be the smartest guy in the room to make it and trading I might I might sound too complicated for a lot of people who are watching as well but I always say I'm not the smartest guy in the room never ever like I was less than average in school and university and I barely made it that's all so I'm not the smartest guy in the room trading is a skill then can be in theory learned by everybody if you do it the right way so it's a skill then also when it comes to trading you don't need like five three what you see in movies and on social media that people have like these walls full of screen and wow it's like overwhelming like once singing laptop is modern enough you can and you know you don't need any kind of advanced software everything these days is browser based so when it comes to people are sometimes afraid wow because of technology they might be not too advanced they're older generation that's why they're like maybe hesitant to get started you do see some pretty ridiculous things on on YouTube and Instagram with like the the the five different screens even I have that but you know I I'm even I have that you know in my maybe I've seen it in my YouTube videos in the background but it's not it's really just for I love tech and it's just for show of purpose you know on it makes the video look good it makes it makes the video look good but I don't need it to be a better trade I off I like I'm that's real that's real I'm saying that I can say that so that's one and then you know sometimes people don't I know also if you're really completely new to the markets that the when it comes to professional trading that trading is also great because it's recession proof because you can make money on both sides upside and downside right you can make money on buying something but you can make money on shorting something which is basically a reverse trade so just because it's very simple terms so it's recession proof so it's great yet you don't have to care about how the economy is going to do and like it's doing because you can make money on both this is a very useful skill then it's a very useful skill exactly that you where you can survive during times of recessions or even depressions who knocks right so if you look at right now you trade forex futures stocks you still trade all is there anything else that you know that's basically these are also the asset classes right I mean yes they are not options not an asset class it's just a derivative like exactly so and crypto can be these days also considered as an asset class I'm not actively trading crypto why not and I'm old school I never really needed crypto to make money and I just stick to my guns so I feel like when it comes to crypto and I might gain a little bit of hate when I say that but I that crypto especially you know there's the entry barrier is even lower and especially with these altcoins and stuff like whatever they are that's because even if you apply these fundamental principles to it bad actors can influence something more than so you're trying to eliminate all the variables I'm trying to eliminate exactly and attract a lot of people who with the let's with the wrong mindset who just wants to make quick quick money who buys who buy like one shit coin and hope for like the 100x that solves all their problems that accumulated throughout their lives it attracts a lot of these people so if you want to trade Bitcoin and Ethereum like professionally that's perfect but everything else I find a little bit yeah because then you can't then you can't apply the same pattern you can't exactly so you cannot apply the same patterns that I'm using exactly so when you think about going into 2024 2025 and 2026 like what is market outlook for some of the things that you do focus on so forks futures and stocks wow so this is also like a topic we could fill a whole podcast with to be honest and what I'm doing is always and people find that on my youtube channel I have my youtube channel now since roughly 205 years it's going very well and 150 000 subscribers doing really well and I'm sharing a lot of free value there and in the beginning of the year and like usually mid year or if there's some important events or anything happening in the market I do some market outlooks in the beginning of the year I always do like some stock market outlooks like for the equity indices for the Dow Jones for the whole like for the whole US stock market basically and I have to say these and people can watch that these are these are online on my youtube channel fully transparent these outlooks are pretty accurate that I make for always the years ahead for the year ahead and so because it's most most most likely the viewers are US based your viewers right so they are maybe interested about kind of a stock market outlook right of course everybody is for now it's quite interesting because there's something called and let me elaborate a little bit on that yeah for sure there's something called president election cycle seasonality these are market cycles so the US president is being elected every four years so this market cycle every year is a separate market cycle so you have Election Year cycle you have after the election year cycle you have to post Election Year cycle we are right now in the post election year cycle then you have the mid term cycle and then you have the pre-election cycle where the whole thing starts again and then you have again the elect and the whole four year market cycle starts again. And the stock market behaves quite interestingly. For whatever reason, we don't know the reason, but it does statistically proven behaves very accurately based on these four cycles. And you can prove this because the Dow Jones exists since 130 years. And you look at these single year cycles and you accumulate them and you get like a very nice thing. It's called seasonality. That's why it's called election cycle seasonality. You get like a pretty throughout the year, throughout the quarters of these cycles. You get a very accurate trend. How the market is behaving. It's super interesting. And it works very, very well. So we are and that's why in in the beginning of 2025, it's post elect. It's we are in we are right now in the post election cycle. So post election cycles, they do very, very well. So an average post election cycles, they have a nine. I don't don't quote me on the exact return, but it's I have them on my mobile, but on average, I think nine to 10% return on post elect. Very good. It's very good. Exactly. It's it's actually the second best cycle of them all. The best one is pre election cycle, I think. Again, I have their exact numbers on my phone, but don't quote me on that. It's also not so important right now. What is important is that post election cycles are always super, super strong. And they're always ending up, well, you're ending up, if you bought in the beginning of the year, one of the indices, whether it's the SMP, the Dow or the Nasdaq, you're ending up with a positive return with a big positive return. And I made these predictions, you know, in the beginning of the year and then give like these outlooks. And then I'm always like so surprised by all these crash profits. We're saying, oh, this year, the market is, you know, going to going down and we are like seeing another recession. And it's like Armageddon is in front of the door every year. It's like that. And every year is like that. And you have like famous people saying that, like people who are kind of quote unquote credible when it comes to the financial market. What's going on? It's not thinking it's, or they just, I'm not sure if they, I don't, I'm not sure if they do it for, if people, I, if they do it for clicks or whether they're doing it for, they really don't know, or they're doing it for, I don't know, just I really don't know. Maybe they just really have no idea what's going on and what tools you can use to anticipate the market. So, and there's something called the end of the, the Q4, the end of the year rally in post election cycles and it's super strong. And if you look at the NASDAQ, for instance, so it's mid October, if you buy the NASDAQ first of November until end of December in post election cycle years, out of the six post election cycle years, the NASDAQ always gained at least 6.84% or so roughly, roughly seven percent gain. If you just bought the NASDAQ in November, first of November, held the NASDAQ until end of December, on average in post election cycle years, in the past six post election cycle years, you made an average roughly seven percent gain and you never lost. So, it's like statistically proven that, hey, if you buy the NASDAQ in post election cycle years in this period of time, it's very likely high probably, it's high probability that you can make money, right? And this is how I look at the markets in this case, in equity indices all the time. How many more cycles are there like that across every, are there a lot of stuff exactly? But you just have these cycles that you know, and then you know, but for equity, but for equity indices, the cycles are really, really important because the president election impacts the markets so, so much. And by the way, what is also statistically proven that it doesn't matter whether it's like a democrat sitting as a president, or whether it's a republican, the markets still move the same way, right? Because people are always, I'm always, this is always funny if you watch it, like they are, they're like on in the media outlets, they're questioning, what happens if front becomes president? What happens if X becomes president? Like, how does this influence the market? It doesn't. The market moves because of that these election cycles, these, these election cycles, these inality because of these market cycles, regardless whether it's democrats or or republicans. And this is statistically proven, this is really, really interesting. Plus, I could go even deeper down that rabbit hole and let me do it for five minutes because it's super interesting. There's something called the dissanial patterns. And the dissanial patterns, this was researched by a guy called Edgar Lauren Smith. He was a trader, he was born in, also you don't quote me on the dates, I think 1881 and died in 1971, so he was very, very old. And nobody knows this guy, Edgar Lauren Smith, but Warren Buffett once said to quote Warren Buffett, Edgar Lauren Smith is one of the best trader he has ever witnessed. So why did Warren Buffett say that? So Warren Buffett looked at the Dow Jones performance since start of the Dow Jones 130 years back. And he checked the Dow Jones performance in every single year. So he is ending with zero, he is ending with one, he is ending with two, he is ending with three, he is ending with five, six, seven, eight, nine, zero, and looking at every century. And then he was looking, hey, can I, can I make an assumption how the market is behaving based on the year ending with five or years ending with three? Is there any kind of statistical evidence that a market, that the stock market with the year ending with five, four, three, two, one, zero is moving in a certain way. So he died in 1970, something, so he couldn't continue his study, but there are people who continue to study. And I, we as a team, I am also continuing doing his study because the finding is crazy. You have to imagine that years ending with five, we are now in 2025, right? So this is called the disanial pattern of all. So we are now in the year ending with five. So 2025, 2015, 1995, 1985, and so on. So all the years ending with five, if you had just bought the Dow Jones or like any of the indices, but in this case, the study is done on the Dow Jones because of the 130 years of existence. If you just had bought the Dow Jones in the years ending with five, out of 14 years ending with five, you would have made 13 gains and only one loss and that loss would have been like almost a break, even trade 0.1 percent down. And overall, an accumulative profit of roughly 300 percent. That's why the years ending with five at Galoran Smith, considered or called it the phenomenal five. So years ending with fives are always exceptionally strong. So to combine now, presidential election cycle, which is we are in post election cycle, it's very strong plus disanial pattern, we are in the year ending with five. So it's a phenomenal five that combined in the beginning of the year, I was like, whoever is not buying stocks is stupid. Made this video out. I made this outlook twice. I had two 2025 outlooks on my YouTube channel, fully transparent. I said, guys, it's time to buy. We are in disanial pattern, years ending with five, you're in post election cycle, regardless of what you hear, regardless of the chit-chatter, you know, whether there's war or not war, like whatever Trump is saying, the mark is going to be bullish as hell because of these two statistical reasons. It's crazy. It's really insane. And people don't know about that stuff. Or maybe they know and they don't want to public, but I'm publicly, you know, like, and with all transparency, I'm like putting it out and people should see that because it's so important for people like for investing purpose. It's tremendously important. I agree. Most people don't know that. Why don't they put it out? I don't know. I feel like most people make the assumption, the incorrect assumption that again, like world events impact markets more than these decade-long patterns. But it's interesting because throughout the past 100 years, you have wars, you had wars, you have catastrophes, you have like external events that you cannot influence. You have so many things happening, but the market is still behaving in the same rhythm statistically proven. There's no one understands why. Nobody cares. I mean, you don't have to care. And it's so good about trading. I don't know why this is the case. Are there deep forces like, you know, we just don't know and I don't care. I just know, hey, and this is very important, like from a mindset point of view as a trader, like to really, okay, does this information here can make me money objectively? Yes or no? Can this add to the probability of my trade? Yes or no? If there's no excluded from your trading strategy, if it's yes, then perfect because you have to be careful. Like now when you have decades of data, obviously, there's no bias involved. But if you have a short term amount of data, like a short short, like if you look over 10 years and you don't have like historical examples, then you can make mistakes based on some sort of biases that you have, but not if you have like 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years of data. It's enough, it's enough statistical evidence to make like to get into to become fundamentally biased, meaning am I bullish this year, this quarter, this week, or am I bearish this month, this year, this quarter, or am I neutral? And if I'm neutral, I don't have any kind of statistical edge, so I'm staying away from the mark. And when you have, so these are obviously multi decade signals that you can pay attention to. Are there are there similar types of cycles on like a shorter term, on like a weekly basis, so you look? Oh, yeah, 100%. So on a NASDAQ, I also don't know the dates like from top of my head, I just know roughly. So yeah, for you, for not knowing every single date, it's okay. We understand where the information is so good. Forget the dates. Yeah, I want to be like always 100% accurate. And you know, when you are like, everything is recorded. So I know, I know. That's why I say don't quote me for the exact date. Give him some grace on the dates. So excuses next year, 2026, we end midterm election cycle. And by the way, this is the worst of all cycles. This is a really bad cycle. And, and so I wouldn't expect massive gains next year, not at all. And by the way, I'm not a crash profits. I always say the markets are bullish based on my, all like the videos that I made. But next year, it's the first year where I say, guys pay attention. It could be a little bit shaky because we're in midterm election cycle. And these are usually weak. They're like, there's almost no gain, no percentage return on midterm cycles in midterm years. And especially the NASDAQ, if you look at, and again, because you said like, ah, there's certain weeks. Yes. So mid of January into February. I don't know, it is like a two weeks, three week period. Again, don't quote me on the dates. There's literally, if you just trade the NASDAQ, if you just bought the NASDAQ, you would have always lost money. Actually, this is a time where usually I would not recommend shorting indices, like selling to enter, making money on the downside. So, but in this case, it's like a period where it's like from mid January to like into February. It's a few weeks, but the NASDAQ is actually losing on, on average, in these midterm years, also roughly five to six percent. So big drawdown. So look for, so, look, look to, look to exit or like a short NASDAQ, like mid beginning mid January to like early February, because this is usually where the NASDAQ is super, super week. And this is 2026 because it's midterm. Indeed is a success story partner. Now, if you're hiring, indeed, is all you need. Let me give you an example. If I needed to hire a new editor for this show, I'd go to indeed and be super specific. Not just can you edit audio, I'd say I need someone who's edited a conversational podcast for at least three years gets our style and knows our software. Someone who's done this before. And here's the thing with indeed sponsored jobs. I'd get people who fit that description. I'm not digging through resumes when people who've edited one YouTube video, I'm getting actual podcast editors who know what they're doing. People who've worked on shows like ours and can prove it. That's what makes a difference. You get people who actually are what you're looking for. According to indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on indeed are 90% more likely to report a higher than non sponsored jobs. And people are finding quality hires right now. In the minute that I've been speaking to you, companies like yours have made 27 hires on indeed, according to indeed data worldwide. Spend more time interviewing candidates who check all the boxes, less stress, less time, and more results now with indeed sponsored jobs. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to help you get your job. The premium status it deserves at indeed dot com slash clary. Just go to indeed dot com slash clary right now and support our show by saying you heard about indeed on this podcast. Indeed dot com slash clary terms and conditions apply hiring do it the right way with indeed. HubSpot is a success story partner. Now look, if you're in marketing right now or if you're an entrepreneur who's hired marketers or if you're a founder who leads a whole marketing team, you know the drill. You are creating content for 12 different channels. You're launching campaigns, you're scoring leads, you're analyzing all the data. And somewhere in there, you're actually supposed to do great marketing and it's exhausting and your spread to them. But this is what actually works for marketers to give you your life and your time back. HubSpot's marketing hub, HubSpot's content hub combined with their new AI called breeze. Now what this actually does is basically everything that you shouldn't have to do yourself. It remixes your content incidentally. So you're not starting from scratch every single time it handles lead scoring. So you know exactly who to focus on which customers will probably convert. And it pulls all your analytics and your data and KPIs into one place instead of having them scattered across 15 different tabs and tools. Plus the AI agents that HubSpot builds for you can automate the repetitive stuff that's eating away your day. Bottom line, you get better results faster without burning out. See with HubSpot, everything's connected in one platform instead of duct tape together. So if you're tired of being spread too thin, check out hubspot.com slash marketers to see how this actually works. Very smart. So listen, this is how now I start to see how this strategy comes together. So when you have these historical signals that you look at, plus you layer in risk aversion and all the all the principles that you abide by. This is how you end up being successful as a trader. In a simple way, you exactly. Yeah, you layer in all like statistical evidence that this was just an example like looking for equity indices. I look at I like to look at disanial patterns and election cycle seasonality. This is part of the strategy when I trade equity indices. So I layer in all the statistical evidence the more the better, right? Because then since I have more evidence, I have more probability because trading is all about probability. It's trading is all about probability. But if you have all these layers of evidence, you have these data points, you have a lot of evidence, meaning you can add more probability in your favor. What do you feel? What do you think about like algorithm trading? Like when people are trying to layer AI into trading and whatnot? Yeah. And the reason why I'll tell you why I ask, obviously because it's topical now and I have I have friends that have lost a lot of money trusting somebody who had AI. It was supposed to trade for them. But I have a lot of smart people that are trying to figure it out in my circle of friends that are trying to figure out, okay, how do we leverage AI to make perfect trades all the time? Because of course, AI is just aggregating huge amounts of data. And that's really what AI is. And it's basically look using a lot of data to come to conclude, but yeah, to come to a conclusion. But it's there will be always so that's like kind of the mindset of finding a shortcut, you know, like finding that that magic program, but AI, whatever, however you want to call it, but that magic button that can generate profits without you having skill, that's a that's a fairy tale. You know, I have to say it how it is like for retail traders out there for us, retail traders are individual traders like you and me, right? We are retail traders. There will never be any kind of magic button that you don't need really like where you don't require skill to apply some strategy or like years of knowledge and skill to make money. That magic button doesn't exist and will not exist because if that magic button, if somebody, if somebody is like super, super smart and develops that magic button, he will not offer it for like 50 bucks on like any kind of social media platform to say, like, wasn't this magic button like Renaissance technology degree? You know, Renaissance technology is one of the most successful in the world, right? That's trading. I don't even think in their in their main fund. I don't even think they allow people anymore, but that I think his returns were just incredible. Yeah, but for there's nobody out there who can develop that met like a single individual that is in our capabilities develops that magic button or can selling that magic button who can make profits without you needing to do anything, right? So obviously you have firms and big firms like BlackRock, Vanguard and stuff like they use AI in it, but they're way smarter than we, you know, they have way more power influence resources than we do. And this is a different story, but we talk about us, single individuals want to survive in a market trade market for us. No way. This is a fairy tale. Just a couple more things that I thought were interesting from sort of the philosophy and the mindset of a trader, which I think will be useful just for the audience. And especially somebody's like looking to get into trading for the first time. So you mentioned the set and forget and get a life philosophy. Where did that come from? Why was that important to you? Why would you recommend? Because we've touched on you don't want to create a full-time job. How is that important for you? And what would you recommend other people think about when they start trading? That's exactly the reason because when I went into trading, I went into trading because usually people go into trading for deeper reasons, not only necessarily about the money. So if you ask people why do you want to trade, yes, their first thought is maybe money, but usually they're deeper reasons, right? I always, I firmly believe that people go into trading because they have some pain, some, any kind of pain, because it's not an easy way to make money, right? But it can provide you with a lot of things outside money as well. And for me, the pain was I hated my job so much. Were you, were you in finance before? No, I was actually in, when I was in a corporate world, I was in the automotive business. Oh, yeah, so fun. Marketing say, so complete 180 from, exactly complete 180. That's why I say it's a skill that can be learned by anybody, right? It's like you start from the scratch, it's like learning, playing the piano in a way, like you don't need, yes, again, this is also nice myth that people think from the, hey, do you have, you have a talent in trading? No, I don't have any, there's no such thing as talented trader because it's a skill, right? It's not like you're an NBA player that yes, I mean, you need to have like a certain size to be because you're talented, but in trading, it's the skill that can be literally learned by anybody. So I went, and my pain was, and then if people think about it, why they want to, like, if not a viewer, if the viewers are watching and they think about, I would like to go into trading, think about really why you want to go into trading, and most probably you find deeper reasons than just money. For me, it was like, I hated my job so much, I hated my nine to five grind, I was waking up in the morning thinking, I don't want to do this for the rest of my life, I cannot do, I don't, I don't feel any passion, I don't feel any purpose, nothing like that, right? For me, it was just, my corporate job was just there to, to make money and to make a living, and it just was not fulfilling at all. Not at all, not at all, right? And I think a lot of people can relate to that, well, that's what I realized throughout the years. So, and I found the passion, like, real passion in trading, and I hope you realized that during the podcast, we could, we could go for hours. And so I found the real passion in trading and also into educating people and, you know, just talk about trading because trading in general is just the lonely business, you sit in front of the screen and you don't have anybody to share your, you're passionate with. So there's a problem, right? By itself, but that's why you haven't, that's an entrepreneurship problem too in general. Usually when you're building anything, it is very lonely. Very lonely. When you put yourself out there, when you do something that no one's ever done before, when it is very lonely. And that's why I love podcasts so much because you can like, really let out everything, right? There's no filter, you can just talk about trading. That's why I love it so much. So yeah, so that's was my reason. So that's why I was like, hey, again, we always touch on that swing trading perspective, set in, so swing trading slash set and forget and get a live trading approach because that's what swing trading necessarily should provide that you have a life that you don't, that you don't replace one nine to five job with another nine to five job. Again, this can happen. So once you're like a proficient in that business, once you like really skilled, then you have that kind of, then you can have that live, but you first have to get to that point. I always want to stress that you don't have that from the from day one, right? It's impossible because you have to, again, I want to really like emphasize in that and make people aware that you have to there's a learning curve. People have to get started. It takes a lot of discipline. It takes a lot of time as well to maybe to also say it takes sometimes sacrifice, right? Because you're learning a new skill. So people who are really busy, if you're the single mom who have two kids and a full time job, you can still learn how to trade, but most probably you have to sacrifice on something back in the days when I started to learn how to corporate job and stuff. I sacrifice gym. I love to go to the gym and do like sports like I'm I love doing my sports and stuff. So I sacrifice the gym a little bit. I sacrificed also my social life and I was really like focusing on learning the skill how to trade. So at this time, I had really like my job, my corporate job and learning how to trade. So sacrifice and I have to say, so there's always when you learn something new, if you start a business, whatever it is, if you go into entrepreneurship, they sacrifice involved as well. Otherwise, it doesn't work. I'm curious because we've kind of already established that the reason why a lot of people screw up in trading is because of either lack of skill or making poor decisions. Poor decision making because you're a human. Poor decisions because you lack of skill and sometimes and this is actually important to stress. People usually they stress that they blame also their psychology. But the psychology is they have quote unquote bad psychology because they are not skilled. Not the other way around. Once you are skilled, you kind of eliminate a lot a lot of the psychology factors. It's never the other way around. It's super important. People don't understand that because again, people say because of my emotions, because I was greedy because of this and that, they blame their emotions because they lose lost money. Yeah, no, you lost money because you're just not skilled because if you were skilled, emotional factors would not play a big role. Were there any things that outside of like, you hated your job, but what made you use trading as the way to get to freedom, fulfillment, money, a life that you actually enjoyed? I think the passion that I developed through trading, that was, it was crazy. Passion follows skill. That's very important. You have to develop the skill and you'll find passion for it. Yes, yes, yes. First, you're curious. First, you're curious about the topic, something, right? Then you get into it. For me, trading, because I have just a normal, like most people, normal university, business, university degree, I went through school, my whole my life until I was like my mid-twenties. I went through the whole school, the bank program, very traditionally. You learn so much in school that you can never really apply in real life. So many theory models over and over again that you realized at some point in time, okay, I learned that so how do I apply that to make money, right? It's like you learn something that you want to apply to make money. Once then, you know, I went into trading and I realized, shit, like I really remember that when I went into trading and I realized, for the first time in my life, I learning a skill and immediately this skill, I can apply to make actual money in that same moment in a way, quote unquote. It was mind-blocking. It was like crazy to me that I learned a skill that I can apply to make money immediately. Very, very. And it's relatively quickly. In the sense of, I can see that this might work out. You know, that's what I mean. Of course, it's fail and error and it takes like practice and all this kind of stuff, but you literally learning the skill that you can apply immediately in the markets and potentially see like an outcome. Whereas everything you learn in school, it's like theory or theory. It is very with theories. I went to school for, I was supposed to be a lawyer at one point in my life and then I went to school for pre-law and I remember learning history and theory and basically nothing that I use right now at all. We're sitting here and having a podcast, right? How is your relationship with money changed since you are now a very successful trader and how has it had to have changed? You touched on this briefly but explain how it's changed for you and just one more time, I think it's very important for people to, I loved that whole idea of your relationship with money and how that ties into who you are as a trader and it has to be positioned in the proper sequence. I have to say money, again, was never the primary reason why I went into trading. I always had like, because you know, I had a job in Dubai, tax-free income, I had good money working for like some automotive brands, making really good income. I never, when I went into trading, literally yes, obviously money was like, okay, I want to make money with trading, but it was never the primary reason why I went into trading. So I had really like the deeper reasons, like I hated my job and stuff like that. I wanted to have like more purpose, fulfillment and life, I wanted to wake up excited. I wanted to have these intrinsic feelings, values that I, okay, I want to accomplish this in life and I thought, okay, money will just follow them, just by default in a way, you know. So when it comes to trading in particular though, obviously you realize once you start trading and you have money in the financial market on a daily basis in a way, right, that you have to get used to, slowly get used to bigger numbers in the market, that your risk tolerance has to increase slowly. It's like, if you have never, like for me, even very, very beginning, if you had never a thousand dollars risk in the markets, but all of a sudden you have a thousand dollars risk in the market, this does somebody, something, this does something to you, right? You make then, because you're also not yet fully skilled, you make poor decisions based on the flashy number that you see on the screen. That's just again, you're a human, it's a human psychology, there's no way around it, right? Some people are, and then it's just about the number on the screen, the flashy number that varies from person to person, right? How risk averse are you, right? It's a thousand dollars for you like pocket money or it's like a thousand dollars like your monthly income, right? So everybody has to kind of determine, define their risk tolerance in the beginning, themselves, and then slowly increase it based on how comfortable you feel based on these numbers. I call that milestone planning and trading that you increase your risk tolerance slowly, the more comfortable, and you have to get more comfortable to these big numbers. Now I'm looking back and laughing about these numbers, right? But that's how you slowly increase your risk tolerance. I think this is how my relationship to money changed the more experience I have, the more I get detached from these numbers, and just follow the strategy. But in the beginning, you're just following the green and red, you know, money and 50,000 is a lot scarier even though the pattern still apply, but for most people, 50,000 dollars in a brokerage account or in a trading account is much scarier than a thousand dollars, and it's much less scarier than a million dollars. But again, if you have the right skills, then a million should follow the same pattern as 50,000 should follow the same pattern as one thousand. You get it. Exactly. That's the point, right? But then the question is, are you capable mentally, emotionally, to manage a million versus 50,000 dollars? If you have never managed 50,000 dollars, then you also never manage a million dollars, right? That's why you have to slowly climb that ladder. And that's what I call milestone planning. You have to, if these milestones, milestones, and if you like feel comfortable with 50,000 dollars, or like that's the money in the account, if you're comfortable risking a thousand dollars per trade, well, then you move up the ladder. And if you're like saying, now you're trading two thousand dollars risk per trade, and if you feel like you're making poor decisions, and you see maybe this based on the data, on the results, that because your execution is exactly the same. It's supposed to be exactly the same than in the previous milestone, but now you see like you're making poor decisions because maybe the amount, exactly, then you have to go back a milestone until you're comfortable again, and maybe do smaller jobs. Okay, so to set expectations, if somebody is starting to trade, how much time should they give themselves before, and I know you're going to say you have to define what real money is, but I was going to say before they make real money, meaning is it two years, is it five years, is it six years, and what is a healthy return? So tell me what a healthy return, not investment advice, but just so that you can level set versus what they're seeing online in terms of how long they should be doing it, and how much they should be making. Yeah, yeah, that's, that's with what would you, with what do you want me to start with a healthy return, because I need to elaborate a little bit on that please. Yeah. All right. So when it comes to trading, percentage return, I said in a very beginning of the podcast, one to five percent is return, but since we're going a little bit deeper into the rabbit hole, I have to say percentage return is not the real approach when it comes to trading. So we measure our success and our profitability based on risk to reward proposition, because at the end of the day, let me explain this quickly, just make a simple example. Yeah. Now, whether I'm going to tell you I make so now 50% a year or 20% a year or 10% a year, you would expect okay, the person who makes more return is just by default the better trader. It's not necessarily true, because he might, he might have overlavered himself. He might have taken too much risk, and we don't know this based on just percentage return. So saying that if a trader tells me or breaks, I made 50% return this year. It's already red flag, because it doesn't mean anything. He could have taken 70% risk per trade. So it's like a, it's like a bad risk to reward proposition. So maybe it was just luck that he all that he made like the 50%. And again, the game is to stay in the game exactly long forever, forever, forever, forever, exactly because you want to trade for the rest of your life. So that's why as a trader, as a professional trader, you measure your performance not based on percentage. You can do this then at the end, but it's more like based on risk to reward proposition, meaning for every dollar you risk, you try to make two dollars. So it's mean it means one hour, one risk versus two reward two hours. As it so and a healthy monthly return is two rewards, two hours per month on average, meaning over a whole year, two times 12 months. So 20 to 24 hours return per year is a realistic goal to achieve 20 to 24 hours per year on average, two hours per month. So it's meaning if today, and this is then you, you have then also fixed dollar risk, it's called a fixed dollar risk approach where your monetary risk per trade is over is always the same, meaning let's assume over a whole year, I risk, we make a very simple example, a thousand dollars, all right, per trade. So meaning, I risk now today a thousand dollars and I have a return of two hours per month on average as my goal. So I make two thousand dollars per month based on a thousand dollars risk per trade. It's a great ratio that can be sustained forever, you know. So X 100% and that's not rocket science. I'm not, it's really one to two two hours per per month on average is very reasonable and something that everybody at some point in time, if they are skilled, can achieve over very long period of time. Obviously you have like, and like in any other business, you have like kind of break even month, you have more like negative month, then you have like really good month, that is like you have over achieve your targets, your four or five hours. But again, 20 to 24 hours per per year on average is very reasonable. So if your risk tolerance, if your risk level right now is a thousand dollars per trade, you can expect at the end of the year 20 to 24 thousand dollars per, per, per, per annum. And if people aren't even speaking like that, then they're just telling you numbers that could have been lucky, could have been fake, could have been, yeah, bad risk management. You don't, they, they, these, otherwise, these numbers don't tell you anything exactly. And most people do that. So it's like for, for professionals, it's like already very red flag. If somebody says I made x, x percentage amount per year on the leveraged markets, it's like, what does this even mean? Now this doesn't tell me anything really, whether you're good or bad, how much risk per trade you talk, like it doesn't tell me anything. That's why I want to, somebody asks this question, I always have to elaborate a little bit more. It's not necessarily measured on, on percentage performance, because it really doesn't mean anything. It's more like on risk to reward proposition. Again, switching the mindset from short term to long term. Exactly. And for somebody who puts in reasonable, reasonable effort, three, four, five years before they should think about this as something that's their actual work. No, I think so. Again, it would be not professionally for me to put like a real number behind it. Again, that's the red flag when people say you can learn trading in x amount of time. I feel like when people say you can learn trading in x amount of time, they are not saying five years. They're usually saying three months. Learn my strategy in seven days and become a profit and professional trader, right? That's like usually like take my weekend course, my weekend semi-nah and become a trader. That's the problem, right? Obviously, it's super unrealistic. And then we have to differentiate, it's very, it's trading is a very individual journey. Are you again, the single mom is two kids and a full time job and can barely, you know, spare some time for trading or are you the board student who is like has all the time in the world and can really like study 10 hours a day on. But when you start to hit those ratios, when you have predictable ratios, that's when you can start to think this could be something that's full time. Yes, exactly. Even if you don't have prop money realistically, if you have those ratios and you have the skill set and you start to scale. But that just takes much longer. Yeah. And if you if you lack in capital, it just takes much longer. No, I mean, if you hit those ratios before you actually get prop money, then that means that you probably would pass the test to allow you to. Yeah, 100 percent. Yeah, of course. Then it should not be difficult to pass these tests. Exactly. Yeah. That's how I experienced it, right? For me, it was like, okay, wow. First, I was like, wow, dad tests. Let me do it. And it was like, wow, that's actually, wow, it's quite easy, right? It's actually such a beautiful idea that if you can hit these ratios with 500 bucks or a thousand bucks, then in theory, you are set for the rest of your life in theory. Yes. 100 percent in theory. That's a beautiful idea. Like, yes, I'm sure you have to manage yourself, your emotions, but it's, you know, if I make 500 dollars in entrepreneur, there's no guarantee I can make five million dollars in entrepreneur. There's there's scaling issues. There's costs of goods sold. There's a hiring. This has to happen. So many other, there's so many other variables involved. So many other variables trading. You don't have these variables. That's why it's the most beautiful side hustle in the world. That's why. And yeah, so when it comes to time duration again, I don't want to put a fixed time, but what we see based on our experience, my experience at people who really put, let's say, 12 months of really hardcore, I don't want to say hardcore dedication, but dedication. So they can study on a daily base an hour, two hours. They're not a week because sometimes during the week, they're busy, but they can put more time effort during the weekend. So I would say 12 months. It's a reasonable time to then see the first, you know, consistency in your approach. But again, you have, you have, it's an individual journey. It really depends on how much time you can put into it. And then it still takes time and people have to go into that knowing it takes time. There's no overnight success. And it looks easy. Yes, but it's definitely not easy. There's no such thing as easy money, right? There's no such thing as easy money. But, but my favorite idea is that in life, you only have to figure it out once. You only have to figure out how to make money once. You only have to figure how to build a business once. You only have to figure out how to trade successfully. And once you figure it out once your life is set. Where can people reach out to you? Where can they follow you? YouTube, socials. Yeah, usually I tell people just go on my YouTube channel, Burns Coropinski, my full name. They can watch my videos. I share a lot of free value. Again, like all these, I think stock market, election cycle, predictions, anticipation of where the market is heading. A lot of value for the people. I put them out all for free. And yeah, just you find me on my YouTube channel, Instagram and you can go from there. Okay, we'll put that on the show notes. Last questions. Now you have a whole bunch of like students, audience, whatever you want to call them, the consumer, your content. What would be the biggest thing that they screw up that stops them from being successful? They jump into the market too quickly. They jump into the market too quickly. They use their own money. They risk too much and all of a sudden it backs back, back fires and they lose it, right? They think they know it, but they don't know all, right? The saying, you don't know what you don't know. It really exists, especially when it comes to trading. Don't have an ego as well, because usually man, the majority of the content that consumes the people that consumes my content are because of trading are made, right? They have, usually man, they have a big ego. They know, they know everything better. We know everything better, right? Females, female traders are the better traders actually, because they're like very like they first want to learn everything properly to the book, like to the point and then they execute, but man, they execute first and then they learn because they realize, maybe I should not go on the bench anyways. That's funny. It's funny. No, really, that's my experience, but so yeah, don't have an ego in trading. You cannot, when it comes to the financial market, everybody has like preconceived thoughts about the market, right? Because we are exposed to the market on a daily basis. Don't have an ego, learn and learn first before you get into the market. And this is usually the right people, then they have bad experience because they lose money quickly and they lose a lot of money and then they hesitate to go back, but they just made these mistakes in the beginning. If you were going to go back and tell your 20-year-old self one piece of advice after everything you've learned in your life, just do everything the way you, I'm quite, nobody's, I think, fully happy with their life, right? Everything, there's always space for improvement and there's always things we want to achieve and so on and so forth. But I think if you have told my 20-year-old me who was kind of lost, really never knew what like I wanted to be in life and what I can accomplish, if you had told me that I would be here in this place right now, I would have signed the paper and say, yeah, take me there, you know? So that's why I would say I would tell my 20-year-old that made a lot of mistakes, learned a lot of lessons, do these mistakes, learn these lessons because they make you the person that you are today and I'm quite with all the flaws that I have, it is just what it is, I'm quite satisfied where I am today.