Chat with Traders is brought to you by Trade the Pool.
Becoming a funded trader means trading with a firm's money instead of your own.
At Trade the Pool, you first complete an evaluation by hitting profit targets while managing risk.
Once you pass, you get access to up to $260 ,000 of buying power.
You keep up to 80 % of your profits while the firm covers the risk.
It's the perfect way to trade big without risking your own funds.
Are you ready to become a funded trader?
Join Trade the Pool.
Chat with Traders is also brought to you by Tasty Trade.
Ditch those rookie trading apps.
Get TastyTrade, the platform for serious traders.
Chart with 300 plus indicators, know your profit odds, and move fast.
Trade stocks, options, futures, and more, all in one account.
See why serious traders choose TastyTrade.
Visit tastytrade .com.
TastyTrade Inc. is a registered broker dealer and FINRA, NFA, and SIPC member.
Trading in the financial markets involves a risk of loss.
Podcast episodes and other content produced by Chat with Traders are for informational or educational purposes only, and do not constitute trading or investment recommendations or advice.
We are in episode 247, and I am Tessa, your co -host of Chat with Traders.
It's been way too long, and it's about time that we have a discussion on Forex trading.
But this is not your average Forex trading discussion.
This is an episode that I am especially excited for you Forex traders out there, and for non Forex traders like myself, because I got a few important key takeaways that I didn't expect.
Today, our host, Ian, conducts an exciting interview with Jamal Adeeb.
Some Forex traders may be unaware of how stop -loss hunting and market manipulation is done.
Like many Forex traders, ex -stockbroker Jamal Adeeb experienced early losses, which compelled him to study the inner workings of Forex trading and how stop -loss orders are hunted by the smart money.
Jamal spent four years pouring over thousands of charts of different time periods and programmed his carefully back -tested algorithms resulting in him winning an international Forex competition.
He shares his enthusiasm and much wisdom of the opportunities and dangers of trading Forex and why you need an edge.
As a side note, Jamal Adeeb will be joining us in a live discussion inside the Chat with Traders community scheduled for November 16, where he and Ian will continue this lively discussion on Forex.
If you'd like to join this private online membership community, go to the Chat with Traders website and then inside the menu bar click on Community.
We hope to see you there.
Now ladies and gentlemen, without further delay, we are so pleased to present Jamal Adeeb.
Jamal I'd like to welcome you to Chat with Traders and love to find out a little bit about your background and what got you into the financial markets.
Jamal Adeeb Thank you so much, Ian.
It's a true honor to be on this podcast.
I'm very excited. My mom is German and my dad is Iranian.
That's where my name comes from.
Yeah, I grew up in Germany.
I went to high school there.
I was always a very driven person, very proactive.
I was president of the Student Council and all kinds of things.
I'd radiated from high school with a 1 .3 average, which is equivalent to an A+.
I went to study a Bachelor of Science in Economics in Maastricht and also at Whitworth University in Spokane.
I did a Master of Finance also after that at Eddyk Business School in Nice, France.
I went also to Harvard Summer School after that.
During my studies, Ian, I already did several internships at investment banks.
For example, I was at Goldman Sachs in London.
I was at Bank of America, Merrill Lynch in London.
I was also at Saal Oppenheim in Frankfurt.
To make a long story short, I did my Master thesis, which was about fractal finance.
I graduated. I worked as a stockbroker and investment manager.
Then for the last 10 years, I basically traded Forex full -time.
Both manual and automated.
To be honest, this is a great point in time for the Forex interview because as you know, Ian, the stock market is coming down as expected.
We had the crypto crash.
Some more and more people will look at Forex now, I think.
So you have experience with equities and I'm curious what led you to focus just on Forex?
That's a great question.
That's correct. When I was a broker, I was trading a lot of equities as well as options on stocks.
I liked it a lot. What happened is I started to create own Forex systems in my free time.
Back then, these systems were quite rudimentary.
If I look at what I'm doing today, it was really just some very basic statistical systems.
Not very complex. What happened as well is, Ian, there was this one client, as I remember, and he used to call now and then and place Forex trades.
I saw everybody doing all kinds of things.
Buying equities, trading ETFs, bonds, etc., options.
This particular gentleman, he was sniping, placing Forex trades and most of the time, they were also good trades.
I got hooked. I started to research myself about Forex and I really found out that this is my passion within the financial markets.
That's basically how it happened.
What could you share about what do you think the advantages or opportunities available in Forex that might not be available in the stock market?
I've heard some traders argue that, well, Forex has a very limited number of choices of what you can do and with the stock market, you have thousands of different equities you can trade and there's more opportunity for inefficiencies.
How do you respond to that?
That particular topic gets us straight into it.
That's right. On the one hand, we know that the foreign exchange markets are the world's largest financial markets.
We have to remember that the daily transaction volume in, let's say, Eurodollar can be 5 -6 trillion US dollars.
That means that if you add up all stocks in the world, we have many days where the transaction volume in Forex far exceeds the global stock markets.
It is a massive, massive market.
It's open 24 -5. It closes on Friday and opens on Sunday night.
It's very liquid. The transaction costs are low.
We have loads of movement.
When you look at those factors, Ian, all of that looks really attractive for trading, doesn't it?
You think, come on, this is really what you want if you want to actively trade a financial market.
But as we know, on the other hand, there are certain things which show us that something is off.
For example, Ian, when you look at the 10 biggest hedge funds in the world right now, you do not really find a single fund which is completely dedicated to Forex.
There may be pot -based funds which have certain teams doing Forex strategies, yes.
But we don't really have a massive fund which is specialized in trading Forex only in particular.
Why do you think that is?
That's a great question.
The answer to that is, to make a long story short, and that's what we're going to focus on today, I guess, is market manipulation.
In 2013, we still had the big FX fund, which was called FX Concepts.
It was managed by John Taylor.
And this fund, it did very well over decades.
It had 14 billion on management, so it was big.
But in 2013, it went bankrupt.
And to make a long story short, Ian, what's going on in this market?
And that's also why SPIN's traders do not want to touch it.
And they are right in that sense.
The market has a very particular structure and very particular dynamics.
I'm completely specialized in that and I hope that I can really shed some light on that today.
And the reason for the bad statistics, which we know.
For example, that over a four month period, 84 % of traders trading Forex lose.
If you increase this by another four months, we're talking more like 95 % of traders lose money in Forex.
So, you know what I mean?
These are the harsh statistics.
So, this is a bit of a fact check.
And also, as you know, you have like, I think 250 podcasts so far.
Very few on Forex, isn't it?
Yes, very few. So, you know, the reason for that is that first of all, as a price taker in this market, without specific knowledge on the Forex market structure, your chances of success are very, very low.
Because you need to understand how the so -called smart money algorithms actually operate.
What kind of principles they apply to the market every single day.
You see, like, and please also understand these kind of topics, like they are inherent to the market itself.
All the broker manipulation, for example, comes on top of that.
You see, we can talk about that later as well.
But what I'm focusing here right now is the actual price action.
Why does Eurodollar, you know, move like it does and go up and down like it does?
Why does the price action look so erratic to outsiders who do not understand that market?
You know, I can explain in detail why that is the case.
And by the way, I should also say clearly that, you know, I have been publishing a large part of my work already for four years.
So, you know, I have this YouTube channel.
You know, I have over 630 videos there, live trades, life analysis.
You know, it's called SME FX.
So you're free to go there if you want to know a bit more about all that.
But you know what I mean?
Like, you know, it's not that I'm here since yesterday.
I've actually decided already some years ago to publish that kind of work and to show the technology which we have, the charts which we have with leading information.
And you know, at this point, around a thousand people have been following my work.
And many of those have actually become good traders in their own right.
You know, they have been also using that website I created and, you know, very proud of that work.
You know, also, by the way, I'm still working on this book.
You know, maybe in the next two years I will finally finish it.
I'm so sorry. It takes a lot of time because most of the time I'm trading.
You know, trading is always my priority.
Everything else I do by the side.
But what I'm saying is, look, as a little disclaimer, I will make some big claims in this podcast.
But please understand everybody who listens to this.
First of all, there's a lot of public evidence out there.
Yeah, like the newspaper articles where you know, it's exactly explained which kind of entities got fined for Forex rigging.
You know, there's even a statement by the US Department of Justice explaining how certain entities have engaged in Forex manipulation.
So first of all, don't take this from me.
You know, if you do your research and you find a lot of content also on my channel about that, you will see that this is basically how the market works.
Also, Ian, you know, I would like to emphasize straight away, you know, one has to understand that this kind of market manipulation, or however you want to call it, is also necessary to a certain degree.
Like Forex would be different if, you know, these entities wouldn't be doing what they do.
I don't want to get too far off topic.
But you know, if you take a historical view on things, you know, and you go back decades, you can see that in all financial markets, you know, to some degree, we always had, you know, like certain things going on, you know, by market makers, you know, by the by the sell side, you know, in that in that context,
you know, and also by the way, there's not necessarily even a conflict of interest regarding the market structure, because people have to understand when we talk about the dumb money.
Yeah. If you wouldn't mind me interrupting here, just because I I'd love to get into that shortly.
I'd like to bring it back to the your background, if you wouldn't mind, and then you're in 2013.
I understand you created a your Forex firm.
Yeah. So what happened is, you know, I was still a broken investment manager.
I got to know, you know, certain people.
They were founders of a big gaming firm.
And, you know, we got to know each other and they say, are you interested in, you know, focusing on trading?
I said, sure. What happened is, you know, we actually created two funds.
One of them was supposed to be a stock and option fund, but it never really got operational.
Unfortunately, it would have made a fortune because it was just before the big bull market of the last day.
But yeah, it wasn't launched.
So we launched, however, like a small Forex fund and, you know, I started basically focusing on Forex for trading.
And at the beginning back then, you know, like it didn't go very well because, you know, all the systems I put together, they were not really consistent.
So, you know, it was at a point where I was like, oh, you know, this is not as a thought.
However, what happened then is, you know, first of all, I got to know some really good people, some really good programmers, one in particular.
I'm not sure whether he wants his name in, but we worked together and we started working on tools, you know, which analyzed certain data, for example, position data, limits data, order data, you see.
And we were really just tinkering.
It's not that we understood how this works.
You see, it's I should also really be humble and say that I was, you know, I was very motivated to get to the bottom of this.
I really wanted to understand how Forex actually works.
And as soon as we started, you know, experimenting with certain tools, we quickly realized, you know, it was like a true aha moment.
I was like, OK, wait a second.
Here we have those positions.
Here we have certain orders accumulated.
And then, you know, the move goes exactly against those positions then to the accumulation of orders on the other side.
So it didn't take long until I realized, OK, this game can be cracked.
And, you know, like we need to, you know, work hard and, you know, like really, really, you know, improve our tools and get to the bottom of this.
And that was a multi -year process, Ian.
You know, I worked like crazy, you know, like if I commit to something, I really, you know, work hard.
And that's basically what I did, you see.
And and then, you know, the more we realized what's going on, you know, the more now, I have to explain also in that context, you know, I took a very radical approach in.
I said, you know what?
First of all, I just will observe how this market structure unfolds.
You know, I will not come with any ideas or theories how it should be.
No, I will simply observe how it unfolds.
And then in the second phase, I will basically analyze what's going on.
And then in the third step, I will, you know, try to derive general rules from that.
You see, like it was really necessary because many things which I will also explain today are a bit counterintuitive.
For example, maybe we jump a bit into that, if you don't mind, Ian.
Stop hunting, you know, you wanted also to talk about stop hunting.
My understanding is that you you created you got into programming algorithms, is that correct?
Well, so no, I should be more precise.
So within the last four years, I also created fully automated strategies.
So my own trading, I goes, yes.
But but that's basically covering my automated for extending.
But regarding the creation of the market causality, this market structure technology, basically, you know, I paid other programmers to, you know, implement it, you know, to to build it.
So that once the tools were good enough and we find children everything, then I was able to formulate the complete market causality and, you know, to formulate also those principles, you know, how the mechanics actually unfold in real time.
And that, of course, then enables you to also predict price moves, you see.
So that's basically, you know, like the sequence how it works.
So so in a nutshell, to summarize, first, I really, you know, did the complete market causality.
And then at the later stage, I also developed a fully automated trading.
I was myself, you see, once you started implementing these fully automated systems, how was your return and drawdowns impacted by using these trading systems versus prior when you did things manually?
Yeah, I mean, that's an interesting question.
So regarding my own trading, I moved more and more to automated systems.
So I used to be like a fully manual trader and I still trade manually.
You know, many of my trades are documented on YouTube.
You can you can watch them where I just basically directly trade the market causality.
So I wait for certain setups.
Let's say it's a post -stop on a setup or, you know, like a squeeze move, whatever it is.
And then I traded them.
Now, when it comes to my automated trading, I basically incorporated certain principles from the market causality into those strategies.
Yes. But the strategies themselves are still kind of statistical.
You know what I mean?
So it's not that they need all the information which I use for the manual trading.
And as you can see, like maybe also in the future, another time we can also talk in detail about the automated systems, you know, how they need to be set up.
You know, it's also topic on its own.
But yeah, I mean, to answer your question.
So, you know, my my strategies in my portfolio, they all have like a great relationship between like, you know, net profit and maximal drawdown.
Like I would say is a general rule regarding these kind of trading bots.
If you can achieve, you know, like a net profit, which is two, three or four times higher than your maximal drawdown, you know, then you are on a very good way.
The next thing, of course, then is to try to limit the the length and the depth of any drawdowns.
But what you do is you have a portfolio of different strategies, of course.
And then there's also a bit of diversification across, you know, markets, timeframes, strategy styles, etc.
You know, so it's a big automated trading in is also a big passion of mine.
And, you know, I'm willing to talk a lot about it.
But maybe, you know, first we cover the causality because that's really how the market itself works.
You see. So my understanding in 2019, you won an international Forex competition.
That's correct. So, you know, that is also quite a story.
And I would argue that my whole path is quite an outlier, you know, like all the things that happened, you know, they are quite unique.
And yeah, that's correct.
You know, there was a forest competition.
I was contacted or we were invited to several locations in Europe.
There was a group of traders all doing Forex.
And yeah, there were different stages.
I think three stages.
I won this competition also because I use the market causality and, you know, that was also very, very interesting experience for sure.
Right. So do you just did you create one program within the market causality or did you create multiple programs for different market conditions?
OK, so regarding the automated strategies, the bots, I run like at least eight different ones.
So it's like a strategy portfolio.
Yes. So so these are like eight different trading strategies.
But regarding the causality, you see, that's a good chance now for for me to explain that there are like very defined set ups.
You can trade as a price taker on the buy side, you know, using the market causality that leading information.
I've defined them very clearly.
Yeah. For example, let's say there's a dumb money switch and the money goes from one side to the other.
And the major top stocks are cleared.
And you know, like the market snaps into the opposite direction and, you know, other very defined set ups.
Now, it's important to understand the market causality.
And it's not a strategy or anything.
It's how the market really is.
You know, like how you play it or how you trade it, whether you do it manually or whether you do it in an automated way.
You know, that's kind of another chapter in this context.
So also within the market causality, there are different set ups which are tradable.
Now, I have shown over the years on my channel like the set ups I successfully traded.
But, you know, there are more set ups than that.
And that's also something I've learned just in the last two years also by other traders using that and coming up with their own approaches.
You know, like there are some degrees of freedom because to be very precise, you know, they are traders.
They don't want to do day trading.
They just want to play trades every few weeks.
So they go to the higher time frames, you know, like the forward chart, the day chart.
And for example, they just wait until the money really goes significantly on one side.
They do the trade and they just ride the move, you know, like similar to traditional trend following.
And if you look at your dollar recently, for example, you know, which went down so much against the family longies or you look at dollar yen, which did the reverse, which went up so much against the shorties.
Chat with Traders is brought to you by Tasty Trade.
Tired of trading on rookie apps?
Then get the platform for serious trading.
Tasty Trade. Tasty Trade gives you the tools to trade your way.
Chart your heart out with over 300 indicators.
Know your odds with probability of profit and move fast with quick roll.
Trade what you want and trade it your way.
Stocks, options, futures, and more.
All in one account on one platform.
No wonder why serious traders choose Tasty Trade.
Visit tastytrade .com and see for yourself.
Tasty Trade Inc. is a registered broker dealer and member of FINRA, NFA, and SIPC.
Hey, I got a great update from Trade the Pool.
Now it's even easier to get funded.
As you know, Trade the Pool built a unique program to evaluate stock traders like yourself and provide you with the company's funds to trade with.
It's real shares and you no longer need to worry about the PDT rule.
But that's not all.
Trade the Pool has introduced a new tier with $20 ,000 in buying power, making it easier to pass the evaluation and speeding up the process of getting funded much faster.
You don't want to miss this opportunity.
You know, these traders, they did very well just riding the move over days and weeks, you know, because you could literally say how the money for whatever reason kept on trading on one side.
So, you know, like so that's, for example, one way of trading it.
But there are also people who love, you know, day trading and more high frequency trading.
For that, of course, you need to be more advanced, you need to have more experience and you wait for very particular set ups.
Yeah, for example, let's say, you know, like you'll see that, you know, there was a news announcement and the money goes very strongly on one side.
And, you know, the market will retest the low, let's say, against the longies.
These kind of things can be, you know, very tradable.
So you mentioned a lot about dumb money.
So we could call that ignorant money.
And so for new traders.
So what aspects of Forex trading is most challenging for new traders and how to how can we mitigate this?
Yes, that's a great question.
First of all, allow me to emphasize, Ian, yes, we say the money, but we do not mean that in any disrespecting way, because these are all very intelligent people, smart people.
But as you said yourself, they suffer from an informational disadvantage.
That's it. If we play poker now, Ian, yes.
And you have cards and I have cards on their cards on the table.
If there is a player who can see our cards and who can also decide what the next card on the table is, you know what I mean?
That creates an informational advantage for that player that makes us the dumb money and that makes that player the smart money.
So allow me, you know, to use a chance to emphasize, look, they are very, very intelligent people around the world, dedicated people.
But unfortunately, you know, by not understanding how the market structure actually works, they never have a real chance in successfully trading Forex.
You see that, by the way, that brings us back to our discussion from the beginning.
You know, that's the reason why experienced traders tend to stay away from Forex, knowing that, you know, these things are going on.
They know it intuitively.
You see what I mean?
And that also creates this complexity and difficulty regarding Forex trading.
So to answer your question regarding new traders, look, and I feel strongly about this, you do not need to study economics or read a lot of books.
I mean, the fact is, you know, that there's a massive gap between economic theory and reality.
And regarding, you know, books right now, there are no great books on the actual Forex market structure out there.
I hope I can change that at some point.
The best thing you can do and really the last thing I want this to sound like a sales pitch.
But, you know, if you would ask me, my honest answer would be, you know, watch, first of all, all the videos for my channel.
Start with the educational videos, understand all the things such as the dumb money positions, the stop hunting, how news announcements are used or abused, how there are short term games as well.
Watch all these videos, study it, try to understand it.
Then maybe watch some of the live videos to see how this can be traded.
Then, you know, like at some point, maybe subscribe to the charts first to demo trading for a few weeks minimum.
You need to get a feeling for how all these things unfold in front of your eyes, you know.
And then once you have passed all that, then you can think about, you know, going live and actually trading that.
On the Internet, there's so much wrong information.
And when you see also people's comments, you know, on Forex trading, you know, don't you see often that comment?
Yeah, it's all about discipline.
Don't you see that often?
Yes. Oh, yes, definitely.
I disagree with that.
It's not only about discipline.
Yes, you need discipline.
But it's no way enough to have discipline.
You know, you need a proven edge next to discipline.
If you do not have those two components, your chances of being successful are close to zero.
That is the reality.
And, you know, the problem is, you know, we have this industry out there which promotes, you know, all of these all these different companies, they're selling indicators, they're selling EAs, you know, they sell courses, they do whatever.
And they try to, you know, draw this picture that everybody can just, you know, go and open an account and start trading and make money.
That is not the case, you know, and that's also, by the way, why, you know, I decided to make all of this also public.
I always think, Ian, of this retired engineer, you know, who maybe has savings of two hundred three and a K, maybe more, maybe less, whatever the amount is.
He goes to the Internet, you know, he sees all these advertisements by brokers, by, you know, trade seeding companies, whatever it is.
And he thinks, come on, how difficult can it be, you know, like, how difficult can it be to, you know, create a system where my predictions are higher than 50 percent?
And these things, they end most of the time in a horrible manner.
You know, these people, they end up getting caught into this loop.
They lose all their money.
They, you know, they get frustrated.
So, question for you, have you tested out the commercially available program trading options out there?
And if you have, what are their greatest strengths and weaknesses compared to a professional Forex system, for example?
Yeah, so I have tested pretty much everything over many years, Ian.
So, you know, we're talking about ten thousands of hours.
I've tested all kinds of commercial indicators as well, commercial EAs as well.
All these things. Yeah, I mean, already a long time ago, my advice is clearly everybody listening, stay away from commercial EAs.
First of all, you know, the problem is that these trading bots, which are sold online, they show you all these great curves.
And the reality is that most of them are based on some kind of marketing system.
So they create some stable return just to completely blow up.
And I find that very, very wrong.
You know, like it's misleading people.
It always ends in a horrible manner, you know, like, and don't fall for it.
If you really are serious about automated trading, then you need to create a strategy yourself.
Nobody can do it for you.
And let me be honest here, it is a multi -year process.
You can't expect and you have to do it also in the right way.
You know what I mean?
You need tick data.
You need to incorporate a variable spread, slip pitch, commissions.
You need to test your strategy over different data sets.
You know, you need to change and adjust your strategy.
So to be honest with you, we are talking about, you know, a few thousand lines of code most likely.
And you know what I mean?
Like, it's a complex process.
Now, personally, I love that and I have done that, you know, like, and my recommendation even to purely manual traders is really to do some testing.
Even if it's not your intent to create an automated strategy or to automate a large part of your trading, you will learn so much just by actually testing several strategies, you see?
I see. So are the commercially available products out there, are they user -friendly enough for newer traders to program in different scenarios so they can test out their ideas?
Unfortunately, the general answer to that would be no.
I cannot recommend, you know, anyone to buy, you know, a commercial bot and then, you know, to just test it a few weeks on demo and then to test it live.
Because you know what?
It's also difficult to explain, but for some reason, if you do not understand every single part of such a complex strategy, for some reason also, you know, you're not in a position to know whether, for example, this is the right market condition for an automated strategy or not, you see?
Like, so I have to be very honest here and warn people because, you know, like, of course, that's what many people are trying to do, you know, they think, come on, I put down a few hundred dollars and buy, you know, some strategy, you know, online, and, you know, I can use it to trade.
So in the vast majority of cases, this will not end well.
However, of course, at the same time, I should also say I'm sure that somewhere around the world, you know, there may be one bot which is commercially available, which is not too bad.
And if somebody really, you know, invests work to understand every single component, given that the creator is willing to disclose those components that is, you know, maybe that can also work for someone.
But, you know, what I have seen so far, Ian, in the industry is not great.
And, you know, and that's also maybe one of the themes, like I'm very interested in showing reality.
I don't want to sell people any dreams.
You know, look, if you become a doctor, Ian, you have to go through so seven years of studying.
You know, after that, you have to go through all this learning as a practitioner.
Now, of course, everybody can open a trading account and play some money.
You know, it's not something where there are legal restrictions, but the complexity, especially when we talk about Forex is high.
That means to summarize that part, if you want to trade profitably, consistently, you know, you need a proven edge.
Like, for example, the market causality needs to be something very sophisticated, which actually gives you an edge.
It can't just be some simple statistical system.
Next to all, you know, the other things such as, you know, like discipline, mindset, etc., etc., that needs to be a given.
If you then dedicate yourself, you know, to really commit yourself to the Forex market, you have a chance.
And look, I'm in a position today, Ian, to say, yes, I mean, like, I have guided people through that, you know, successfully.
And, you know, like the few people who know my work, you know, some of them do very, very well.
And, you know, I'm very proud of that.
But, you know, you need to really be realistic regarding your expectations.
It's the Forex market is one of the most difficult financial markets to trade.
That's the reality.
So you would you would suggest that newer traders or people who don't have much programming experience just simply don't get involved with these commercially available program trading options.
Is that correct? That's correct.
So either really create your own strategy from scratch.
And you don't need to be able to program.
Okay. Find the programmer you like, you know, pay him to create a strategy you put together.
Otherwise, the risk is that you get caught up in the actual programming and you lose the view of the strategy itself.
You know, the big picture.
That's a big risk. And, you know, like really go down that path and create a strategy and in the best case, a handful of strategies, which, you know, are consistently profitable.
That means in which show you a good equity curve over, let's say, the last eight years, for example.
Yes. So that that can be drawn on.
Yes, they can be flat periods, all of that.
But over, let's say, the last eight years, including, you know, like variable spreads, slippage and all that the the curve needs to be stable.
If you are able to reach that, then, you know, you can demo test it, forward test it.
And if the strategy works life as it does in your testing, you have a chance that you can take the strategy life.
So can we get more specific save when we talk about dumb money and smart money?
Is there a noticeable difference between how the dumb money and the smart money put on their positions and place or stops?
Okay. That's the great question.
And the answer is yes.
It's not only a difference.
It's literally the opposite.
And maybe I start with a very simple example.
You know, like there are these principles everybody seems to believe.
For example, you buy your market, you place your own stop below the recent low.
Now, this is the worst thing you can do.
You know what I mean?
I mean, you're setting yourself up to just be short term, stop -hunted.
Yeah. So all these things, people believe, for whatever reason, tend to be completely wrong.
And that's, by the way, why the statistics are so harsh as we discussed at the beginning.
Now, let me give you a little hint already.
The dumb money tends to trade reversals.
So if you would ask me, Jamal, can you please give a very simplistic example?
I would say, well, most of the time, the dumb money tries to enter cheaply into markets.
So trade some kind of mean reversal strategy, you know, where they expect the price to go back to some kind of mean, some kind of average.
And most of the time, that results in a fake reversal and the price going further in the previous direction, cleaning out the lows and the stops which are placed there by the money buyers, and even doing so in an exaggerated fashion until, you know, like the ones who try to trade reversals again and again and again,
loose again and again and again.
I see in your videos, you show these green and red position bars, which you say represent dumb money positions.
Where can we see the smart money positions?
Okay, that's a great question.
So what you see mainly on the charts is basically the dumb money trades, their positions, their stops, the different types of stops.
We come to that in a second.
We do not directly see the smart money.
I used to have one indicator, which was actually showing certain activities by the smart money, but by reverse engineering the market, it's not even necessary to directly see the smart money, believe it or not.
All you need to do is to understand certain principles, which is, you know, like only a handful of principles, you need to understand the extra dynamics, and I would like to talk about that in a second, at least one specific example.
And you know, that's more than enough to, you know, like to avoid being stop -hunted yourself, to avoid being position -hunted, to avoid getting lured into the market and ending up with a horrible position, which in the worst case ends up blowing your account, you see?
So maybe let's talk about an example.
Ian, so yes, it's just what you see, I mean, on the 5th of September, I sent you a chart of euro -dollar on the forward timeframe, you remember?
And you could see already then that, you know, there were a lot of dumb money buyers trying to buy in the market, expecting euro -dollar to do a reversal up, and many of those guys actually placed their stops below the low, you remember?
Yes. And then when you look at the screenshot from yesterday, again, of euro -dollar, you see that it went all the way down to 0 .956.
So it actually what happened in the days in between, more and more long is kept on buying euro -dollar, and what happened?
The smart money, I was pushed euro -dollar down again and again, creating dollar strength, and then taking out all the stops until today, until like three hours ago, where we had a little bit of shorties coming to the market.
And guess what? There's a little pullback in euro -dollar right now, 0 .964, you see?
But so let's talk a bit more in detail.
Let's assume we have that scenario from the 5th of September.
Let's say, you know, it's euro -dollar.
Let's say the market is full of dumb money long is, yes?
Now, let's assume here that above the price, let's say back then 1 .01 or whatever it was, there is a big stop target.
Yeah. So like a big yellow line.
Now, a stop target.
So are we talking about how many traders have put their stops in at very similar levels?
Exactly. So let's assume it's the same market structure like on the screenshot that long is in euro -dollar, and let's just assume that above the price, you know, like let's say 40, 50 pips away, there is a big stock accumulation.
Yeah. So where a lot of stops accumulated.
Here's the thing, Ian, and that's also counterintuitive.
The smart money ego has no reason whatsoever to directly push euro -dollar up and take out the upper stock.
Because if they would do so, Ian, all these dumb money long is which are already in the market and the positions are above the price, they would temporarily get into profit, isn't it?
So, you know, like that's the reason why in such a scenario that smart money will not take out even a big stop accumulation, if that would imply that some of the dumb money positions would get into profit.
Well, wouldn't they look at the size of the longs and the size of the shorts and determine, okay, well, you know, if we push up the price, then the long is will be profitable.
But if the size of the long is is relatively small compared to the those who are short and have a big, you know, many stops at a higher level are the does a smart is a smart money tempted then to just say, okay, that's okay.
We'll we'll let some of the long is make some profit and we'll drive up the price to hit these stops forcing the shorts to cover their stops.
And if that is the case, does a smart money calculate the amount of money necessary to push up the price to trigger these stop losses?
And do they ever come into a situation where it's not really worth it.
They calculate the amount cost to push up the price and then they back away because it's too expensive.
Okay, that's an excellent comment.
And you are exactly right.
That's exactly how it is.
So that's right. Exactly like you say so and that's also where we get to a bit more advanced topic such as the dumb money tolerance.
So there is some money tolerance around the price.
Otherwise, the market would move as much as it did.
But let maybe let me give you a very good example to explain this this point, which you have talked about now because that makes it I think very clear.
Let's assume in exactly like you say, we have that money long is in the market.
Yeah, there is a stop above the price of the dumb money shorties.
Now, let's assume that we have a big news item.
Let's say us unemployment being published.
Yes. Yes. Now, guess what?
Let's say the unemployment rate is way lower than expected 2 percent lower than expected.
So what does this money do?
Would they push your dollar down against all these longies, taking them out and pricing in this, let's say, economic possibility for the outside world?
Because it looks like, come on, the dollar got stronger against the euro because unemployment in the US was lower than expected.
Therefore, you would allow went down, isn't it?
Right. That makes sense.
Now, but let's now take the opposite scenario where the news result is suddenly much worse than expected.
OK, so unemployment is suddenly 2 percent higher than expected.
So they would need to let your dollar go up and have some dollar weakness in order to price it in.
Now, in this scenario, we discussed, we said we have longies in the market.
So those longies would win.
So but we also said there's a stop above the price.
So guess what, Ian?
They go up, they quickly take the stop out, which was in the upper side, like 40, 50 pips of the shorties.
And what do they do?
And they instantly go down again.
And that's a typical price action we see these days.
And that, by the way, is the reason why you don't have news traders anymore on Forex, because the willingness, exactly like you said before, and the willingness of the smart money to either go after the diamond positions or to go, you know, after a specific stop area or to create some economic possibility,
of course, fully depends on the amount of, you know, like the money as well as, you know, the overall market structure.
It's exactly like you said.
And also what you what you said in the second sentence, it's true as well.
There are scenarios where, you know, the picture is not clear enough.
And by the way, these are the cases where we, as causality traders, stay away because we are not at par with the smart money.
Yeah, we are not ten steps behind them, like the dumb money, but we as causality traders are still two or three steps behind the smart money.
So we wait for very clear situations.
Whenever there is a scenario like the one you described where you cannot clearly see which of the factors will be prioritized by smart money, we don't risk our capital.
I see. Would it make sense for the for the dumb money to not use regular stop loss orders and just use mental stop losses?
Because by using a regular stop loss, they make their intentions known and puts a big bullseye on their forehead for the smart money to run their stops.
Unfortunately, you have the answer to that question is no, because if you do not use a stop in your trading, your downside is unlimited.
So one single move could blow your account.
You know, you have to use stops one way or another to protect the downside, you know.
But what you say, excellent that you say it because many people come to that conclusion and guess what?
That's a trap in itself because if you don't use a stop, yeah, eventually there will be some move which is so unusual.
Remember, for example, the euro Swissi and, you know, the so -called flash crash, thousands of pips in movements, etc., where you where you put your whole account at risk.
So the solution to that is not to not use stops.
However, I have to say in all fairness that why I also recently more and more promote using stops yourself and actually going for balance risk return, etc., there are people who trade the causality and they do not place the stop order in the market.
However, Ian, they are they either already place a hedge.
So let's say they want to buy you a dollar.
They already place a sell stop below the price where you know, that position will be hedged.
Or if they don't even do that, they will use very low leverage in, you know, like that's another thing.
You can you can destroy any strategy by over -leveraging.
Yeah, even even the causality, if you don't use reasonable risk parameters, you can still miss it out.
Right. I'm curious where where does the smart money hang out?
I mean, I've heard of this thing called dark pools.
Do many of their transactions and their positions, if we had access to the dark pools, could we see their positions in there?
Yes. So, yes. So first of all, think about the smart money players as some kind of cartel.
They will not trade against each other.
It wouldn't make any sense.
Similar to the prisoner's dilemma, you know, in economics, they will not end up trading against each other.
Their algorithms are aligned.
They don't need manual intervention.
This is all automated.
This is done by, you know, like programmers there.
They use certain things such as dark pools and other things I'm sure to align, you know, like the overall market -making process, let's say.
And, you know, they have price control.
And please, again, I would like to emphasize that.
Don't take it from me.
You know, I mean, I have done a video where I have summarized it and I've put together some use articles and all kinds of evidence, you see.
But I can tell you right now, if you talk to any senior professional from the industry, whether it's an investment banker, whatever, they all know exactly what's going on.
And again, allow me to emphasize once more, all of this may be necessary to a certain point, because think about it, Ian.
If you would be a market maker and you just earn the spread between the bid and ask, would you take the full price risk?
I mean, there is no perfect hedge neither.
Like it's intuitive that, you know, there is some control also on the market by certain entities, you know, which provide liquidity as it's called.
You know, if you ask me, it has never really be different also in historical terms in any financial markets, you know, like the difference is, Ian, that these days, you know, we went through a whole phase of algorithmization of automation.
That's the difference.
You know, like the market is efficient in the sense of the fact that it's a fully oiled machine and what they do works very well for them.
And it's very repetitive, you see.
And to come back to our discussion at the beginning, please, if you are novice and you listen to all that, understand this is why you need to understand how this works if you want to trade successfully.
Because otherwise you simply fall victim to those games which are plain.
As simple as that. Can retail traders ever get access to seeing dark pool activity and therefore adjusting their trading strategy?
Retail traders do not really have a chance to get access to any of that.
I mean, I offer to see my charts on the website.
You can subscribe. It's called MKWeb and you see my charts live with everything on it.
You see, that seems to be the best, the best chance they have.
And please understand again, Ian, you know, I'm a full -time trader.
I created this product because that's what I would have needed myself when I started out.
You see, if I, when I first started out at Forex, had this tool, I would have been the happiest man in the world.
It didn't exist. So, you know, I created it.
And by the way, I created that after I published, you know, these principles, because I started around four years ago, publishing screenshots and predictions and all that.
And then some people said, okay, we got it.
But can you offer something?
So I had to go back to the drawing board, you know, put together a plan to, you know, make it possible that people can see their chart and trade them.
So that was the whole process.
And it took a lot of time because, you know, as I said before, I'm trading first and foremost.
So I did that kind of by the side.
But yeah, it's completed and people can use that.
But look, I mean, the the part message here is that there is this, there's an informational advantage by these players.
If you do not put in the homework, you're easy prey, you know, and and there's no simple solution to that.
If you say, OK, you know what, I will just not use stop.
So I can't get stopped out.
What happens, you will eventually end up on the damn money side and you know, you will have a big drawdown.
And what happens then, Ian, people try to average down, they try to trade a cheaper prices and the whole downward spiral gets worse and worse and worse.
And click on subscribe so we can keep you posted of information that may be of importance.
Thank you. Now back to the chat with our guests.
Does a typical Forex trading platforms allow traders to see where all the stop losses are and at what levels?
Not really. I mean, as far as I know, the last time I checked, which is a while ago, I mean, out there, there are different commercial offerings, you know, like, you know, like there used to be like services where you could at least see, let's say some stops or something.
Unfortunately, this is not enough.
And maybe explain that because that brings us also to the next point.
Look, stops in particular.
Yes, they are important, but they are not the dominant factor as such, because guess what?
If you have a clear target above the price, yeah, let's say you have a big medium term stop accumulation.
Yes, you know that eventually it will be taken.
However, on average, I would estimate that around 8 to 10 counter moves will be implemented by the smart money, I was before they do the actual main target run.
You see, I call this pre main run counter move.
You understand? That's maybe something we should explain a bit because that's also where people can get a flavor.
And that's also where things are a little bit counterintuitive because most of us, if we see a big line on the chart, and we know, okay, the price wants to take that level, we tend to say, okay, a bite towards the line.
But no, if you want to be more sophisticated and accurate, you need to understand things such as the time and range principle.
The smart money algos, Ian, are not in a rush.
They do not need to quickly take out any stop for that matter, you see?
Like they have all the time in the world.
So what do they do?
They make sure that any of the money positions which are placed in front of that target are what I call priced in.
There are counter moves against them.
Sometimes the market goes flat for 10 hours just to make sure if there are any day traders, you know, whatever who try to trade towards the upper target, they close their position before the move.
You see? Now, it's important to understand by implementing those principles, such as the pre -main run counter principle and the time and range principle and so on, by implementing them constantly.
They make sure, Ian, that on the Darmoni side, no matter whether people bought or sold or whether they trade reversals or breakouts or pullbacks or whether they are scalping as a collective, not individually, but as a collective they lose.
You see? And that's hopefully something which is now also a realization for people listening to this because it's also counter to Ian.
No, you would say, come on.
I mean, first of all, when we look at the naked price chart, there are big trends.
There exists. There are breakouts, which are followed by a proper move.
There are reversals where the market suddenly completely changes direction.
These things exist on the naked chart.
But, you know, one has to understand how the mechanics are because the price is just the output from the market structure, not the other way around.
So just to summarize, the word stop hunting is a word that you use to describe a cartel -like action of smart money that concentrates their trades to push the price up or down to hit stop losses, which will then trigger a cascading sell off, for example, which will push the price down further and then
thereby enable the smart money to flip their positions at a profit.
Is that accurate? That's correct.
That's exactly right.
So that means that the stop targets are kind of the final phase.
These are the moves.
So the price moves towards those target levels.
They are kind of the last phase where the smart money finishes up, because first of all, market participants who have the stops at those levels, they get kicked out at a loss.
Yeah. The ones who didn't use stops, they may get over -leveraged in the worst case.
They get a margin call.
The ones who try to just hold over, they may get into a deep and long drawdown.
So that's exactly right.
We often see these days, Ian, that the market goes to the target level.
And then once, by the pit almost, the target has been cleared, they snap back up.
That's typical house key moves we see a lot these days.
This is why Forex is destroying so many simplistic systems.
The ones who try to trade trends, they get whipsawed.
The ones who try to trade reversals, they suffer from fake reversals over and over again.
You see this erratic price action, which looks very irregular to the outsider, is the result of these kinds of constellations.
As simple as that, to the point where sometimes, and again, please, watch all the videos I posted over the years, it's very repetitive.
You see these things.
Often, I could capture it on camera.
You know how the price goes exactly to the target and then snaps all the way back up once the target has been cleared.
There is no way for someone sitting at a naked price chart to cope with that, if you ask me.
Can you give us a specific example of what you look for to enter and exit from a trade?
Sure. That depends on which kind of setup I'm trading.
Let's talk about a few specific examples.
Let's talk about maybe the post -stop -on trade because this is an easier setup to trade.
That's in a situation where the market overall is rather ranging.
There is a clear target.
The target gets taken out, the price overshoots maybe a little, and then the price falls back into the range.
This can be tradable because you can see in front of you that the job is finished, the stops have been cleared, the dump money goes also to the opposite direction.
That's the other thing.
Most of the time, when you observe the causality life, you will be surprised how well the Smart Money Elgos tricks work.
They work over and over again.
Sometimes, by simply drawing a certain pattern on the chart, let's say they draw a double top.
People for some reason think a double top is a place to sell the market.
Suddenly, there's a big, strong price bar to the upside.
What looked beforehand as a double top doesn't look as a double top at all.
It looks just like some messy price action.
I see. That's a direct result of there being a lot of stop losses right above that double top for them to trigger.
If there wasn't those stop losses there, for example, or say the amount was very small, would the Smart Money say, hey, it's not really worth fooling with this here?
That's exactly the point.
That's the reason, Ian, why, of course, if you look at the historic chart, of course, you find double tops and double bottoms and Ws, of course, you find these patterns.
But like you said, exactly like you said, the only reason why these patterns then were successful is because either the Smart Money was again on the wrong side or the job has been completed, the main target has been cleared out.
You see, that's exactly right.
So now to come back to your question.
So one particular set up would be, for example, to wait and then trade the counter move after the stop one.
But let's talk about the second set up, the so -called down money switch, because right now when you look at Eurodollar, you see this nice move up.
And if you would see my charts, you would see that the down money will switch from long to short.
So within the last eight, nine hours, we suddenly have sellers, that money sellers coming into the market, the red bars.
That is the only reason why right now as we speak, Eurodollar is going up against those shorties.
Such a set up, I call it the money switch, because the money literally switches from one side to the other, can be, for example, a tradable set up.
What we typically do in those cases is we wait at least until the previous loan has been cleared, which has happened here, by the way.
So the low Eurodollar around the 0 .9566 level had been cleared.
And then the price comes back up into the range and down money sellers keep on coming into the market.
In that case, you can buy and trade the actual down money switch.
This is a second example.
But allow me to give you a third example, which is very relevant looking at the recent weeks, which is a squeeze.
And I feel very strongly about that one because people are so confused.
When you look at Dollar Yen of look at since Fed this year, it went up 3000 pips, isn't it?
Yeah, it was a big move.
You see, like they went up and up.
There were only two pullbacks.
You know, apart from that, it was like a strong move to the upside.
Now, that's a typical squeeze move.
And we actually have a separate indicator.
That's an indicator you see on the on the bottom of the chart, where the squeeze itself gets shown.
This indicator shows you overall is the dump money overall rather long or rather short?
And is it increasing in that direction?
And this is a typical squeeze move.
That means for whatever reason, Ian, the money keeps on selling to the market over weeks in this case, which is crazy.
And the price goes up.
Now, you can as a causality trader, you can trade that, but you will, of course, trade at expensive prices there.
That's something where people sometimes have a psychological barrier.
And again, it looks like counterintuitive because you see a chart, which already went from the lower left corner of your screen to the upper right.
And then you decide to buy it, you know, up that came up so much.
But you can absolutely do that if you are a causality trader.
You can enter expensively into the market and write the next time it pips up.
And then personally, also, I recommend yourself in those cases to use a clear stop just in case that, for example, there's a dump money switch or dump money leaves the market, all of a sudden, and the price actually turns, you just get out.
You understand? I see.
So on your videos, I notice that you have these position bars where you show where the smart money is and then both long and short, and then the stop levels.
Do you adjust your trading strategy such that you will wait until those stops get cleared out first?
Do you take that into consideration?
Well, I'm obviously experienced, so I also trade towards the targets.
So it allows me to elaborate.
And that's actually also a good strategy.
If you see, first of all, Ian, it's important that there are three different types of stops.
Okay, there are short -term stops, there are medium -term stops, and there are long -term stops.
On our charts, you see the medium -term stops as orange and yellow.
You see the short -term stops as blue.
And the long -term stops as pink.
To make a long story short, Ian, the most important stops, especially when it comes to actually trading those moves themselves, are the medium -term stops.
You will see, quickly, that eventually those medium -term stops get taken out, you know, after the smart money, I always did what they had to do.
You can absolutely trade those moves.
However, as I said before, you have to take into consideration that for each of those target runs, towards the target, on average, there's a number of counter moves literally to the opposite direction.
So what you can do, Ian, and you can also work with limit orders, by the way, that's very, very convenient.
You can say, you know what, I see, let's say, the cable right now, look there, medium -term stops around the 1 .072 level.
You know, eventually, the price goes there, but you know also that right now, it's not a great enterprise.
You have some shorties in the way also, and you have stops on the upper side.
So why don't you place a limit to sell, you know, let's say 50, 60 pips above the price with the target, you know, at the just a few pips above the medium -term stops.
You see what I mean?
So the causality enables you to make those kind of precise decisions.
And to answer your question again, yes, I trade it also on the live trades, a lot of medium -term stop runs.
The easiest scenarios to trade the MTS runs is within the squeeze, Ian.
That means, for example, in Eurodollar also during the last weeks, and you can see the videos I've made during that time period, you see the longies are coming into the market, you see the big medium -term stops of the longies below the price.
So you can literally short, even though it's an expensive entry, and you can place your own target just above the medium -term stop's accumulations.
And as I said before, in the best case, also your own stop in a similar distance on the upside above potential longies, because most likely if the price goes against you, it will turn again to the downside at the longie positions.
I see. So we've been talking a lot about short -term manipulation by the smart money.
And I'd like to transition the conversation to government intervention and price supporting or price suppression in the long term.
And as we saw last week, Japan's action in their markets by selling off US Treasuries and then buying their greatly weakened currency with the US dollar that they just received, was this action a surprise to you?
And do you see more of this coming by other countries that have a weak currency?
Okay, that's a great topic as well.
Okay, so let's talk about that.
Looking at USDY and the example you mentioned, here's how that works in a nutshell.
First of all, central banks, no matter which currency in general, they, of course, are concerned about currency rates when it comes to very large deviations from certain levels.
The central banks literally do not really care much about short -term moves.
So a few hundred PIPs is nothing for them.
However, as you mentioned, if we talk about the multi -thousand PIP move, and this affects whole economies and world trades, as it does, no question about it, of course the central banks eventually will do something.
However, let's take a close look at what they did exactly.
Now, when USDY went up already, I think, like 2 ,200, 2 ,300 PIPs, the Japanese central banks started to make certain comments.
So they start, like always, they start to give certain announcements and unscheduled announcements at the press, which then end up on our spot boxes, etc.
As you remember, before the last statement, they already said, oh, looking at recent forex prices, we will consider what to do monetary policy wise or how this will affect trade, etc.
Now, the reality is, first of all, it's all a little bit of a game because the central bank is aware that any comments they make in this direction can already change currency prices.
They know that very well.
In fact, there is a footnote.
There's a whole economic theory how you can manage inflation expectations, interest rate change expectations, etc.
However, as you can see what happened after they started to make those comments, shortness came in the market again.
So the market went up another good thousand PIPs up to the point where we talked about like $144, $145.
And then at those kind of price levels, they started to make stronger statements, and the market started to lose momentum.
So what I want to say, to make a long story short, is to summarize the whole case, and it's interesting you brought it up because that's a bit more advanced.
Yes, the central banks will, of course, always have in mind what the forex market is doing.
But first of all, they're certainly not concerned about short -term price movements.
In my personal opinion, Ian, they are very well aware of all these dynamics I've discussed today.
But it's not that that is something which is very important for them.
Whenever the market goes really out of line and we have serious macroeconomic consequences, like in this case, they eventually will do something.
However, let's be honest here also, at the end of the day, Ian, look, Japan with this weak yen will have a lot of exporting, you see.
So since the country is a big exporting country, it may be in the interest, even at least for a certain time period, to have a weaker currency because that can sometimes boost exports and all that, you see what I mean?
So considering that there's the distinction between policymaking entities and monetary politicians and businesses and the domestic economy and their potential to export, et cetera, like, overall, when you look at the big picture, you can see there are different interests at stake.
Yeah, yeah, that's a good description.
So wrapping up, what key advice would you give to new traders in the forex market?
OK, so first and foremost, you know, after this little insight you got today, be aware that when you're starting out as a trader and you want to focus on forex, the odds are really against you.
That's a fact. Take this as a given.
Now, if you're really, really, let's say, as crazy as me and you're as passionate about the market as me and you're willing to put in effort, yes, and to put in hours and to learn how you can trade that market and you're serious about it.
Yes, this is achievable.
OK, be realistic. You will not get rich overnight.
OK, you will not make loads of money in your first two, three years.
But if you, you know, have the discipline, which is required in this game, if you put in the hours, if you set yourself up for success by having a proven edge, you know, by having your risk management in place and all these things, it can be an amazing path for you.
OK, the potential is there.
It has certain aspects no other financial market can offer you.
OK, and if you are in control, OK, it's an awesome thing to do because, you know, like you're not just trading some small peripheral market, you know, some futures on a particular bond or whatever.
You know, you are basically kind of trading the world.
But if you want to be successful in this endeavor, be realistic.
OK, do not believe what's shown to you on the Internet.
Always understand what are the incentives of, you know, the people talking and explaining.
You know what I mean?
Like are they actual traders?
You know, what's the evidence?
You know, have they actually over a longer time period also shown how things really work or do they just want to make a quick buck?
OK, be very, very skeptical.
And then, you know, look, the upside in this journey is, first of all, you will get to know yourself on a very deep level because, believe it or not, by trying to become a successful trader, you will really understand your own self.
Psychology. You will understand your emotions, OK, your incentives.
You will understand a lot of truth about yourself because it is necessary that you know yourself very well.
Otherwise, you will make mistakes.
You will quickly lose money and you will become a victim, you know, to other market participants who are very well prepared in this game.
So be aware that whenever you click the button in Forex, you made a decision where you are very confident that this risk you took on that trade is worth it.
And other institutions around the world and brilliant minds around the world will be beaten eventually by that decision you made.
And since, you know, since it's very necessary to be very humble as a trader, you know, that's by the way, as you know, better than me, all the good traders, they are nice people.
They're very humble.
They can't afford to be arrogant.
You cannot afford to be arrogant or ignorant in this game.
Stop, you know, coming with ideas or expectations or theories through the game.
Stop it. Take reality as it is.
OK, try to become the best decision maker you can be.
OK, have realistic expectations.
Do your homework. I mean, I could show you on my screen now.
For years, Ian, I have made screenshots from every single market.
Sometimes, you know, every few hours, I have thousands, 10 ,000 of screenshots.
In order to come to this stage today, I had to go through a very long process.
It was a lot of pain, let me be honest.
But you know, look, by documenting these factors, I was able in the end, by never giving up, to come to this position today, where, you know, I can give you that information firsthand.
And, you know, that's the reason also why I was really excited to be on your show today.
Thank you very much for coming on the show, Jamal.
How can our listeners get in touch with you?
Yeah. So if you are interested in that kind of stuff, you know, my YouTube channel is called SME -FX.
I still do, like, you know, some live updates there.
I don't do so much live trading anymore these days, but, you know, on a regular basis, I still post videos there.
The website is www .sme -fx .com.
So there, you know, there's also a forum.
You can talk to others who have, you know, learned to become causality traders.
You can consider to subscribe to, you know, like the screenshots and all that.
I'm very honored I was able to be on the podcast.
Keep on doing what you're doing, guys.
It's great. You know, I really appreciate your efforts, you know, to talk to traders around the world.
It's so interesting.
I've been listening to your podcasts for quite some years.
And it's, you know, even if there's some trader who trades a different market, it's always interesting to, you know, get insights regarding their methods, their thoughts.
So what you're doing is fantastic.
You know, it's probably the modern equivalent to Jack Schwager's market wizards.
Well, great. Thank you very much, Jamal.
Looking forward to talking with you again soon.
You've reached the end of this episode of Chat with Traders.
But rest assured, there are more episodes loaded with real market insight and zero hype on the way soon.
So to stay updated with each great new release, subscribe to the podcast and iTunes.
And we'd love it if you'd leave a rating and review.
We'll catch you next time on Chat with Traders.
Thank you. Thank you.
