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Insilico Terminal Podcast Episode 9 - Nikalgo
72 Plays1 month ago
In this episode, Nick shares his journey from discovering markets to mastering DOM scalping and developing a unique order book–driven style. He dives into breakout and knife-catching setups, lessons from the Russian scalping scene, and his transition into algorithmic trading with Spreadfighter. The conversation explores building an algo fund through volatile markets, adapting as edges decay, managing risk, and lessons from major drawdowns - ending with insights on protecting capital, holding winners, and embracing positive tails.
00:00 Intro, Nick’s background, early exposure to markets and discovering crypto
06:05 Discovering DOM scalping, order book focus, and early trading habits
12:16 Developing skill with DOM tools, breakout vs knife-catching setups, Russian scalping scene
18:26 Joining Spreadfighter, learning pairs trading, and transition toward algorithmic strategies
29:18 Building Spreadfighter into an algo fund, adapting through the 2021–22 bear market
39:16 Current trading today - decayed edges, intuition, risk management, surviving October 10th
54:27 Protecting capital, lessons from dumps, holding winners, positive tails, and closing thoughts
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Transcript
Introduction to InSilico Terminal with Nick Algo
00:00:13
Speaker
Welcome everyone to a new episode of the InSilico Terminal podcast. Today i have with me new guest called Nick Algo, who some of you may already know.
00:00:27
Speaker
um But why don't you introduce yourself and tell us a bit about who you are what you're doing.
00:00:35
Speaker
Thanks for having me here, Sokyo. Thanks for invitation. And yeah, I'm Nick and I'm a gambler. Introduction to, you know, edX club or whatever. Mariano, just jokes aside, there is a little bit of truth to it.
00:00:49
Speaker
um I guess a simple answer to who am I will be, I'm a trader. But I think it's oversimplifying at this point. um And yeah, I'll probably just say ah person who lives around the markets at this point, that will be more accurate.
00:01:07
Speaker
And yeah, some people know me as Nick Algo. i mean, shorter just Nick. So i don't know, there's quite a lot I might be going around today, just mainly about my journey and stuff.
00:01:18
Speaker
i do I've done quite a lot different trading. done some business in crypto, um done so done some stuff just in general around markets and not only markets. So yeah, i don't even know where to start.
00:01:30
Speaker
I will give you the reins and you can lead the conversation here for now.
Early Interest and Entry into Trading
00:01:34
Speaker
I guess a good point to start is always just like, how did you get into crypto in the first place? When did you join? What made you join?
00:01:41
Speaker
What attracted you to it? Yeah, well, um there's quite a bit of pre-story before it because I started learning about markets back in 2016, 2017. twenty is seventeen 2016 was the moment where I was just learning what is the market order, what is the limit order.
00:01:57
Speaker
I didn't even know what order their book was. mean, just a complete beginner. I was still in high school. At that stage, I didn't want to become a trader. I just wanted to You know, get a degree, get a job, invest some of my money into ETF stocks and just grow my wealth over time. That was my initial plan.
00:02:16
Speaker
And, you know, life has its own ways a few years later. Yeah. There you have me. um Anyway, it was initially I was mainly focused about stock market, you know, in 2017. I got myself a brokerage account, not even under my my my name.
00:02:31
Speaker
I was still not legal age, so I had my parents to do it for me. yeah um And I heard about crypto actually very, very early. It was, if I remember correctly, 2013, 2014, one of my uncles, he was telling me about this thing called Bitcoin and how you can mine it and how it can be the future um finance or whatever, he was just telling me, look into it.
00:02:55
Speaker
It's a good thing. And he was way too early. He was like in his 50s, maybe closer to 60s, but he always had this commercial acumen. He was collecting antique stuff, you know, flip flipping properties. And I actually, at that stage, I was 13 or 14.
00:03:09
Speaker
I was more interested in playing computer games and just hanging out with friends. Looked into it. I was trying even to install some miners, but i and was afraid to catch a virus, so I kind of didn't do it.
00:03:21
Speaker
And then in 2017, everyone heard of Bitcoin reaching 20K and all that stuff. And I'm like, damn, well, could have been a journey, but I mean, I was still very young. and So I knew about crypto from pretty early age.
Impact of 2020 Lockdowns on Trading
00:03:35
Speaker
And the moment I start trading like properly was 2020 in lockdowns, lots of spare time. Very accessible market was probably the main reason. Because you know if you really want to trade something easy, without much hustle, um back in the day, you can get yourself an exchange with no KYC.
00:03:54
Speaker
You can just deposit 100 bucks and just give it a go on perps or spot. um So that's what got me into trading in particular, but I had a Binance account since like late 2019, where I just bought a little bit of Ethereum, XRP, and a bit of Bitcoin, of course. um And yeah, and I got dumped on instantly on March. So it was like my introduction to crypto.
00:04:17
Speaker
um I wasn't planning to become a trader again back then. i was just like, yeah, let me see. What is it? Like, you know, finally, maybe it's recovering. Like I was already at that stage. I wasn't a complete beginner.
00:04:27
Speaker
I had some understanding of, you know, fundamental analysis, technical analysis. And back then, fundamental analysis was still kind of relevant in crypto. I think at this point it's not as relevant and everyone understands the game bit more.
00:04:40
Speaker
But yeah it was the DeFi even before pre-DeFi boom after ICO, which I haven't actually participated in myself. um And what in particular got me into trading was um oh one of my friends, he told me about order book scalping.
00:05:02
Speaker
Like look into it, it's pretty cool thing. um And I looked, what is an no order book? Because I was like you know like, I knew what is it, but how how can you trade like through an order book? And apparently there are tools.
00:05:14
Speaker
um
Exploring Order Book Scalping
00:05:15
Speaker
Back then for me, it was C-Sculpt. um You know, in Silica Terminal, have an order book right now, which is like a DOM depth of the market tool. ah But I was mainly referring to like C-Sculp as a tool where you can actually place orders directly in the order book really quickly, amend it and like a separate category of the trading terminals as I would refer to them.
00:05:33
Speaker
And it looked very cool to me ah from the fact that it's actually trade you trade, not something what is like arbitrary, like like patterns or candle ah candles, you know, candlestick charts.
00:05:47
Speaker
so um That thing didn't kind of catch my attention. Like I didn't think you can make money from it. But when it came to ah looking into order book trading, like depth of the market, I would say, but DOM terminals trading, DOM scouting.
00:06:00
Speaker
oh It made sense. Yeah, i looked at the few videos and essentially idea was you just trade ah market inefficiencies, you know, like some um large limit orders. you see the liquidity, you see the order flow, you see the order book.
00:06:14
Speaker
At this point, it's quite, Hard to explain because it's already like deep into my mind, but back then I was like, damn, it actually makes sense. And ah one of the first videos I found was selling it. um He was actually having a course, but a lot of free educational videos, like which were actually amazing.
00:06:30
Speaker
ah The idea is that a scalper makes money where majority of other traders lose money. And like, yeah, then it makes sense. I want to learn that. And that's how I started. i had lots of free time.
00:06:41
Speaker
And yeah, there's much more to this journey, but that's kind of like initial foundation of me just playing around and finding out, I guess. How long did it take you to get proficient with using the DOM?
Learning Risk Management the Hard Way
00:06:55
Speaker
o I would say it it didn't take me very long. um Because, you know, the first day i installed it, I probably spent the next like six, eight hours just clicking. yeah And my initial goal was I was just trading minimal ah lot size on Bitcoin.
00:07:09
Speaker
And I didn't want to like, you know, like make money at that stage. All I wanted to do is ah get familiar with hotkeys, get familiar with the interface and essentially just like, you know, work muscle memory up.
00:07:22
Speaker
Like I knew, like at that stage, since I wasn't new to the markets completely, I was just new to intraday trading. I'm like, yeah, sure. I mean, let me just learn this game. and Technically, it's a little bit, it feels a bit gamified because you have hotkeys, you have like was a constant thing which is moving in front of you, you know order flow going, order spending, amending.
00:07:43
Speaker
um so it felt very alive, very engaging. And it actually got me on. I installed like around 4 p.m. and I remember like almost skipping dinner up until 10 and just like sitting and clicking.
00:07:55
Speaker
And then that day made a loan like maybe like two, three hundred clicks on BTC. And I even end up making like 50 cents after commission and stuff because I I already had an idea what to catch, um but it was obviously 50 cents, nothing critical. um Then in the next week, started increasing my size a little bit.
00:08:15
Speaker
And then another week later, i lost 50% of my deposit, which was initial. Then I was down to Well, it was FTM. I still remember. It was actually the first moment where I realized like how easy you can lose money. and it was the first most stupid mistake any beginner can make. It was averaging down as the thing goes down and down and down and down. And I said on stage, I couldn't like, you know, like just hold it.
00:08:40
Speaker
I sold it. And next morning I wake up. It was above when I was entering, of course. And it wouldn't even have liquidated me. I just had a very big loss, very big cut of my...
00:08:52
Speaker
deposit back then. And it was the moment where I realized, okay, like that's what they mean when they say psychology of trading, because um it's one thing to look at the charts, you know, on history.
00:09:04
Speaker
And another one is having like 50% of your deposit just burning right now at this exact moment and you have to do something or don't do anything. That's kind of the moment I realized that, yeah, there's much more to it than just, you know, getting technical clicking fast enough.
00:09:22
Speaker
So that's ah something that really impacted you back then and like ah took you, was like a learning that took you to another level in your trading? I mean, I would say it was the initial point that made me realize, okay, there's, again, much more to it. It was still a remarkable experience. I remember like that night pretty well when I lost this, again, it was just 150, but it was back then just realization. You can actually wipe half of your account in a matter of like, it took me probably under an hour altogether.
00:09:53
Speaker
ah The moment where you watch every minute candle close and it's just closing lower and lower, it's a very bad feeling. And you know, like I would say bad feelings, bad experiences, they usually leave the biggest mark.
00:10:05
Speaker
And so ever since then, i always try to have the position where I don't get and like don't don't end up in similar situation essentially where like I don't risk too much to the point where, you know, even the recent 10th of October dump, I actually survived it pretty well. We will come back to it a bit later.
00:10:27
Speaker
But at any given moment of time, I look at my like exposure and I ask myself, like, what is the war? Like, is there a chance even the slightest I can get absolutely crucified here?
00:10:41
Speaker
And if answer is yes, I need to change something. ah And yeah, well, 10th of October showed it well. A lot of people literally got wrecked completely. And yeah, um like, I mean, it's all about risk management. And at this point, it's all about risk management. Like the 10th of October was more about that because I literally, since I'm based in Australian time zone, I wake up, it's 9am and I'm like, I have bunch of DMs And i like I have also, I opened my phone, like you know, pumping, dumping Telegram channel?
00:11:15
Speaker
and No, I don't. There's like a Telegram channel which says pumping or dumping, right? If you're dumping heavy, it's like dumping, dumping, dumping, dumping. There's a lot of notifications and I would comprehend 30 of them.
00:11:26
Speaker
And first thought was, oh did we pump hard and then we retraced? And then I'll open the charts and I'm like, no, no way. I actually haven't had much damage, but I also had flight in five hours from that moment.
00:11:40
Speaker
So I was still trying to kind of get my stuff ready, ensuring don't forget anything. And at the same time, like you know looking at the market to see if there's anything to open. But we're getting into a zone of like 10th October because that was remarkable experience, I would say, for any trader who had purpose position open back then.
00:11:59
Speaker
um was It was interesting then for me, it was actually not painful at all, given already have paid some of my tuition earlier.
00:12:12
Speaker
So how did you progress ah when you first got into DOM sculpting?
From Scalping to Algo Trading Journey
00:12:17
Speaker
I guess you did that for or for a time and then did you move on to like other strategies? or Because your name is also Nick like Algo, did you move into like algorithmic stuff eventually or how did you proceed from that?
00:12:29
Speaker
Yes, yes, no, that's a good question. And i think like it's going to be a bit of a story here. um Initially, yes, I started with Dom Sculpting and I was, at this point, I still have Dom terminals installed.
00:12:40
Speaker
I don't use them as often, but I would say Dom Sculpting, like this foundation of trading is still like living in my core. And first, um six months, I would say first six months to a year I was actively into it. It was like the primary strategy.
00:12:56
Speaker
I wake up, I check charts, I check levels, I open, you know, like just um screening stuff, you know, to see approach to levels, set alerts and stuff. And just for the next eight to 10 hours, I'm just sitting there trading this stuff.
00:13:10
Speaker
um The path of a Dom Sculper is very simple, I would say, especially back then. ah like Most of the trades you're executing are either breakouts, and consolidation breakouts.
00:13:24
Speaker
Because again, i to people who never done DOM scalping, I'll just probably have a bit of preface about what it is. and like you know like It's trading using the DOM terminal. I would definitely recommend looking what is a DOM terminal.
00:13:36
Speaker
ah In Silica, can do it to a certain extent, um for example. And at this point, I actually use it mainly. um But a lot of traders use other tools. And um yeah, the point is that you just trade market mechanics ah around liquidity because they know you have consolidation and if you breach consolidation, you don't need to like, you know, you you're not guessing where the price will go.
00:14:02
Speaker
oh it might go up because of this or might go down. um You know for a fact, if the price will breach consolidation levels, there will be a spike because of ah other stop losses.
00:14:14
Speaker
trigger other stop losssis triggering other other stop losses, triggering liquidations, and there will be an impulse. Usually, like especially if you can sell it for a long time, even up to this date, you will have a big spike out of it.
00:14:27
Speaker
Then it can do full retrace, it might do retest and continuation, it might go collect other side liquidity. It doesn't matter, but the whole purpose of like you know my trading back then was just collecting this initial impulse.
00:14:41
Speaker
And then it it doesn't matter what happens, right? You just collect the impulse. Another type was also knife catching, which I didn't execute back then.
00:14:52
Speaker
At this point, it's my favorite strategy. um Not even at this point. this point, it kind of like, I would say decayed as an edge for me. I will also mention it probably later down the track. um But a lot of Dom scalpers, they do trade knives um because it's also another form of impulse, but where you lay it for the first impulse and you just take the pullback from overextension.
00:15:13
Speaker
yeah And the type of trades which I would say almost non-existent at this moment, but was really the bread and butter, um like the the highest risk reward. ah It's the um real limit orders front running, where you have like a real limit order.
00:15:30
Speaker
but If it's on perps, it's even better because you can just place, let's say, a small wall right in front of it. And stop loss right behind it. So technically, like if that limit is real, right, especially you need some proofs, that maybe like it already touched it once, maybe you're waiting for a second one. ah But the technical trade is like i call it tree fee ah risk. So you have fee for entry, fee for closing, and your stop loss is roughly the size of a fee.
00:15:57
Speaker
So it's a very low risk where it can size up pretty heavily and everything ah like your P&L is pretty much all the upside you can get from that bounce. Maybe 1%, sometimes you get full retraces.
00:16:09
Speaker
And at this point, in the order book i mean, it always evolves, it changes. Back then you had much more real liquidity in futures. it was i mean It always was highly algorithmic, but you still have high-baller traders who just like you leave half a million dollar order as a limit and just and just leave it there.
00:16:29
Speaker
right It's actually a real order, which you don't see as often these days. ah You know, market participants got smarter because market got more aggressive, in my opinion, not just in my, I would say.
00:16:40
Speaker
um Or similar stuff with spot trades. But these are three core trades, you know, for any Dom Sculper where you have breakouts, um you have knives, and you have ah limit order retraces. You can call them different ways, but just like pullbacks from limits.
00:16:56
Speaker
Or just from China. basically you just just ah see like a really huge order in the order book. Yeah, you see a real, like and like at this point, it's hard to see a real order in the order book because usually it's all spoofing ah or if it reaches, you know, maybe it will be just breached.
00:17:13
Speaker
I don't know, back then it wasn't the highest win rate strategy, but it was very ah high risk reward. i don' I'm not a big fan of risk rewards in general, but it still classifies it pretty well.
00:17:24
Speaker
um And it's kind of different stuff. So I was mainly trading breakouts. But if you ever see a real limit order either on perps or on spot, and especially if it's not like a round number limit order, because getting know round numbers attract liquidity.
00:17:40
Speaker
because traders can't be bothered placing like 10.55, they'll place $10 on a dot. yeah So that liquidity ah often will be taken just because it's not like um something very substantial and it's not like, it's a different type of liquidity, just resting liquidity from multiple market participants, not just from one large limit order from one player.
00:18:01
Speaker
which usually you front run and I mean, for smaller scalpelers, it's bread and butter until your size becomes bigger where do you can't front run it no more. But I was starting with small capital, so it worked pretty well.
00:18:13
Speaker
And I was doing it like literally like as as a mantra for brook like almost a year. And um then i progressed, like that's already, i would say,
00:18:27
Speaker
You know, the whole beauty of, you know, getting exposure to an industry, not just like, I mean, long exposure or short exposure allocation is just, um you know, there's maybe some people will call it luck.
00:18:39
Speaker
ah But if you expose to an industry long enough, you will ah um eventually find or maybe attract some opportunities, which you never know, like what they will lead to.
00:18:50
Speaker
um And well, there's only one way to find out. And that's literally what happened ah in my journey because um some people know me as well as the co-founder of Spreadfighter.
00:19:03
Speaker
Spreadfighter initially was just a community of traders and I got in there just absolutely by chance. um In 2021, it was the like ah earlier 2021 when Bitcoin was still around like 60K before it did the dump to 30 and another rise, like you know double top to 60. It was still the mania phase, absolutely crazy pumps, BitTorrent, BitShares, SafeMoon, Anchor, like these pumps I remember, very very cool.
00:19:37
Speaker
um So um there was just one YouTube channel I found ah found. It was like, you know, the guy was talking about stuff you don't see other traders talk.
00:19:48
Speaker
Because, you know, if you look at educational materials on YouTube, it will be most likely the same stuff. Like, you know... 80% of it RSI, MACD, maybe combination of RSI, MACD, Bollinger Bands, strategies, like, you know, kind of the generic stuff, which, oh yeah, which just, um we can come back to it later. But that guy was actually talking about hitmaps, order book scalping as well. He was talking about...
00:20:13
Speaker
um like you know application of moving averages, but not in the way that you expect, but just like you always like average conditional fair price, as he referred to it back then.
00:20:24
Speaker
And I was like, like ah the way he, like you know what what he was talking about the market, it was like it really separated him. And I just followed his account for like a week. Then he was having a stream.
00:20:35
Speaker
And I joined the stream, war like it was midnight my time, I was sculpting. um Very late, the stream was almost over and he was asking, is there anyone who knows English well enough?
00:20:48
Speaker
He actually was Russian because I also was born in Russia. like I mean, I learned sculpting. Dome sculpting is the primary strategy, I would say, by CIS traders, anyone who's the Russian speaking community, they usually like 50% of the entire trading but population, their trades Domescalping to a certain extent or download before. Why is that?
00:21:07
Speaker
Is there a reason for that? Or you have any guesses? It's actually a fascinating thing because you know like if you take a look at crypto Twitter or English speaking YouTube, ah everything is all over the place.
00:21:18
Speaker
You can't find one like systemic approach. And even if you look 10 different videos at trend following, there will be 10 different approaches to trend following, which obviously makes sense. But ah I don't know how it happened.
00:21:31
Speaker
There was like a really good foundation. um i guess it's my guess. I'm not sure exactly how it happened, but there was really good foundation of ah initial Russian trading community who was like who were who were trading Moscow Stock Exchange.
00:21:45
Speaker
And some of them went into crypto and a lot of them were you know just expanding into YouTube channels, content creation, course selling, you know diversifying the income streams. And um it just snowballed into the degree like there was very limited amount of education about trading, which is like, you know, actually like good education, I would say, not just like some noise and some bullshit.
00:22:09
Speaker
oh And it just snowballed into the fact that everyone started doing it. And the more people did it, the more people did it. And at a certain stage, um there was, ah especially when I was learning you, like, you know, go, um you know, search up in YouTube how to trade, you know, how to how to trade intraday, let's say, or something like this.
00:22:29
Speaker
And if you search it in the up in Russian, you will have majority of your videos about dome scalping, People using C-Sculp, Tiger Trade, and these were literally two main terminals um which still exist.
00:22:43
Speaker
yeah And lot the people still use them. There are already better alternatives in my opinion, but ah I still respect them a lot. In my case, like C-Sculp, I literally like lived through it for about three, four years.
00:22:56
Speaker
um So yeah, that's kind of the snowball effect it had. And it's really interesting because the whole Russian speaking community, they kind like you speak to any trader and they understand you intuitively and you understand them intuitively because again, most of them trade the same stuff. Breakouts, retraces, I mean, front running and knives.
00:23:18
Speaker
oh So it's kind of the same school, I would say. um It's quite opposite in English community, which is different. It feels more chaotic. Yeah, for sure.
00:23:30
Speaker
Yeah, just interesting observation. I also kind of like get fascinated up to this day. um I mean, coming of back to the story, that guy, he was looking for a person who speaks English.
00:23:41
Speaker
ah And I'm a bit introverted. It was late, I was exhausted, but something made me reply. Yes, I speak English. um He sent me his email, like contact me.
00:23:52
Speaker
And essentially he needed someone, if I remember correctly, to translate some academic papers or whatever. And long story short, it turned into a Discord community. But one month later, we having, um like it wasn't like a course. I was essentially like, you getting it for free as a part of the like, know, founding part of the community.
00:24:11
Speaker
And like, you know, maybe payback for my services as a translator. um But it was paid course, paid invitation to community ah where we were studying pairs trading, statistical arbitrage. And it wasn't even the automated version. It was just the idea of pairs trading, how to apply it and in perps, in crypto.
00:24:32
Speaker
And um back then it was even manual. like We had a guest speaker. ah He was a friend of of the founder. The founder, his name is Alex. He's the founder of Spreadfighter up to this date.
00:24:43
Speaker
all And yeah, ah it was and back then i was just like, you know, doing kind of simple things, but Paris training. At this point, it also like, I can't say it's the holy grail of trading, but back then it looked like, oh damn, I'm onto something like really secretive. Like it felt like, you know, we had we're really close, like small meetings, ah like 10, 12 people, you know, in them. And we're studying something what you can't find much information online, especially it's even right now, you won't find a lot of good information about pairs trading, not from quantitative perspective, but from actual trading perspective.
00:25:18
Speaker
um I haven't checked for a while, maybe I'm wrong now. But in 2020, there was very limited information about pairs trading, like actually applicable something that gives you like an approach, not just theory, yeah right how to do it.
00:25:32
Speaker
And we were studying it. Long story short, like few months later, we established something something for like internal prop. ah we were building our own software for pairs trading, like a terminal, which lets you execute pairs with scanner module, ah risk management module, ah and also like you know essentially same way as you have in silica working, you know but it treats pairs as your positions. you know For example, you have, I don't know, Litecoin to beat Bitcoin Cash, right? LDCBCH.
00:26:05
Speaker
ah And yeah there was lot of like There was a lot of development done back then. And eventually a lot of this stuff ah was starting to get automated as infrastructure was growing.
00:26:18
Speaker
um And like our team back then wasn't called Spreadfighter. It was just like, you know it was another name, but I would still refer to it as Spreadfighter. And it eventually turned into an algo fund.
00:26:31
Speaker
um I was just at this stage, it was really like a snowball, which just keeps on rolling and I'm just going down the path. But it's still kind of crazy how how one random the message that yes, I know English and I can translate for you can get me into like, you know, an official position ah like involvement into what turned into a prop, then turned into an alga fund.
00:26:52
Speaker
And um it was just like a bit crazy. Even up to this day to me, how one random opportunity can change the course of your life for a pretty long time. And it also was happening you know down on like the whole prop was founding probably around like mid end of 2021 before the NFT boom, before the Solana pumped to 200 first time, you know like that bull market.
00:27:22
Speaker
so But technically the bull market was over. Right. And I was transitioning from scalping, which is a really profitable strategy in crazy bull market as we had back then. It was absolutely insane period of time.
00:27:34
Speaker
I would say I'm not sure if we will ever have something like this. But scalping was a highly ah effective approach to the market back then. And part of me wanted to like, know, like why...
00:27:46
Speaker
Part of me wanted to like, what a question, why and what switching from a strategy? Because I was still doing this you know sculpting, but I was like kind of getting into pairs trading more and more.
00:27:57
Speaker
And I was trying to combine two approaches, um shifting my focus. And it actually, early stage, I thought like, why am I doing it? Like sculpting still works, right? Yeah. But then, you know, we had FTX, Luna, 3 hours capital collapse and like, you know, marketing, in complete turmoil and ah scalping, I would say probably would have be a really risky approach there and I could have like given away.
00:28:22
Speaker
But risk financial approach kind of saved me. And I don't know, like the transition was very smooth. And um I navigated like my journey through the market without much crazy deviation.
Adapting Trading Strategies
00:28:34
Speaker
Like, you know, I never had a story like you know some like, you know, some people just blown up their entire portfolio in a day, same as it happened like on 10th of October for many people. I've had large drawdowns, large losses, but nothing crazy because of kind of like how my journey was structured.
00:28:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:54
Speaker
Yeah, I realize it's turning into monologue, so I just want to give you some some space. No, I was i was ah so patiently patiently listening to your to your story. So you basically started with scalping, did the DOM scalping thing, then got into the Spreadfighter community, which became fund eventually.
00:29:15
Speaker
and then you started, you were doing scalping, but it was also like a very... It was during the bear market, so you started looking for other approaches and then you went into more of the long short strategy, which is like higher time frame stuff, right? like I went into long short ah even before the bull market officially ended, you know, because like it was more of November, December, I was already like allocating like 70% of my effort into Paris trading, still having sysculp always open. Like my sysculp was always on my screen for about three years of my life. Literally, shall I wake up, it's already there.
00:29:52
Speaker
I just, you know, establish an API connection and I'm ready to roll. um But yeah, ah it was like, you know, not exactly as when it started crashing. It was like, kind I was slowly transitioning into it more and more because at that stage, 2021 was one of the best periods of my trading history.
00:30:09
Speaker
My portfolio grew simply because I bought some things on spot. And I was actually and it was just allocating some of my profits from perps into different you know different exposure on spot for longer holdings.
00:30:24
Speaker
right I wrote the Solana, I wrote the Cardano pump to $3. I wrote a few other things. ah and And that stage, scalping, like I couldn't allocate more capital into it. I started you know entering into a issue of liquidity because especially that then liquidity started already like shattering.
00:30:43
Speaker
yeah And pairs trading offered much more flexibility, especially if you do it algorithmically. Because I haven't built infrastructure from scratch, but essentially like Spreadfighter was like a fund with internal pool of capital.
00:30:54
Speaker
And we took some like limited amount of capital from um mainly friends and family, as we called it, and traded that. But yeah, if you diversify, allocate your portfolio like an exposure across multiple different pairs, and at certain stages can be 30, 50 different pairs, um you have much more capacity.
00:31:14
Speaker
in total. So like that kind of worked pretty well. um And yeah, ah the whole 2022 period was the stage of, you know, algo trading.
00:31:26
Speaker
It was very stressful. And I would say more from managing the entire like, you know, state of affairs while the market is just burning. Yeah. it was It was interesting. I also had massive drawdowns on spot still because I and i i had a lot of Bitcoin ah holdings, Ethereum, and it was kind of like a pretty desperate times, even though it was not as bad. Like I didn't get completely wiped and I still was on my feet.
00:31:51
Speaker
It was tough times ah for everyone, I would say. you know yeah That's why it's called a bear market and a massive correction.
00:32:00
Speaker
Did you do you do the coding yourself for the algorithmic strategies? So you have like a coding background did you teach it yourself? How did you get into that? Yeah, that's a good one. ah I have financial education, finance degree. So like that's why getting into pairs trading was quite, i would say easy, but it wasn't as hard because I already learned statistics and all the statistics which ah back then, by the way, 2020, 2021, finished learning about so when i was just learning about ah Paris trading, I was just doing like advanced statistics. yeah It was ah was called Stachistics Methods in Applied Finance.
00:32:39
Speaker
The course was named Applied Portfolio Management. And a lot of stuff which I was studying there was actually highly relevant ah to what I was doing in trading, which was actually really cool to me.
00:32:51
Speaker
Because it was highly applicable um from maths and statistics perspective. But actually never, um like I don't have a software developer degree or like any prior education.
00:33:03
Speaker
And back then I haven't had GPT. So I was slowly and patiently learning my own Python. Because we had the spreadfighter community at the early days with this education about pairs trading, which was the only offering about pairs trading education you can have on the Russian speaking market. Like, literally no alternatives.
00:33:22
Speaker
So it kind of, there was, you know, initial screening. it It wasn't like even a course which you sell to everyone. it was like screening why we should, like, in know, why you should join us. And Alex was essentially filtering out people who just here for the next shiny thing.
00:33:37
Speaker
He wanted to attract you know people who are actually passionate and genuine. and And for example, that's how we found our DevOps, Ivan, who is still the chief technical officer of Spreadfighter up up until this day.
00:33:49
Speaker
you know Pretty much the entire infrastructure is on his hands and a few other developers. um So it was kind of, yeah, we found, like I was, exposed to a community of smart people from different backgrounds, whether it's a maths or business or trading or coding development.
00:34:09
Speaker
And it kind of like i I'm a quick learner. That's one of my greatest strengths, I would say, be up until this moment. So I was absorbing everything quickly. ah I'm also like you i a bit obsessive about new things. And it's kind of like you know like my whole trading thing is like in a one big stage of obsession about you know trying um to solve the markets to a certain extent and extract money from it.
00:34:34
Speaker
um Yes, I was just learning. answered a question earlier, like slowly learning Python. without GPT. ah I was even some stage paying to external developers to build a few things for my personal use.
00:34:48
Speaker
I would say I'm still a terrible developer. ah Like i I'm um not the best web coder either. I understand like the system architecture. i What actually carried me through is like, you know for example, I was running simple trend following strategies for some time.
00:35:04
Speaker
I was even trying to build my own pairs trading system independently from Spreadfighter just to, you know, to kind of like build my own version, my own approach much simpler. um And a lot of things what worked for me is not the like you know um not the development skills,
00:35:21
Speaker
right Not making my code work perfect and you know like maybe optimizing for latency when it comes to high-frequency trading where a lot of edge is coming from your ability to optimize for latency and um execution.
00:35:33
Speaker
Actually, never done high-frequency trading, so dont you might want to no not have any expertise there. But a lot of my... like you know I probably spent more than 10,000 hours in order books.
00:35:44
Speaker
with C-Sculpt, even Silico, with other tools like Bookmap. um Right now there's Okotoki, which recently I think they rebranded. But yeah, like a lot of different tools I looked at.
00:35:58
Speaker
and oh you know, it made me kind of start noticing patterns, start noticing things, how order book operates. And like, you know, like it gave me a lot of ah and discretionary edge where I just looked at the markets for so long.
00:36:13
Speaker
i am very well familiar with its behavior and ah you know Especially in 2020, there was a lot of edge coming from in 2020, 2021, where you know there was that would be just TWAP bot on.
00:36:29
Speaker
And that TWAP bot is not like you know it's buying every minute or so, like and like kind of gradual TWAP. It's like the TWAP which have a goal to pump maybe a million dollar worth of liquidity into the market in the next five minutes.
00:36:41
Speaker
So if you see something like that turning on, it's no brainer long. There is no breakouts, no like front running needed. You just see the thing. It's free money on the table because like if you support it early, you will catch all the upside that order flow will close.
00:36:55
Speaker
And um that approach, don't think of an approach, but ability to support things and trade them manually eventually, you know, led me to automating some of the things up to my best ability, of course.
00:37:10
Speaker
It's actually quite interesting that you can do all of that even while not having that kind of background or just teaching it yourself and the not being the most proficient in that, but having all the trading expertise and still being successful through that.
00:37:28
Speaker
there was There was quite a lot of fuck ups as well, I would say. Am allowed to swear here, by way? Of course, of course. This is ah not but for Not for kids, like explicit content warning. Yeah. yeah Well, yeah, as well, it was it was really cool to me because, um you know, as well, you know, how is at the beginning of the interview, I said that I never was planning to become a trader.
00:37:53
Speaker
um At the same time, i never never had a goal of becoming an algo trader either, like we're running my own, like I wouldn't say I'm an algo trader. You know at the moment when my Twitter handle, you know, like created it, I was mainly into algo trading.
00:38:08
Speaker
And I was even like my approach at this point is creating assisting models for my manual execution. Some screeners, scanners, what helps me you know navigate the market. I still will have to do execution myself.
00:38:20
Speaker
And I believe some some things are like what I would refer to as an edge can't be caught automatically, all like to a degree where I would want it to be. um And maybe I'm just not capable to build some of them.
00:38:34
Speaker
Actually, maybe i just need to pay someone. Well, um that's the pre-phase. But it is impressive, you know, how sometimes you just like, I never wanted to become a trader.
00:38:47
Speaker
And end of the day, i was running like some algo strategies. Again, life has has its own ways. And cons saying comp I ah complain about it. Like it's it's a good thing it happened.
00:38:58
Speaker
I'm grateful for it. but if someone would tell me five years ago that this is what i would be doing i i would probably laugh or like like i wouldn't be like oh no no way but i would be like seriously breath i mean i guess uh it can be quite an interesting profession even if you're not if you're never prepared to get into it and i mean if you're good at it then why not keep going and just push it to the limits that you can reach.
00:39:29
Speaker
I'm curious how your your training is like, since we had like went through all of your developmental phases, how how is it looking like today? Like what what is your bread and butter now? Are you still doing manual stuff? Is it all a algorithmic now? Do you still do your knife catching, dom scalping?
00:39:47
Speaker
um Yes. And I would even start with the fact that I probably lost most of my edges up until this point. like my As of now, I don't have many edges left. ah And most of my ah trading comes from, like most of the, like the only edge I would say i have left is discretionary ah intuition.
00:40:07
Speaker
Like, you know, there are moments ah where I look at the chart and I'm like, hell yeah, this looks like it will absolutely fucking rip. And guess what happens next? It absolutely fucking rips.
00:40:18
Speaker
um It happens very often. And it's like an intuition, not it's not magic or like I've seen too many charts. And I also believe that in like chart, it's a visual representation of executed intent.
00:40:33
Speaker
And just because I've seen a lot of order book activity, order flow activity behind like you know the charts, I saw what kind of pre like pre-processor of a pump, for example.
00:40:45
Speaker
um im mainly lung like I'm usually long exposed when it comes to like a no longer term. But at the same time, I've done a lot of knife catching, which I would say 70-80% are shorts.
00:40:57
Speaker
But at this point, I'm mainly long. like you know lus 100, 200 trades, let's say 95% of them were long. And even the my knife catching, um like it's a very interesting thing to me, very precious thing to me, I would say, because it was at certain stage the most profitable scalping approach I've had in my arsenal throughout the 2023, 2024.
00:41:23
Speaker
Especially, ah it it was but fairly limited capacity, but it was still something I was able to execute pretty well and it had very high bin rate and very high profitability for me. But it stopped working now. Like, you know, I can't catch knives right now.
00:41:38
Speaker
um Like the market structure changed to the point where um they're more choppy, they're less snappy. And I just kind of decided, like I realized, okay, this is no longer working for me.
00:41:51
Speaker
Some knives still behave pretty well, but um I just realized it's like, it's less of an edge now. It's more of a thing I'm trying to reserve, like, you know, drag along as a dead body down my journey.
00:42:03
Speaker
And I'm like, nope, okay. ah But one thing I even mentioned, know, the beginning when I was learning dome scalping, a lot of people do knife catching, breakouts, knife catching, and front running.
00:42:13
Speaker
I was actually at the beginning, I've never done knife catching. I was scared of it, you know, because usually catching involves shorting the pump. um Especially back then during the market I was trading, there was very limited drops and they're usually less severe, but um a lot of knife catching back then was re revolving around. yeah just You watch the pump and in a massive exponential growth candle and and all that massive like one minute 50% candle, which you just have enough balls to short. right And I haven't had enough balls to shorten back then.
00:42:47
Speaker
um But after doing pairs trading for ah like for a pretty long time, which is mean reversion dominant strategy. and I was doing initially momentum, um then I was doing mostly mean reversion and knife caching is a part of mean reversion trading.
00:43:02
Speaker
And a lot of my even pairs trading, which I was doing both manually and automatic reviewing trades, I looked and essentially it was a point that You know, you hedge, let's say one of the short, like one of the knives with another leg.
00:43:17
Speaker
But in reality, you don't even need to hedge it most of the time. You need to hedge it like on on the long term for maybe like, you know, risk management. But to me, it was like, what if I just don't hedge it and I just like find a way to catch these things quickly?
00:43:30
Speaker
and just trade them, you know, as a knife essentially. And yeah, started doing it. And apparently was very, very simple back then. Like, I don't know, you was like it wasn't any friction for me to get into knife catching despite never doing it, but technically doing it through pairs trading. And I just like, oh yeah, it works.
00:43:46
Speaker
And even the edge, I openly actually like, you know, revealed on X ah in 2CT, like, you know, the ah daily close rebalancing.
00:43:58
Speaker
If you remember it, ah it actually doesn't work right now. I mean, it the edge is fully decayed, but there was a moment on the market where at daily close, you know, zero, zero, zero, zero GTC.
00:44:10
Speaker
For me, it was 10 or 11 a.m. depending on daylight savings time or not. ah it was I treated it as market open. But the point is you have massive spike of volume out of an hour on the dot pretty much every single day for the next few months.
00:44:29
Speaker
Right? And sometimes it doesn't happen. Like not every single day, I would say at certain stage, but at a certain moment, it was just like day after day after day, you have five to 10 tickers just popping. bomb And 70% of them been reverted.
00:44:43
Speaker
So all you have to do is just be quick to find them and just short them at the end of the like, you know, it kind of like evolved over time, I would say, because I'm assuming more people start finding it. At the beginning when I found it was super simple, no brainer type of trade, then it became already bit more picky. And there were stages where, you know, this actually would cause into momentum, like momentum ignition type of candle.
00:45:07
Speaker
So that was a bit of a journey to this edge alone. um But yeah, that kind of like, you know, just observing the market long enough ah will bring you the edge and just understanding why it happens.
00:45:20
Speaker
And i like it's after a certain stage of milking it, the edge, i I shared it on Twitter and I got like 70 likes for the post, you know. Like, we it was one of the most profitable inefficiencies I have had yeah seen, which is like, you know, like no brainer type of thing, which is super simple and very liquid.
00:45:39
Speaker
And you can give piece of bread, you know, to traders like literally on a plate and they will just ignore it. I loved it, actually. i loved it. It was like kind of proving one of the points, you know, you can give a full blueprint how to become um like, you know, millionaire or how to make your next thousand dollars, let's say, like a lot of...
00:45:58
Speaker
And like, you know, 100 people will watch it, 10 people will do it, one people will actually achieve success. So ah at this point, I'm not even fairly hesitant to give away some edge if i if if i would have it.
00:46:13
Speaker
ah But there is still there that is on the markets that one person who will actually do it, he will become your competition. And, you know, for example, as like not high frequency trader myself, but I know that ah if someone is one millisecond faster than you, he eats all of your profits. So technically, it has to be done you know kind of carefully.
00:46:34
Speaker
How does your time zone as as someone, as me, i'm an I'm an Asia time zone hater and you're in in the Australian time zone, which is quite removed from the core times of market activity. How how has that impacted your trading? Or have you gotten like around that during your your times as a sculptor?
00:46:55
Speaker
ah Well, it it impacted my trading a lot, but at the beginning when I was starting and I was most active, ah it im impacted not my trading, but my sleep schedule. During the lockdowns, I was simply going to sleep at like 5am, maybe 6am.
00:47:09
Speaker
And I was waking up around lunch. It was still lockdown, not much difference, except maybe for my ah my body, which I kind of felt after some amount of time and I had to you know take a year of recovery and kind of step down, which was done with pairs trading, hopefully. But one year i was just like and burning myself through ah because it was working.
00:47:31
Speaker
um Plus, plus like you know at the beginning when I was just starting, ah I was still not as cooked, you know, to not sleep up until 6 a.m. m just for trades.
00:47:42
Speaker
um There was a lot of activity around Asia session, you know, Chinese Open. um Right now it is not as crazy, but back then there was like, you know there was even a joke that burgers dump it, Chinese market just buy all the dip. And I was, you know, it was a pretty good For me, actually, I wake up, I open a bunch of long exposure sometimes um and it works.
00:48:05
Speaker
um And I mean, long exposure as of like, you know, expecting long breakouts.
00:48:11
Speaker
So, um and at this point, I would say I do way less trading, um you know, with much more respect to my health. ah And most of my trading actually moved into trend following.
00:48:25
Speaker
I don't do much scouting. I think it's a very hard strategy at this time. And my trend following is very simple. Like, and know sit around might be see, look at the markets. And if I see something that looks like potential trend establishing, it's highly visible. Like it's very easy to see.
00:48:40
Speaker
You know, trend is nothing crazy. um And yeah, at this point, most of my trading is just turned into ah getting long exposure and willing to place my my my money, like, you know, as risk on it ah at the times where I feel it's the right choice to do.
00:48:59
Speaker
Again, discretionary edge. like Even right now trying to automate it with one of my friends and we'll see what will happen out of it. um Because I'm trying to like you know bring a fair bit of my discretion into code, which is um not the most trivial task to do. it Yeah, it sounds pretty difficult.
00:49:20
Speaker
It varies like, you know it's like a challenge. I don i think everyone who like who's successful are around the markets, they enjoy challenges. Yeah. um Like enjoy solving riddles, math tasks, you know, or like, I mean, something else maybe entirely. But um it's it's like a competitive drive, um not even for the sake of winning, but just for the sake of participating and just doing something what kind of makes your brain...
00:49:49
Speaker
work, not to let it age quickly because it's just an infinite riddle. Markets are an infinite riddle which just never stops, at least from my perspective.
00:50:01
Speaker
No, I agree. That's what makes them like fun in the in the first place, that it's like an infinite game. I'm curious, and ah since you said that a lot of your edges have decayed over time, um are you still looking out for new edges?
00:50:18
Speaker
Trying to find anything new that you can like rely on? Or is it like just so difficult that there's no real point in in doing that and you're just like relying on what you already have? or At this point, I'm always open to them and I still rely on my, like most of my edges were not like done through the quantitative method.
00:50:37
Speaker
You know, there's like quants who do numbers crunching. I'm not this type of like, algo trader. I'm more of a visual, like, you know, applied trader who like, I'm just, I've been in the market and trade in order books for a pretty long time.
00:50:49
Speaker
I would say again, ten over 10,000 hours, maybe 20,000 hours. I lost count seriously. But um it's just at this point, I can kind of spot something what stands out and deserves my attention.
00:51:02
Speaker
You never know if there is an edge, but it's more of like I look at the market and I see, okay, this is interesting. This is new. yeah you know Especially ah August, September period, ah just was discussing it with my friend actually yesterday. It was the period where I saw the most amount of cooked and fucked up charts.
00:51:22
Speaker
Like to a degree where, you know, like like you I've been on the market for a long time. I've seen many different charts, patterns, etc. But to the point where you look at it and like, what the fuck?
00:51:32
Speaker
Like, you know, BR, for example, BR, NYX. um I literally had like a folder of screenshots where I said that BR alone, it's a pretty interesting chart. Like I understand the reason behind it um There was like some Binance event, but it's still like if you open up BR, USDT, even right now, this shit looks insane.
00:51:53
Speaker
And YX, 200X pump crazy TA was a pretty weird chart. um There was like, I mean, I had a few of them saved. And there was a lot of yeah just weird stuff happening. um I haven't found any edge because these were mostly independent examples.
00:52:12
Speaker
But I'm always open to it again. ah I'm not big fan of numbers crunching and I'm assuming maybe some people who do it, they found something that works now. um At this point as well, I kind of, again, I've been lucky enough with my journey, as I mentioned for a long time, like a lot of things and decisions, not just like, you know, I've done it by chance, but kind earlier decisions which snowballed into me kind already being prepared for it.
00:52:38
Speaker
um Same as like, you know, a of people got wrecked on 10th October. For me, it was something I anticipated years before and I was always ready for it. um Same with other dumps. There were dumps where actually like, you know, the 2021 May dump and December dump, I got damaged pretty heavily.
00:52:55
Speaker
This like, know, kind of was the foundation for surviving like future dumps. um The point I'm trying to bring here as well about my trading is that I happened to be lucky enough to make money when it was the easiest.
00:53:07
Speaker
I think right now it's actually much harder for any crypto bloke extract money. It's still possible, but back then there was a lot of free money on the table, like just just grab it.
00:53:20
Speaker
um if you if you mean if you pay enough attention. It's not as simple, but again, it is it was easier than now. And I managed to make money during the times where the money was supposed to be made.
00:53:32
Speaker
um Back then, Alex, the founder of Spreadfighter was even having a saying that right now is the time to make money. You will learn how to trade later.
00:53:42
Speaker
And there was so much truth to it. You know, like there is no better time than now. Technically you learn, it kind of like a bit of a funny statement. and Back then it was like, I laughed at but it makes sense.
00:53:53
Speaker
If you really think about it. um And yeah, like for example, right now, my goal is just to survive long enough up until my spot holdings. Because I also, all the time I've been like, I kind of,
00:54:06
Speaker
having some spot long-term holdings. Like my BTC average is 25K. Ethereum average is 1.2. I have Solana's bought at also like $25, $30. Not the bottom, not the most bottom. I'm not very successful there with catching long-term bottoms. But ah these entries are putting me in a pretty comfortable position where I don't have to You know, constantly wake up on like, how do I make money? How do make money? I need to make money. I need to eat something. I'm not in a rush. I have won myself enough time to keep on doing this.
00:54:39
Speaker
And at this point, I even like I founded a company ah earlier and in July, this in june in June, actually, it was in June, right at the end of the financial year here. So I right now working on a few products.
00:54:54
Speaker
Just kind of like you know trying to migrate. It's still around trading. I tried our first product we tried doing ah was not related for trading. And like halfway through it, I like, fuck it, let's do a trading software. And they're like, sure. yeah i don't I can't leave markets. I tried leaving markets and I had taken many breaks. you know every yeah Every year I have a period for like three, maybe four or five months. i'm like, I'm done with trading.
00:55:19
Speaker
And not as if like tilted, but I'm like, I'm done. I need to do something else um because like I can't do it forever. But I always end up getting back. And usually the moment where I get back, it's actually like, know, the right time. I don't know, like it's all something about intuition because always keep an eye the charts. It's just like, it's on stage, I don't place trades. I just keep an eye on BTC, Ethereum and majors.
00:55:44
Speaker
And um even like, you know, I went on 10th October, dump for me, it was already 11th because of Australian time zone. and um Five hours later, I took a flight and I haven't looked at charts.
00:55:56
Speaker
Like, you know, in a few days, you know, mainly like every two, three days I check to ensure we're still alive. But I haven't placed much trades. And then I returned from my flight on Thursday, 23rd, placed a few trades over the weekend. And then we have the upside.
00:56:13
Speaker
um So I have pretty good entries. And um I would say in trading the chop post dump, looking back at it, I wouldn't want to do it. and Everyone who did it, my sincere apologies because it kind of was really choppy and in my opinion to trade.
00:56:30
Speaker
Yeah, usually it is after events like that. And I guess you're also right about like the market just having a grip on you. You can you can never leave your you here forever. but what What sort of stuff do they you do for for like protecting yourself from ah events like October 10th?
Safeguarding Against Market Dumps
00:56:47
Speaker
Like you have spot holdings and stuff, but but do you like split your holdings across exchanges and stuff like that? or Most of my spot holdings are on ledger.
00:56:58
Speaker
on a few of them actually. um i Yeah, it's just spot holdings for BTC, Ethereum, Solon, other coins, like you know the big bank, the big vault. Then I have some hot wallets, you know, Fantom.
00:57:12
Speaker
And then in just the general stuff i would say for anyone who's been exposed to crypto for long enough, you have like kind of like three centralized exchanges, so my two, three decentralized exchanges, maybe like five different wallets, e etc, etc.
00:57:27
Speaker
um And ah the thing what actually protect me from risk, ah from like you know from getting wrecked on 10th October Dump, like the spot wise, um I took some damage, but it wasn't heavy because I mean, a lot of people got wrecked mainly on perps.
00:57:43
Speaker
If you look at spot, Well, Cadena got wrecked, but after because of their announcement, when for example, like very few things got absolutely destroyed. Some things got minus 50 to be fair, but it's it's crypto. Like, i mean, it's it's something what like I expect.
00:57:56
Speaker
I never placed more than like, you know, two, three percent of my net worth into a single coin if it's an altcoin. Yeah. Right. i mean, we I don't put myself in a position where some random dump minus 50 can, the you know, actually half my net worth.
00:58:09
Speaker
Because BTC kind of fully retraced almost... you know to pre-dump numbers. um Ethereum did the same. So like it's not critical. On perps though, that is where the whole thing came because I had long a lot of long exposure.
00:58:24
Speaker
But back then it was already in profit. And ah I had stops, ah some positions break even, some positions are you know in profit stops.
00:58:36
Speaker
I'm a big fan of using hard stops. you know There is like kind of like a debate whether you need to use stops or not to use stops, at least for all the traders, and it it is worth debating.
00:58:46
Speaker
But if anyone is trading um you know just discretionary perps, like stops are a must. And especially having stops in break even,
00:58:57
Speaker
ah after your position kind of confirmed, especially I'm training trends. So if I'm entering into trend and right now like I'm 10-15% into profit, it would make sense for me to place a stop at the point of and of a new point of invalidation.
00:59:12
Speaker
right Because if let's say trend fully reverses, there is no point for me dragging extra you know, extra movement down because like, yeah, we're just over. Like you you leave ah earlier than later.
00:59:26
Speaker
And you know, even the story about it, like, you know, the day before, like the night before dump, I was literally like, you know, I woke up at 9 a.m. for me. It dumped in Sydney time around 8, 8.20, 8.30 a.m. I went to sleep that night around 12.00.
00:59:40
Speaker
ah I had long on BNB from 1000.00. um i was It was on lighter, just farming some points here. But I had a pretty good entry on BNB. At the moment when I was going to sleep, the BNB was like 1,300 something.
00:59:57
Speaker
I had my stop at around 1,200. I'm like, let me place it 1,150 or so, ah just in case of extra volatility so I won't be taken out.
01:00:08
Speaker
and then I wake up and I see the thing went to 850. eight fifty So technically, I cut some of my profits um because of i moved stop below. and At that point, it wasn't it didn't matter.
01:00:21
Speaker
even if Even if it's 1,000, even if it's it's like 10% below my initial entry, yeah it doesn't matter how much profit I'm taking or how much loss I'm having. And that's what actually saved me because I had lot good entries.
01:00:36
Speaker
I had lot of good stops. I woke up. and Pretty much all of my long exposure was wiped. And so except for Zec, I have the cache long opened from 65, so I'm kind of bothered there.
01:00:54
Speaker
And oh yeah, it kind of it all it did for me, it was having stops, good entries and not taking an excessive amount of leverage.
01:01:05
Speaker
um Because on December 2021 dump, or it would I think it was December 2021, yeah. There was a moment where you know like all of my risk seems to be calculated.
01:01:16
Speaker
But everything when everything starts dropping simultaneously, your margin your free margin ends very quickly. And what seems to be like, you know in isolation, you look at this position right now, your liquidation price is here.
01:01:31
Speaker
but it's ah including unrealized profits from other positions. But when they become unrealized losses, your liquidation price moves like extra close to your entry. I mean, extra close to whatever whatever price. And that's what, like for example, it caught me a little little bit of guard. I knew about it, but the move was so feral and I'm like, damn, okay, i woke up. And it was a pretty big cut of my deposit back then.
01:01:53
Speaker
Not the biggest, but it was less. And I'm like, okay, how do you ensure it doesn't happen next time? And that was pretty much like, you know, I paid for it once and yeah, I haven't had to pay for it again.
01:02:05
Speaker
As long as you learn from your mistakes. I think like whatever, whatever everyone if anyone who had, you know, their entire portfolio lost um but on the 10th of October, sincere apologies.
01:02:18
Speaker
Just don't let it happen again. That's my message to you.
01:02:24
Speaker
Just don't lose all your money again. Literally. it is It is very simple, guys. you know Just don't lose your money. That's the secret of trading. But no, there is truth to it. you know um There is, yeah.
01:02:37
Speaker
You know, I was yesterday discussing with my friend, um you know, MYX. If you've seen this absolutely insane pump, I caught the MYX from like 11 cents. It went up to $20.
01:02:48
Speaker
I closed my position. literally was laughing. I was sending him trader to make money screenshot. um ah My entry but you know my answer was like almost $0.12, $0.11, and I have fully left at $0.32.
01:03:05
Speaker
That thing ripped up to $20.
01:03:09
Speaker
Over the next two months, it went, I think, up to $3 in the first place. And I'm like, wow, okay, that's a big kind of L. Even though my total realized, like you know like I do DCA out, so I closed position in partials.
01:03:22
Speaker
um It was 60%, 58%. fifty eight o three as of trader make money. And oh I was like, damn, okay, well I should have taken, I usually leave runners. That's how caught tier B pump back then.
01:03:36
Speaker
The infamous tier B pump on the new year 2023 to 2024 or think one of them, anyone who was there, remember C and Tier B know what I'm talking about.
01:03:47
Speaker
um Because I also get a pretty good entry and I just like left 10% of my initial size. But by the time when that thing did 10x, this 10% pretty much became profit of my like full position before opening. So it's like kind of 2x just on 10% remaining because the whole thing did 10x.
01:04:07
Speaker
right but I mean, obviously I would be happy to hold the entire position up to there, but you never know. And this is like what leads me to the point, um you know, 10th October was an extreme ah deviation, like you know, tail event as it's called in statistics, right? Tail or risk, as some would refer to it.
01:04:26
Speaker
um Traders who are not ready to tail a risk, they will eventually get destroyed. like it's up There are events every two, three, five, ten years.
01:04:38
Speaker
No matter how well you perform, if you can't control your daily risk, at least with some sort of protection measures or like you know risk management, you will get destroyed and it doesn't matter what you do.
01:04:49
Speaker
And you can feel terrible about it, but at the same time, you can have anticipated it earlier because it's not a secret knowledge. ah But same way, it's also like, you know, MYX pump made me kind of reassess my approach to positive tails.
01:05:04
Speaker
Where you know, like when I enter a position, I might be expecting, you know, like 20, 30% move, maybe 50%, maybe 100% move, right? It all depends what on a ticker, right? If I'm longing BNB, I'm not expecting expecting it to really go crazy ah or like BTC, Ethereum. But if I'm longing something less liquid, ah it might go crazy.
01:05:26
Speaker
um And as well, in case of MYX, yeah, from 10 cents to $20,
01:05:33
Speaker
Something around that, you know depending what point you take, because entries, exits are not perfect, but it's the potential move which matters. And this was the positive tail event, which I personally not always ready. And even like I'm the big big fan of living runners, and I always recommend living in like 5%, 10%, 20% of your initial into a position, especially if it's keep on training, keep on like, you know, showing momentum, same as Zach.
01:05:59
Speaker
You know, I'm out of Zach mainly, possibly like already like 70% because I bought spot and futures. But I still have decent exposure to Zach on both cases. And right now it's already like 300% from my entry or so So there's a takeaway. ah Believe runners.
01:06:19
Speaker
Believe runners, they will be covering a lot of like, you know, positive tales and adding extra ah returns to your portfolio.
01:06:31
Speaker
Content of size is enough.
01:06:35
Speaker
Those who can't manage their risk will have the market manage it for them or something like that. Good old Suzu. Suzu said it best. I think so. I think so.
01:06:46
Speaker
um It gets reported every year. Yeah. that's very As we're going to wrap it up for now, that's it for for me and my questions.
Final Advice on Trading Resilience
01:06:55
Speaker
Is there anything that you want to to say at the end? Anything that you want to... Like wisdom you want to give or anything you want to pluck or shill or...
01:07:06
Speaker
Well, gamble responsible, gentlemen. That's probably the closing note. Be open to experiment. Be open to experiences. Look where others are afraid to look and don't rush.
01:07:22
Speaker
Just be here. Stay here and focus on surviving. Yeah. Don't blow up. Don't lose all your money. That's the takeaway.
01:07:33
Speaker
Yeah. Thank you very much for coming on. think this was a good talk.
01:07:39
Speaker
Yeah, no, thanks for having me as well. I mean, always a pleasure. how and I do have like podcasts every year or so. So it's always good to even see, you know, the progression.
01:07:50
Speaker
ah My first podcast ever was with Stoic. um Then there was also another one, like a yeah year, a year ago and a half. And it's like, I'm kind of rewatching them every now and then. I'm like, I'm cringing. Oh, damn. i was a weird but That's how it should be, no? Like, I hope I cringe a year when I watch all of the old episodes or whatever, because that means that you improved.
01:08:10
Speaker
So that's a good thing. No, literally, literally that's the case. oh But it's a good kind of to leave these traces, you know, of ah verbal, you know,
01:08:22
Speaker
Verbal traces, yeah, literally instead of like, know, I sometimes take a look at my old posts, you know, to see just as a journal, you know, to see like, you know, just the progress I actually made, you know, just to stay consistent on top of it.
01:08:33
Speaker
But verbal ones, even like the way, the way you speak, what you speak about it and like, you know, the tone, I don't know. it It's always great pleasure, especially, well, even Silica Terminal, I haven't,
01:08:47
Speaker
been using anything else actually out of terminals right now and grateful that you guys exist. I should have said it though. I think we're still recording, but no. Big shout out. Big shout out. If you're still recording. Here we are. We are. We are.
01:08:59
Speaker
This is going in. to the silly This is definitely should be. No, it should be in as well. Thanks for the frog. The badge. The badge of honor. Of course. Yeah,
01:09:11
Speaker
I think.