[Music] how's it going everyone today we are with my good friend Trader Kane and we are going to have him answer a few questions for us I'm a bit nervous I don't know what any of these questions are You've kept them pretty secretive from me All right so let's start out with an introduction if you want to give us a little look back into your trading journey uh maybe a year-to-year overview Yeah sure So probably got into trading about 10 years ago Um well coming up 10 years Um probably like most people I got involved in trading through numerous adverts offering me you know silly returns the ability to own a Lamborghini and retire my parents Um the reality is I probably just got scammed like most people Um my my journey doesn't really look like oh I solidly did it for 10 years I like drip dripped in dripped out Um but I guess the main time I really started trading was like 2015 2016 I really really got involved um quite heavily Um and then dropped out around that 20 2018 2019 mark Picked it back up dropped it again back end of 2019 and then obviously COVID hit and I got back straight into the market and predominantly most of my 2020 stuff was all crypto Rode most of that up after COVID rode that to like 60 rode it from 30 back to back to 60 Timed pretty much most of the market pretty well 21 still crypto 22 kind of took a bit of a break and then end of 22 uh got rugged for a million dollars when FTX went bust So uh took a bit of a break back end of 21 2022 pivoted back to forex Like you know what i've actually learned to trade now Let's pivot back to Forex Went to Forex um 2022 made good money trading props again Props was kind of my journey to regain some of my capital and then boss a couple of years pivoted from FX to futures and then currently the record holder for the largest payout JCAP is approaching sorry very fast that is the better term So with that and everything that you've experienced if you had to restart all over how would you approach it would you use prop capital personal capital i mean the game the aim for me right is always you want to be trading your own money You don't really want to be trading the the prop firm money because there are a lot of rules and it's stacked against you Right So do I think that prop firms are net good on the space 100% I think they the ability to gain capital and gain payouts or accumulate capital i.e via payouts It has never been higher Like this is the peak of it It's only going to get worse from here In my opinion it's quite literally the peak of you can spend $3,000 to get 5,000 the $5 million in capital and run that up into hundreds of thousands of pounds if you're conservative about it I think the downfall with a lot of people is that they they shoot for the moon Yeah And they don't just take those baby steps to get there And everyone I've seen that takes those baby steps just kill it But yeah if you're trading to not then transition into live you're just playing the you're playing the prop firm game of just hitting the payouts and dipping which is fine There's nothing wrong with that but you're you can't trade prop capital forever unless you go into that legacy brick and mortar prop world But then again you're just a fully fetfledged trader at that point because they're also going to impo impose certain rules on you that make you a better trader They're going to coach you etc So So to summarize if you don't have that capital now is the peak time to do it Peak time to do it Yeah But end goal should be to trade your own money Yeah 100% Yeah So going back to prop firms you touched on it a little bit there but could you give us a little insight into your strategy and how you approached it daytoday to build up that buffer and get those larger payouts yeah Look I haven't really said this before but like the Apex thing was completely a plan right accumulate those 20 accounts and then run those 20 accounts up in as short a time frame as possible to reach a good amount of money in 70 70 80 days because at the time you had to get 10 trading days plus a payout plus six or seven payouts to then withdraw the lot So my plan was always very small conservative base hits started off very aggressively early on getting out of that trailing draw down I got out of it in 4 days Get out of that as aggressive as I can Be very aggressive with the market Get in and out very fast Grab those impulsive moves those expansion candles that you obviously talk about a lot And then um then I can pivot back to my my my strategy of taking those expansive winners and holding on to them and letting them you know playing those 4hour PO3s into those those highs those lows And then once that that account or that trade gets to a certain amount I don't care about it anymore I'm closing that trade It could go to my target but I just sized accordingly that if this plays out I'm going to be in the money and my risk is controlled I'm going to be in the money very fast and I can just close it and be happy with that because the 20 accounts give me the scale So that was always the plan and it was just stay consistent don't get greedy don't hold for long moves Most of my trades were 100 ticks So I've seen you trade behind the scenes and I can say it's quite a bit of a different strategy in terms of risk-to-reward for prop firms versus how you trade your personal capital Yeah my personal account I really let breathe Like I I'm very risk on on it because it's my money Uh it's only me that's going to be upset with myself I'm very risk with it and I'm more aggressive with those types of moves I take a lot of paper cuts getting in those trades when I catch them the paper cuts are all gone and I catch like a a huge winner Again if I'm trading in an expansive consolidating market like where it retraces and then expands retraces expands I normally just trade those retraces So I'm just always predetermined point to get out of the market I'm not expecting the market to just fall off the face of the earth Yeah So I to say that I always have a planned exit and a planned entry from both sides of the market Do you want to touch a little bit on your strategy of going break even and scratching trades like that versus holding those trades yeah so I predominantly just try and get position in the 4 hour and hourly wick They can obviously overlap a key market time being 10:00 a.m most days So most of my trades are trying to be positioned in the 4hour wick Whether that's to the downside or to the upside I'm not really that bothered In a bullish market you can imagine it's most likely to the upside because we expand on that hour and then when we retrace I want to grab that retrace into 50% of the move And once we once we trade into like invert something in that in that wick I'm looking to trade that invalidation that the high of that wick for me is now the high of the 4hour wick and I want to trade that back to the close when we get that shallow wick that you obviously speak about a lot that strategy is a bit different because that I can't be positioned in a 40 tick move I want to be positioned in an expansive candle that retraces back to the open where if I have to trade a reversal and there's a small wick I just trade a different model So a few questions about sizing I know you sized up pretty significantly at least in January You sized up quite a bit Yep Could you give some insight maybe a few things that helped you size up going from some smaller size such as a few minis to maybe 40 100 minis that I've seen you trade yeah Um I think the reality is is like no one goes from two minis to 100 minis and if you do you're silly because the risk there is 20 like 40 times right it's silly So um it's all about baby steps If you're growing a if you're growing a draw down right if I put money into an account and this is not how obviously a lot of people look at it but this is genuinely how I look at it I size my personal account for heavy risk So that if I for let's just say I deposit $50,000 into a personal account I can risk $50,000 because that's my capped downside The broker leverages my money I'm good with that So I can cap my downside to that And once that grows like I can withdraw my my initial the money there is house sal's money I don't look at it as in like oh that's all my money now because it is my money but ultimately you got your initial I got my initial out and I can now grow that into whatever I need that to be and I can take riskier trades like and when I say riskier I don't mean like trades aren't my model I can tra take trades with much larger size and I don't need to sweat about it because it's not my money in my head If it's gone you got your initial Exactly Worst case we just reload it with the initial and and run it back up Luckily I haven't needed to do that And it's just the beauty of the game is that in January I I had an amazing run Took pretty much all the money off the table at the top of the market and the market's been only down since And I've been heavily risk off Like when I say risk off again I mean downsize from an account perspective trading much smaller size but the the gains are still there you know because the volatility is crazy right now I couldn't trade 100 minis in this market right now It'd be silly Like we watched a video the other day right of me trading 40 minis just before the open one day I traded a 50 point move ENQ moved 50 points in 5 minutes earlier right now Yeah the range is actually more It's 200 points and it's in in two hours it's it's 400 points So So what's your approach to risk management do you go in with the same dollar risk every time or if you're in a losing streak do you size down how do you approach all of that again these are different for different things Like for prop it's how do I make the draw down work and I need to make it work Some people just see it as oh I've got 10 lives in an account I don't need to worry I can take nine losers and yolo it on the on the ninth That's not the way I look at it Um so I I have like a scaling matrix in from a prop firm perspective of I risk 1% if I'm on a win streak I risk more if I'm on a losing streak I risk less But like I scale up and down with that So if I get a winner I go up and if I get a loser I go down If I get another loser I go down again So it starts about one scales up half a percent either side to a maximum two and scales down to 0.25 So it's a bit more dynamic in the way that you want to minimize your losing streaks and maximize your winning streaks because that's how the equity that's all the success of an equity curve I know you have a pretty strong opinion on taking partials Yeah Took your first one yesterday I took my first one yesterday Yeah Volatility Look I was expecting the market to really uh really die off yesterday and I couldn't guarantee that because it's going to be making new yearly lows and that's just risky right so I want to just be off at the low and I don't want to take it all off on the basis that we dropped to my overall target which is previous year low So I I factored in taking some off But luckily for me the market pushed through that level and then just before the close we got to close out pretty much the same area So but yeah my view on partials is um you're stealing money from your future self right either you have conviction in a trading you should get out at a certain low or a certain high um or you're going to hope that it breaks through and hope that it does these things And we start to speak about all emotions and every time I spoke about emotions with my trading I'm gambling So I just can't logically put partials together with a constructive model that isn't I can't associate to gambling With that said I do see logic in partiing off on swing trades and not round tripping a monstrous move when you're swinging But intraday for 99% of people scaling out every five points or 15 points is uh is silly because either you know where the c you you you anticipate where that candle is going to trade into and you have a draw or you don't and if you don't you partial off I see these crazy videos on Twitter of someone buying a low and selling every candle on the way up and it's like you don't understand that if they held that low to that high you make five times more money Yeah So you're taking a five hour trade and making it a one hour trade One hour trade Yeah Yeah So are there any market conditions that you will just completely avoid not watch the market at all um not really I don't like really like trading Mondays and Fridays but even then recently I've found myself trading Mondays and Fridays with this big big expansive moves because they happen on those days Um I like consolidating expansive markets And I know those two things don't make sense in this the same sentence but I like an expansive market that trades into 50% of the leg up So you like price when it retraces and then goes to expansion Yeah Yeah I just like I like that What I don't like is I don't like I don't like rangebound markets because my model is completely unprofitable in those because I'm buying the low trying to sell 50% of the range up down and then we range here and I'm buying the low and I'm anticipating some sort of breakout from a range before the range forms and then I'm trading into that 50% mark and then it trades into the top of the range into the bottom of the range and I get stopped to break even and those are the r those are the conditions as soon as I identify that we we're in that range I either just trade the range if it's big enough or I don't trade So what are a few things that you see in the charts that say "Hey we might be in a consolidation here Is it just after a large range or pre-news?" Yeah it's all market cycles isn't it so once you expand you typically consolidate and and then once you consolidate you typically retrace and then you consolidate and then you go back into expansion That's I built a model around all of those market cycles in grabbing the expansion not potentially grabbing the retrace but you can and then grabbing the expansion again And the way you trade is even if you're wrong on your overall bias you're just catching that retracement on a higher time frame Like I could be like "Oh I'm expecting new weekly lows." But I will just grab that move from the top to the middle of the range and if it picks back up I don't care that I'm wrong on my bias I just call that bit the move and I'm done So do you ever journal your trades or review trades and if you do do you find it more important to journal your winners or your losers yeah I don't journal my winners because I've done the reps with my model to understand that my winners are going to be winners and I don't need to change those because they play out how I expect And my losers are the the parts of my model where I'm like what could I have done differently here that would have allowed me to potentially either take a break even or not take a loser whether that's oh I got in on a lower time frame and if I went up a time frame the I just basically bought the bottom of an expansive or sold the bottom of an expansive market Um and I constantly review that I don't journal a whole bunch other than the losers or if I have like an emotional trade like if I feel very emotional about a trade like I revenge traded or I got in for no invalid no reason other than gut feeling then I'll just journal that Um but yeah I mean look every if you would have asked me this question 3 four years ago the answer is different I journal I journaled everything because I needed to find consistency in the reps and understand my edge That was 100% of the reason like the reason And if you're not journaling very early on in your journey you're just cutting yourself off at the knees Probably the biggest question I have for this section is do you believe in macros oh yeah No I I trade the 920 to 940 macro all the time Yeah Oh the market The market open I trade that one a lot Yeah Uh no I don't trade macros No they uh they don't exist All right so let's get into it Uh it's funny cuz we talk about the the New York market macro You would just pause to trade it So yeah So a few psychology things when it comes to mindset What were the building blocks the few key things that led to your long-term success as a trader you have to understand things in trading are just all probabilities right it's not nothing's guaranteed to play out Some guy could fat finger a million contracts tomorrow and send NQ 10% higher It may retrace but it will run absolutely everybody out in the process right so um there's no guarantees in trading It's just a stacking all the probabilities up in in a model in some sort of structured trading to say x amount of time this plays out and you stack those probabilities in your favor But the reality is is like they don't always play out They are going to fail sometimes and you have to accept that and lots of people just can't accept a loser It's okay to lose I had a losing day on Ninja Trader on Wednesday but on Friday and on Monday we had I had a relatively good days like big winning days It's like okay do I just judge myself based on my 6K loss on a Wednesday versus my 50k win over two days no Why would I do that because that's great RR if we just compare those two So you do that extrapolate it out over periods of time and then just accept that you're going to lose sometimes It's not always going to play out It's not always going to look exactly how you want it to look It's stacking those probabilities up building that intuition over time and letting it play out Once you click the button your job is over Like the rest is up to the market and you can't control that So what would you say to someone who just struggles with taking a loss you know they take a loss they go on tilt or revenge trade What would you say to that trader you you definitely have to have a a rulebased system for stepping away from the chart and accepting that your edge is not in play on that day right so whether that's one trade whether that's two trades whether that's two losses one win I don't know It's different for everybody but it has to have some structure but you also have to be able to just follow the structure There's no point setting up structure in your trading to just ignore it when you go on tilt Yeah Because it's just like that's the number one thing is like you know I know you know we can sit here and tell everybody that what works but it's like if you don't do it it's just not going to work Like if you only do it 50% of the time those 50% of times you don't are going to absolutely decay your account and ruin your P&L to the point that when it does work you're like oh I'm not actually making good money at the moment Well cuz you're winning for 40 50% of the time and you're making let's say 10% 20% but you're losing 5% on every single one of those days you go until 50% of the time which takes up 25% of your losses It's about controlling your downside playing defense and just attacking when it makes sense And that has a lot to do with confidence right cuz if you don't follow your rules how are you going to be confident with your system yeah And that's the thing is like when my confidence is skyhigh I'm just in the market so much because I'm just in tune with it I'm I'm in that flow right that flow state That's where I make most of my money Like those times is just when I just my P&L curve just goes like this And then you're sizing more as you said with your dynamic risk strategy Yeah So backpacking off of that idea what would you say is the biggest difference from someone in a break even stage versus someone who's profitable it's like I I said this before like you're stuck between that stage of you're not in the 99% of people that lose but you're not in the 0.5% of people that win you're in that 0.5 in the middle but you're still better than the 90% people that lose You're winning in my head I think a lot of people think break even is bad I think it's really good I think it's okay to be a break even trader like because that's your first job Your first job is to become break even Then it's to refine and become uh profitable It's that time It's engaging in the right time the right market conditions accepting your probabilities And over time your model will go on losing streaks and go on winning streaks And it's identifying those things and getting used to the market conditions and building that intuition up that allows you to size up when the market's there size down when it's not and really just curve that equity curve down and really ramp it when it goes up It's all the difference It's just all time market conditions and probabilities and accepting that over time you're going to become more weathered to all of them And once you are it's it's a recipe for success What would you say is the biggest difference between people that are not profitable versus those that are break even would you say that's just following your rules i mean that's what I see with most people is they either just go and tilt revenge trade don't follow their rules and that's why they're unprofitable Once they start following their rules they become pretty break even And that's when it comes into journaling and refining Yeah I mean look we all get stopped out of a trade and immediately start framing another trade right that we've all done that in our time If you don't say that you're a liar right the reality is is like you have to become so weathered to be like okay my model's not there See and just go and do anything else And you know that's the I guess the turning point is know actually having the ability to do that over periods of time and do it consistently and really stop those silly losses trying to catch the tops or the bottoms because that's where you just blow your account Removing the losses of course you remove if you remove the losses and add winners you can only win right so but it's just minimizing your downside Play defense Don't be always on offense Don't try and be in the market all the time The market is always right and you are always wrong until proven right So going off of that what is the biggest losing streak that you have had six losers Yeah roughly I mean this is like I'm saying that from someone that has a profitable model and can't remember going on tilt for 20 trades in a row revenge trading you know like I'm sure there are times when I've lost a lot of trades in a row like and I've just blown through money like no one's business Um which I couldn't put a number on that like actually going through a loss streak is like the last big loss streak I had was like I had like two weeks where it was just like backtoback losers like consistently losing like I just almost didn't think my edge was there anymore and then it's like you know turn up to the markets on a Monday or Tuesday and suddenly your model's there you click the button it's like boom straight away TP and it's like the confidence just starts to come back So would you say the most important thing to do during that period is to just continue to execute as planned Have you ever dealt with any fear in trading you know fear of failure fear of draw down fear of losing 100% Because that's the name of the game If you're not scared of the money if you're not scared of losing money you will lose a lot of money right and you know it's well on Twitter like obly you mentioned it earlier January I had a good run I downsized Why did I downsize because it got to a point where I was risking a house on a trade And it's like this is so much money and one loss is just going to tilt me And it's just at that point I just accept I just don't want to trade that size anymore It's too long I trade it for too long over a consistent period I knew that my model was due some losses Stacking the loss like knowing my intuition is like oh loss is around the corner I'm trading massive size I want that loss I don't want it and I'm scared of it I don't want it So let's just downsize Downsize Pretty much like two weeks later my model goes on like that six losing trade streak So it's like minimizing that downside allows me to preserve my capital when I want to step back into the market with size It's all there and I can go on that streak again or I could go on that six losing streak again But that would be my choice and I've curved the equity curve right now So yeah I guess we'll go ahead and end with this question Do you have any psychological issues that you still deal with today do I have any psychological issues today um I don't know Some people probably say "Yeah but um in trading no." Like and that's not like a cryptic way of saying like I'm depressed or something cuz I'm really not Um I've just really mastered my emotions when it comes to trading And I don't you know I could be up an an extremely large amount on a position and some people would stress about it and I'm just like it's okay So it's whatever will happen will happen Like and that is 100% my edge you know like letting it play out over time And I think that I I still like being right more than I'm wrong And that's my ego right so it's always going to be in front of me But I've learned to accept that the ego is the best and worst of me And if I get rid of it I get rid of the best versions of myself Um but I really try and put the bad versions of me in the corner in a box you know and don't let them out that much because I have the ability to revenge trade I love being in the market at the wrong times sometimes you know and I've developed models and rules that keep that Am I perfect on them no I don't profess to be perfect on them Do I remain disciplined most of the time like a good 90% of the time yeah And again that's my edge right i have a dopamine hit like anyone else Like I like getting dopamine hits Do I get a dopamine hit from trading sure Is that bad yes But it's my job and I enjoy it And I have to curve those urges to be in the market or oh this it's going without me Just leave it Just let it go I have the ability to just get in those moves and get wrecked like everyone else But I've been that guy and got wrecked like everyone else And when I'm feel that way I remind myself of all those things and I'm like this is why we don't do it like that anymore Because we would sit up till [ __ ] 2 a.m trading crypto on some random meme coin no one's ever heard of on some exchange that no one's ever heard of where I'm risking the GDP of a small country just to make my money back It's degenerate It's gambling It's not fun It's not fun in hindsight In the moment I'm chasing that money back I'm chasing that dopamine I'm revenge trading I'm doing all the things that I now don't do And I remind myself of that This stops me doing it But look I just always want to remind people I'm a human being I have emotions I mess up just like anybody else But it's the messing up and the time and the repetitions and turning up to the market every day that has allowed me to develop the weathered emotions to the storm and understand that it's all probabilities and understand I I could sit here and mark out a candle and say it's going to bounce there like I did at the open yesterday I want to see this high and I want to see his diet We didn't come back to that high all day We took it and and high of the day high of the session Okay Do do I know that for a fact no Because you could just blast through that and I don't know But like the intuition in me and my model tells me that this is max pain This is max pain That should play out Done It played out But on another day it couldn't And I accept that the probabilities there are all probabilities and I don't actually have control I can't force the market into a direction I don't have unlimited amounts of money And when you accept all of those things and accept that it's going to take time and your job is just to be part of the marathon and not sprint to the finish line like every 19-year-old millionaire on the internet that's selling you a dream It's a marathon You're in this for the long haul and if you're not you're not going to make it And that's it really Thanks for coming on We'll see each other in what greece Greece Yeah Appreciate you big dog