@Alex Douedari Trading Chat
Hi guys. Welcome. I'm here with Alex and this is another chat with traders, Alex, if you can please introduce yourself, that would be fantastic. Sure. So hi everybody.
My name is Alex Douedari . Um, I've been in trading for, I would say over 15 years by now. And, um, Over the course of my career. I've been on different sides in the industry. I, I worked for a private bank in Germany. I worked for a hedge fund in Switzerland. I've won some, um, investing awards over the time and, um, I've run or am running a mentorship as well.
So I'm really been all over the whole spectrum of where you could be, uh, what has to do with trading. And I'm very glad to be here today with you. And you have a YouTube channel as well, right? That's right. It's basically, my name is Alex and I shared a channel, you know, like, um, a couple of my, of my learnings, um, in my mentorship, I tried to focus that's to say a lot of people try to. Um, yeah.
Uh, teach people one certain trading method. And that's not really my approach because if I had to think of what was the one thing that kept me afloat over almost two decades by now, it's the ability to strategize to come up with strategies, to see things in the market. To prove them right.
To prove them wrong, to create methods around them, to be able to spot them myself and do them. So I focus on strategy development. I teach people how to develop their own trading strategy with all the details about it. And of course I helped them out with like a pre-prepared strategy so they can have a starting point. Fantastic.
And my name is David Jaffee. I run the YouTube channel, youtube.com/beststockstrategy. I will link to Alex's channel by channel as well. And, um, yeah, let's get started so early. Um, you just spoke about that you help individual traders and you customize a trading strategy. And can you discuss some of the more popular trading strategies? That, um, that you found to be successful for many of your students.
Yeah. So look, I think, um, especially when it comes to retail trading, there are a lot of myths out there, you know, like just trade, simple technical analysis kind of thing, and you'll be fine, you know? Um, in reality that's absolutely not true on the contrary, you know, like, um, when you trade in a market, especially as a retail client, you're basically trading. The broker, the liquidity providers, the market makers, um, and they know that you are looking at certain levels or certain patterns. And so, and they are very happy to push. Over your stops or whatever, in order to really, you know, collect you.
So what I found to be quite well as that you need to add certain, um, um, layers to your strategy that are not just, um, on the visual side of things, you know, just not just like a, um, uh, a descending triangle or any of these things. Um, Trend trading against the sentiment has been, I think one of the most popular things, we, we have a tool it's called the prime market terminal, where we aggregate, um, and number of sentiments sources so that you could see where's the majority in the market actually positioned. And when you have that information and then you combine it with things like, um, you know, a certain, um, uh, technical pattern, one that you have a statistical, um, you know, relevance for that you have. Researched and actually back-tested many times. And then you also add obviously sound risk management, which means like the risk reward ratio and these kinds of things.
Then you have a much higher chance of winning. So I found as soon as students start to combine these kind of, um, and it's just called them pillars, they have a much higher chance of succeeding. And can you briefly touch upon the difference between retail trading and institutional trade? Yeah, because, okay, so I'm a retail trader. Let's just call us like you and me.
Like everybody else, we sit on our own, let's just say computer and we're not. Um, and we try to trick the chart in a way, right. Um, an institutional trader has different, um, um, he sees more because a lot of institutional traders. The flow that they get from their own customers, you know, from like banks and hedge funds, they buy flow from, from other sources.
So they can see where are people actually in the market? What are they doing? And then they, um, they work off this information and they either provide them liquidity themselves. They are market makers, they meet, it means they take on the other side of the trade. Um, and they, they work with, with that information that we don't see at all. So basically in this situation, Or a market maker is trading against the retail traders a lot more.
And the retail trader thinks he's trading against the chart, which in reality, he's just being, I dunno, like pushed around, played around with, with the guys that see the little guy, what he's doing. Yeah. From my experience, uh, retail traders is very similar to what Alex just said. Um, they have a tendency to be more directional, whereas institutional traders are essentially. Risk-free quote, unquote, market makers or transactional traders where they're matching up bid-ask spread differentials and profit. Exactly like a hundredth of a penny.
And they're essentially making money based upon volume. And we're talking about hundreds of millions of shares. Um, now it is true that some investment banks do have a proprietary trading, you know, and those, those, um, those groups do have a tendency to be more directional or use different transact or, uh, use different strategies. But if you've heard that.
Like Goldman Sachs making, um, making money, like 300 consecutive days. The reason is that they're not really taking much risk because they're essentially just matching up order flow and profiting like a hundredth of a penny for, um, you know, every transaction or wherever, ER, sponsorship. Just, if you think about that from, from a very simple perspective, um, in the retail space and that's, uh, um, let's just say a metric that a lot of people like to ignore, even though they see it at every risk disclaimer for brokerages that most people lose. And there's kind of the saying that 90% of people lose 90% of their money in 90 days.
Um, and, um, you know, when you are, when you aggregate client. The F the one thing that you make money on already is that you have a lot of buyers. You have a lot of silos, you know, and, and you consolidate them and you don't send every trait to the market. You make already on the sprints, you know, because the clients are paying the spread, but you are internalizing those spreads. You are basically to market to those clients as a market maker.
So you already make money from the spreads of the clients already. And I think a lot of people underestimate. How much spreads and trading costs actually make up for their own losses. Um, typically it's really more than about two thirds. You know, people think they lose just by the trades, but they lose a lot food, the spread costs and, and these kinds of, um, um, uh, let's just say, um, this is the reality of what people lose a lot more with than just the directional.
And that's another reason why retail traders, in my opinion, should really strive to trade very high liquid underlines with very tight bid-ask spread differential. Because if you have something that has limited liquidity, then you can. Sell it for you, or you can buy it for X amount and then you can immediately turn around and sell it and you'll get like five or 10 cents or sometimes 20 cents less just predicated upon the bid-ask spread differential and the narrow markets. So trying to target something that has very liquid and deep markets is beneficial over a trading, something that's very thinly.
Yeah, especially also from, um, from a perspective of execution quality, you know, and it's not just a spread, but if you trade something that is more illiquid than what your slippage is as well, that's something that people also don't pay attention to. You make a trade, you don't get the price that you actually wanted to trade. A lot of retail traders also use.
To unsophisticated order types, they work with market orders. You know, you want to, if you work with a market order, you're going to get executed at a much different price than when you actually wanted to trade. Whereas if you use, uh, like limit orders or even when you use, um, algorithmic trading with an API, and then you can do like, like instant or cancel and you can very clearly define the price that you want to trade or not be executed at all.
And that is a level of sophistication that you need to grow into. If you really take trading. Yeah. And I think if I recall about two to three years ago, Robin hood actually got in trouble because they were trying to profit more from market orders and they were giving them less advantageous pricing. So I think a big takeaway from this. Um, use limit orders because therefore you're guaranteed to get the limit price or better.
However, I will say that if you're going, if you're watching this right now, and you're thinking that the market makers are evil or that investment banks are evil. That without them, you would not have the liquidity. Additionally, just the past 10 years trading prices in transactional prices have decreased by about 90%. So we're really splitting pennies here, like 10 years ago. If you wanted to Tre like one option contract, or even if you want.
A few, like a hundred shares. It would probably cost you about $10. That same trade is now costing you about 50 cents. And oftentimes it's free and all you're paying or the exchange fee.
So we really things have gotten significantly better. And the profit for these banks and for, um, you know, for a lot of these market makers are really like tense or 100 years or 170. I think you mentioned something very important here also because obviously trading has a big aspect that has to do with a psychology, right? And if you point fingers at something, someone, the market, the bad market makers, the whoever, then you're basically, you've decided that you want to lose because you, if you want to win in trading, you have to take responsibility.
And that means instead of condemning or judging, the environment is working. The reality, not, not, you know, when you know these things, you know, um, like how, how market makers work that market orders have a different type of risk profile than limit orders. Um, that a general market makers are not there to, you know, they're not like a, a doctor evil or something, but they they're, they're in it like you for the money. You know, um, then, then you work with these things, you know, like when you go into the jungle, you also take precautions to not, uh, I don't know, get eaten by my something, you know? So, um, it's really about not, um, condemning or judging these things, but to see them for what they are.
And this is where I think, um, a lot of, um, I would say. If we speak used the word evil and the training industry is not really the market makers. It's the affiliates out there is these educators, these, these, um, signal providers, these people that tell you trading is super easy.
All you gotta do is follow my simple. Uh, yeah, uh, yeah, ideas and it's going to work and those people make money off their kinds of losses, basically in a way. Um, and I think also if you want to win in trading, you'll have to go through the experience to get slapped in the face, to lose, and then to wake up and understand like, okay, wait a minute.
What can I do differently? What do I have to do differently if I want to make this work? So I it's very great that you actually mentioned that David. We're not saying that we're, I'm also definitely me. I'm not saying that as well, in order to point fingers at something, I just want to give people the opportunity to wake up to the reality of things so they can make better choices. Yeah, I think that's a great point.
I think in general, that people who are successful, they believe that they are an absolute control over their situation at all times. And even if something happens to them, then they assume absolute responsibility and they don't believe that the victim, they don't point the finger at someone else. So they, if someone hit their car or they got into a car accident and it wasn't their fault to use a bad example.
They don't blame the other person, or they don't think that the world is out to get them. And they, instead they think, okay, this bad thing happened to me while, how am I going to react? How can I recapture control of this situation? So, and I also think that look, human beings in general, they inherently want to point fingers at someone else because they want. That if it's someone else's fault, then it absolves them of responsibility to take ownership and therefore anything that happens after that is no longer their fault. So I would definitely encourage you if you're watching this, that regardless of the mentality or the Headspace that you're in to take absolute responsibility and ownership over your situation and not to blame anyone else it's about possible to win in life, not just the trading without the accountability. That's basically my personal to.
Yeah, I definitely agree there. Now I've watched a lot of your videos and you mentioned distinctly trading strategy with a positive expectancy. Can you touch upon that? Yeah, so, um, If you trying to trade, um, a certain combination of patterns or rules or something that you've, um, um, constructed in your mind, then what you need to do is you need to analyze that over the past. You know, it doesn't mean like, as the disclaimer always says, you know, like past performance doesn't guarantee future performance, but you'll have to look. Um, how did this method work in the past? You know, um, how, how, what is the statistics, the metrics of that method? A hundred attempt to trade a thousand attempted trades, maybe how much does it differ? How well has it worked in the last three months compared to last six months? Um, because what you want to know is that, um, is the net the result of what I'm trying to do positive or not.
And for example, um, positive expectancy means like, if you take all your. Um, and you divide them by the number of the trades and you look at how much pips you made, basically that number needs to be positive. That means that then the average, your trade needs to be, um, or needs to have a positive result.
Um, let's just say you make very, very little with every trade and it works great on the last 50 trades that you back desk, and then you back us the last hundred trades or 150 trades, and then suddenly you end up in a little negative, then it means that your strategy is very, very, you know, like, um, the, the, the potential for profit is very, very small and what you cannot control is which market condition you're going to face in the future. So if. If you strategize and build your strategy to thin the probability that it may actually not succeed and end up being negative that's spite, you thought it was positive for a certain amount of sample data. Um, yeah, that's, that's the challenge that as a trader, we really need to do.
And I really think as a trader you're, you're a researcher of your own data and ideally. Because that's the next thing. When you trade you contextualize what you see and how you react with yourself in a way, you know, like you and I, we look at the chart, we don't see the same thing.
We don't feel the same thing. We don't react in the same way. And that consistency is not just you and I, that consistency. These even me with. From trade to trade.
So the more I train myself for the exact rule set or, or strategy that I'm trying to trade. And the more I know what a typical result of that trade should look like and what a bad example of a trade looks like, or the longest losing streak or things of that nature, the more I can really build confidence in executing it accurately. Now I got a little bit overboard with the question, but, um, that's essentially what, what, um, what I would add. And in general for your students to build a strategy that has positive expectancy, you will build in certain technical analysis indicators.
Um, yes and no, like, um, I don't necessarily tell my students exactly which indicator they must or must not use. Um, I give them examples. What I tell them is that, um, you need to decide what is your trigger? How do you. When and why it, how do you define it? Can you spot it again? You know, um, if we go on a chart last year, can you find exactly the same thing? You know what I mean? Like I tried to help them to, first of all, have a clear framework of what it is that they're looking for to check the boxes of what they required to pay attention to, um, you know, risk award entry. Um, all of these things and, um, then they, they build around it, then they see, okay, where is it struggling? Um, is it rather a ranging strategy? Is it rather a trending strategy? How do we, how can I find out is the market rather trending? Is the market rather ranging? Um, because arranging strategy will definitely not work in a trend and a trending strategy will definitely news and arranging market. So, um, it's very important that.
Understand what it is that you're trying to do. You don't like if you go to the desert, um, with a race car, you're not going to get anywhere. And if you go with a, um, with a desert deep in, on a race track, you're going to be the last one, you know? So it's really, you need to understand the environment that you in, um, and build your tools around that and understand your tools and create statistical improve for that and train yourself on doing that in order to have a chance to win. What are your thoughts about selling options? Um, it's um, my thoughts about that iStat, it's a, it's a completely own type of trading. It's a completely own type of strategy.
You know, people, people think like covered calls are just like a simple, easy way to make money, but how, how do you, how do you define the levels? How do you, you know, what risk are you taking? I using leverage. All these things are very important. So my answer would be, I don't really have a positive or a negative opinion about options or any strategy, unless you can make it work for yourself.
And you can create all the evidence that we talked about in your testing, in your development process. Um, because look, I didn't fall from the sky knowing every method in the world that works and not you don't, nobody did so, um, options can work, but for most people, they are a tool for gambling. Now I think, um, yeah. So when selling options, I think that the, it does definitely give you a positive expectancy of the problem falls in the tail risk.
And typically people have especially traders that have a tendency to trade too large. So, so you end up winning over 90% of your trades, and then you hit a situation where you run out of buying power because. One stock, um, you know, the, the move is far outside, the expected move, and then it uses up all your buying power. I mean, you're forced to close out the position for a while. And then two weeks later, that same stock that you closed out is now trading above your strike price. So I think that if you are able to potentially buy options, especially during times of like low volatility.
So you're buying that insurance, then he could protect you against the volatility expansion event. And, um, I also like to you trade the option, order to be called, or do you trade the option of. Um, you know, to, to, to hit the level you don't want to, or to trade above that ever. So it's also, there's trading options is the whole own ballgame, you know, and, and I agree that you can definitely add it to your, to your risk handling. And also again, depending on the market phase, you know, like in certain market phases, it will not really make sense to add any option layer of complexity and risk.
And, uh, but which market phase or what kind of options and how you. That's exactly what I encourage people to really delve into. A lot of people have very little patience and, and, and, uh, um, you know, what's funny is that trading somewhat became very much cultured by now.
Okay. Kids grow up, want to be traders, like they used to be rappers, I guess, in a way, some of them at least. Um, but it's, it's not that easy, you know, there's, there's a lot of work if you want to succeed in trading, like wanting to succeed in the NBA and the NFL, it's like constant daily training for a number of years. So, and only then you can, you can.
Have a chance of really finding what are you good at? Some people are really, really good at, at them defining levels, trading options like that. And others are really good in the daily, you know, um, intraday kind of thing. So what are you, you know, who are you, what are you good at? Um, those, I would encourage people to really put more attention to and also enjoy more the process of finding. I think the problem is that human beings inherently want to take shortcuts.
And then when they log on to YouTube and they see videos where someone turned 10 cents or 10 pennies into 10 Lambos or $500 into $50,000, they think that it's easy. And then the content creator is making a seem easy. And oftentimes, unfortunately, especially with like, They actually charged them for the education.
They aggregate them in like a discord chat. They buy a low float stock beforehand, and then they pump it up to their followers and then they sell it to them at an inflated price. So not only do they charge them for worthless education, but then they actually facilitate. Um, and so it's on, I think it's, and this, uh, I, I really enjoyed this conversation.
It's I think it's on, on those educators out there and traders out there that are, um, not part of the scheme. Let's just put it to communicate these realities, you know? If you will know that all these, um, you tubers that are, you know, with the grape, um, uh, thumbnails and stuff that they're basically make how they make their money, people would more understand how they make their. No, I wouldn't trust him anymore, you know, and then they would know that this is, um, and I think actually, um, that this is going to happen.
It's going to take more time, you know, like how long does trading actually exist in a, in a culture perspective? You know? Um, I think it may be 10, 20 years from now. Every kid that knows about markets. We'll know that, um, I think this one, today's like a very big thing, like being this influencer type of financial, um, uh, scammer, I guess, sorry for the word. Um, it's going to be too much of a known scheme by then for people to continue to fall for it in the extent they are today. Yeah.
Unfortunately, I, I wish you're not so helpful yet primarily because I don't believe that human nature is going to change. Uh, even with, with education, I think that, you know, you do have people like coffee, Zilla and Spencer Cornelia who come out and they expose these guys, but there's always going to be a subset of people, or we're going to think that they're special. If you have. You know, a hundred people, if they're better than average drivers, then probably 70 to 75% of them are going to indicate that they are, there's just psychological biases that are inherent in human nature. And I think that people are going to want to make money.
Additionally, going back to what you, you spoke about earlier. You do have affiliates who make it seem like it is extremely easy for day traders to make a lot of money. And then oftentimes you have the day trader themselves showing like large gains. That they essentially took from, you know, quote, unquote stealing or facilitating or transferring that wealth from their subscribers. So the subscribers watch that, see the gains from the, from like the YouTuber or like the, the head trader quote unquote. And then they think that, that they can buck the trend and not be part of that 90, 90, 90 club who said they want to be part of like the few percent that actually makes money.
But, um, I agree with what you say. Um, I'm just an inherent optimist. I have to say that because, um, I've been at a number of crossroads in my life. In theory, there was no way out or no way back to, to making it more or less.
And I essentially managed to maneuver myself into, um, success in one, one way or another by continuing to be not, not naive. There's a difference between naivety and our being optimistic, right? An optimist is someone that doesn't expect the bad, but also understands the complexity and the reality of the difficult. And naive and naive person, and that it's just positive. You don't like the secret. That's all just be happy and get rich overnight by doing nothing. Um, that, that, that doesn't get anywhere, just actually invites people to take advantage of you.
And this is what most people end up being in the, in the financial industry. What most, most clients, most. Um, yeah, but I also want to be the reason I say that, sorry. Uh, I want to encourage people.
I don't want to like, like, make it sound like a trading. Is this, this very bad thing that, that, um, nobody should ever do? I think there's, it's a great thing. You know, you develop you it's, um, it's basically a catalyst for personal growth for independence, um, for, for critical thinking for, um, you know, all these things. I wouldn't even say make you stronger and better as a human being, you know, um, if you don't approach it from the perspective of just, you know, making money overnight, get rich Lambos. Yeah. I definitely agree in, um, yeah. I also believe that trading is great for decision-making.
I'm also not necessarily a proponent of like the toxic positivity, because that type of stuff actually invalidates. Um, other people who might not be feeling so positive and it makes people feel uncomfortable speaking to you, if they believe that you're not idealistic or objective in your feelings, um, what are, um, now I know that you've also mentioned in some of your videos about reducing risk as your account grows. Can you touch upon that as well? The importance of reducing risk? Yeah.
I mean, um, I mean, everybody should know there's relative values and then there's absolute values, right? Um, if you, if you flipping your hundred dollar account and it's quite difficult to apply a, um, a very, very small risk simply for the trade sizes that you have to trade, like, for example, in, for. Typically the smallest rate side is 0.01 lot, which is a thousands of unit of accounts. You know, um, if your account is a hundred bucks, that's at the very minimum, attend to one trade that you're taking with every single trade now, as your account grows.
So, you know, now you have a hundred grand or maybe a million. You're not going to take a 10 million trade on a million dollar account because you don't, you cannot, you don't want to burn the 1 million account and you don't need to make that. But that's also a misconception.
People think they need to flip accounts overnight or even per year, or, or make, um, you know, hundreds of percentages over the year. And I think that's inherently wrong. If you have a million dollars that you can work off, it's like your. If you were a company that sells a product, your money is your stock, basically in the warehouse. So you need to protect it. You need to use it to, to make money with it.
If you just, you know, burn it, then you're just gonna lose, you know, and that's very important that you understand, um, uh, from, from a certain size on the percentage of games. I would say is less important than a lot more, you know, if you make, um, uh, if you make 10 grand a month from a million dollars, then you fantastic, you know, in a way, you know, and you just make 10%, just 10% a year, you didn't beat the S and P oh my God. You know, you're so bad. No, you're not actually you're living an independent life and you're growing more and more and more, you know? And, uh, so I think that, um, Um, completely underestimate that or, or, or seem to ignore that perspective, that it's very important to differentiate between relative values and absolute values.
You know, if I'm making enough money to sustain my life without taking stupid risks on my capital, um, even when you lose. Uh, you don't lose too much that you cannot stand up to fight another day again, you know, like if you, if you, what people also underestimate, there's this nice little table that everybody should know. If you lose 50% of your account, you need to make a hundred percent.
You need to double your account to get back to where you are and people just lose the risk, 50% of their accounts, you know, and, and that's something as you have a larger account, you're, you're less and less and less prepared to do, you know, Yeah, I definitely agree. I think that if you're younger and you have a smaller account, You're also in all likelihood, you're probably more risk seeking as younger people have a tendency to do more risk seeking. And then if you have a $5,000 account and you want to learn and you end up like blowing up your account, it's not the end of the world. Like, is it going to stay in? Yes.
But in hindsight it might actually be beneficial to you because you might actually learn that trading is not a game and that you need to make sure you protect your capital. If you're a little bit older and you have. A lot of money then you definitely don't want to, uh, you definitely don't want to lose that money. And also you want to mitigate portfolio volatility.
I definitely think that mitigating portfolio volatility is extremely, extremely important. And even if that means that you're potentially costing yourself a little bit of upside, I think that it's definitely worthwhile to protect your capital at all costs and mitigate that portfolio volatility. The other thing.
I think it's vital to make sure that you reduce the stress that goes along with trading losses, because. If you do experience a situation where you lose a lot of money, then maybe it starts impacting your sleep or your relationships. And I don't really see many people talking about surely it will not maybe surely will, you know, I think we should, we should really call it for what it is. You're not at your right mind if you get punched in the face like that, you know? Um, it's like Mike Tyson said, you know, everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face, you know, and if you get punched.
Then you're not in your right mind anymore. You're afraid to execute your strategy, that you were so confident about just a moments ago, more or less or days ago. So that's also part of, of being able to continue to be successful is that you don't put yourself in that psychologically weak state.
And that is completely on you, your responsibility to not maneuver yourself into that by grief and. Yeah, I definitely agree with that. Can we shift gears a little bit and talk about your hedge fund experience and some of the pressures you experienced while running a hedge? Yeah.
Um, like when you, or in general, when you manage other people's money, there's another layer of, of, um, pressure or expectancy from others from outside on you. And, um, you may, you know, when everything's great, everything's great. You're, everybody's starting, you know, you make money and everybody's happy. Um, and, and, but when the market, you know, starts to become sometimes a bit difficult or you're not as profitable for a certain phase, which by the way, happens to every trader to every strategy, no single trader or strategy works all the time.
Then you start to, um, you know, get caught, you get, um, pressure, you get like, um, all these influences from the outside that are actually. Detrimental to again, to your psychological state, to your ability to perform. And this is also at some point why I got out of that game. Not because it couldn't handle the stress or any of that. It's just like guys, I'm, I'm not a tool for, for people with capital, you know? Um, once I made money enough for myself to be independent, That's exactly what I took from life. You know, I didn't see myself become this corporate money manager for some other dudes more or less, but, um, I got out of it for, for them to walk life in my own pace in a way, you know? And so I really think that the stresses and the pressures in the, in the professional financial industry, they, they also, um, I mean, okay.
That's a judgment from my side. I wouldn't, I don't know if it's completely true. I mean, everybody needs to decide for themselves. We'll find out for themselves.
It encourages people to find ways to make money that, um, Somehow involves other people to news money, you know? And, uh, and, and that's something that also, I wasn't a, it's not what I like to do. It's not what I like to be. It's not what I like to spend my life with.
And, uh, so in short, the answer to your question is that there are a lot of added pressures and expectancies from powerful people in the space that, um, take away the, um, uh, what, what trading is, is outside of that space, you know, and, um, There probably are of people watching this video who are interested in starting their own hedge fund. Can you talk about your experiences raising capital? Yeah. So, um, first of all, and then I think people, a lot of people got this thing backwards. Um, they want to raise money first and then. Figure out what they do with their money, basically.
Um, first of all, they're not likely to be successful with that because people that give money, professional money givers, they want to have a track record. They want to understand what are you doing? What is your strategy? What is your, so I would recommend to anyone who wants to get into the game of managing money or scaling up his own game, you know, by managing bigger amounts of money is to have. Um, that first you need to have a certain track record, you know, at least at the very least, a couple months, half a years, like literally nothing. This is where things start.
Um, ideally. I thought it was like, yeah, just in general. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Well, look, it depends on, on, on, uh, on the, um, the size of the, of the, of the investors that you're looking to attract, you know? Um, but yes, you're right. Certain, certain M capital sizes. They would never allocate money to anything. If there's not at least three years over success record. And that consistency is already something that a lot of people that want to get into trading, they never actually get to that place of building that.
Um, so you should, if you want to attract capital or build a business that manages money and you need to prove that you can manage money. And that is the part that a lot of people. Seem to ignore. So, and the racing part as to what tactics you're using in order to, to raise money, sales tactics, or whatever, um, you know, a straight line persuasion or whatever stance you want to use.
Um, those are. Secondary in my opinion, uh, because at the end of the day, if you have a good product, you have an audit to track record, you know, like as you grow your track record, go and find, um, uh, um, even go tool to one of the big KPMGs whatever, and have your results, audited and verified, um, or in four X use at very least my effects poker public one, um, that is also verifying your MetaTrader record. To be accurate and true so that you can, you can really build a verifiable record.
And then, um, when you attract, uh, when you approach people, it's very simple. Actually there's a lot of a hedge fund registry. The Barclay has, um, just even, even social media. There's a lot of social trading abilities these days. Did it didn't exist at the time when, when I was involved in this space, you know, um, you could even raise money from, from retail clients, tens of thousands of them, if you want, you know, um, well, I think now in the us, you can manage about $25 million without even having to record. Yeah.
And, and, you know, and so, so, um, but the really the way to get there is not that there is any magic ingredient of how you raise that money. It's the quality of your product and the quality of your product as shown by your track record and by your reliability to reproduce results, following a certain method and not a gambling. I definitely agree. What are your thoughts about using like a hedge fund incubators or things of that nature? Um, it as in like, um, what do you mean? I think, uh, I saw this guy, like a Bridger Pennington or something like that.
Like he advertises on YouTube and, um, I don't know if you're, uh, I think, I don't know this particular guy. I think, you know, I know what you mean. Like people that charge money for that, you mean, um, to, to basically. They, maybe they work. I haven't ever seen any one of those guys get anyone, any money personally, you know, like, uh, no offense. I'm not, I'm not saying that those guys don't, but I personally have not seen, this is just a business for them.
Like affiliates, sell trading signals, those guys sell the dream of allocating money. And do you think in the future that you might go back to operating a hedge fund or do you think that stopped for you? Actually, it's an interesting question that you would ask me that, um, the answer is yes. However, Probably not in a traditional finance space. Um, um, I'm a lot more, um, involved in, in the defy space recently or for the last couple of years. Why do I like that? Because let's just say, if you are at defy is like being able to participate in the infrastructure, like, like market makers, like liquidity providers, these kinds of things, you know, Um, you can provide liquidity to a pool so that people can swap one token with another. You provide the liquidity and you make a fee from the swaps that people actually do.
Now, then you have other risks. If you have different tokens, you have to stay called in permanent loss. You know where the price of a token may change while you were in the pool and you need to mitigate that risk by hedging it out with other, um, um, let's just say derivatives or whatever.
So those are kind of strategies. Kind of reactivated my hunger to, to offer that as trading strategies to, to the world again. So, um, I'm actually in the process of finding out in which shape or form I may or may not do this. Um, so I guess the short answer is actually yes, unexpectedly, but in, in a newer, more decentralized accessible, fairer space.
And, um, from my, from what I gathered, you're pretty, well-traveled like currently I believe you're in Dubai and you spend a lot of time in Europe. Can you talk about some of your experiences traveling and potentially like mitigating taxes or some of the, some of your favorite places that you've lived or that you yeah. Um, like from a tax perspective, I'm sorry. I'm I can't really, you know, I'm not, I'm not an expert on any of that at the end of the day, wherever you have your life, wherever you live, you got to obey to the local rules, you know? Um, and, uh, but the reason I travel is really, um, You know, to meet other people like Dubai, for example, this is, uh, from the outside, it looks like very posh, very shiny, whatever.
And, um, it, and in fact there's a lot of not so great things in Dubai as well. However, there's also a number of very forward-thinking new type of, um, um, young entrepreneurs, um, spirits here, and people that is great to connect with that is great to take. You know, um, uh, impressions from, so I think traveling mostly helped me to, to be that, to continue to, um, find interesting and more interested thing in life, because, um, if you settle, quote, unquote, you kinda close up right. For, for what is possible, but if you're always going around and you're looking for new things and you get new impressions and, um, and you're not like.
Married to your own comfortable, comfortable space. I guess then that is I think, helpful to always develop into new things. And like I said, initially on this course that if I had to name one thing that made me successful in life, it's exactly.
Always be developing, you know, I may trade something completely different as I am, actually than what I did five or 10 years ago. Um, and living in a different place, you know, having different people that I work with. And I think that this whole traveling thing or the openness to. The whatever is out there in the world, such a big place, you know, you could be going into like posh spaces, like the bio, you could go to very, you know, uh, downturn spaces like, like Bali, for example.
And there was a lot of, um, this internet world has opened so much opportunity to literally everyone. Um, that I'm really a supporter of this lifestyle personally. I just, I just, uh, I, I enjoy it.
What are some other places that you visited that you've really. Um, well, um, personally, like, first of all, I'm from Berlin, you know, I'm from Germany, Berlin. That's my, my, where I come from. So I would definitely recommend anyone. Who's never been there to at least go and have a look at the city. Um, uh, I, I I'm, I'm a fan of the Mediterranean, Cypress is a great place in order to, there's a lot of Forex business actually out there.
Those are more, as we established more casinos than financial providers. Um, then, um, Dubai's a great place. I've I haven't been for example, in Singapore or like more in Asia yet, which, um, One thing or China, which I'm really interested to go and see also, because obviously it's such a dynamically evolving, um, um, uh, a part of the world.
So, um, then also, um, in the U S obviously I still enjoy, like, I am not anyone who hasn't been. New York, um, Los Angeles, uh, um, down south Florida, these kind of thing. I would really encourage people to go and see the world for and connect with people for the impressions, you know, find out what you click with against like really trying multiple trading strategies.
You know, maybe the time zone fits you better than others. Maybe the weather. And some places you feel the press and others, you feel just a lot more energetic. And, um, uh, and it's really not, you know, oh, whenever you go into the sun, you're going to feel better.
When you go into a rainy place, you won't know you walk, that's not true. You have to find out, you know, and this is what I would really want people to be more open about. Let's judgmental and more experimental. Great. Hi, do you have any parting words for the audience about like trading or life in general? Yeah, well, um, first of all, you know, you gotta be your own biggest believer, right? Um, I, I would definitely tell that to anyone.
Um, but you also have to understand that nothing in life that is successful is not Eve everything that is successful, whether it's in nature, um, in engineering, In, in business and finance has some level of sophistication and depth and complexity to it doesn't mean that everything needs to be extremely rocket science. It's not what I'm saying, but, um, you, you want to, you want to Pierce through the surface of whatever you really want to be successful with, whether it's wrapping or traded, you know? And so, and there is going to be a phase of hardship and learning and you should embrace that and not, um, feel pity about yourself during that. Those would be things that I would really, um, uh, what I want to give everyone because even, you know, I see them, my mentorship, even when you give people everything they need in order to succeed, there's still a very tiny fraction of percentages of people that actually made it. Why? Because they are the ones that put in the effort to go through the hardships and, um, learn from setbacks and not give up on them. So, Really, you know, persistency and persistence doesn't mean I just continue to jump from one thing to another forever, go and try certain things. But then if there's something that you will feel you click with and it's difficult face the difficulty with, you know, and be happy about your ability to challenge it, to make it work.
Yeah, I definitely agree. I think it's important to be an expert in a select things. And I know a lot of schools, they all, well, I prefer to be an expert in a lot of things. The problem is. If you want to truly be an expert, then you have to dedicate a significant amount of time and experience.
And you're limited in the amount of things that you can truly be an expert in. So I definitely think it's important and much more vital, and you'll be much more successful if you're an expert in one to three things, as opposed to being a Jack of all trades, which basically means that anyone who has an expertise. In anything that's valuable is going to be more valuable than you are with superficial knowledge of a wide breadth of.
Of, um, of topics or wide breadth of, um, I agree. And by the way, even when you, let's just say, you're not an expert in a lot of in-depth things, but you're an expert in, um, in managing these things, you know, and then you work with experts, then that's also not bad per se, because then your expertise or your, your level of expertise is dealing with experts, for example. So you're an expert in that.
So, um, just to, to, uh, make people understand. The perspective, your, your ability to, to really see things for what they are from, from your own, through your own lens, super, super important. And that's something that you actually cultivate over the years. It's literally, nobody's born with that, I would say. And, but a little bit of everyone can get to that place with enough dedication and, um, um, yeah, and love for his own game, I guess. Fantastic.
So Alex, I'm going to put the link to your channel in the description of this video. And then I assume that you'll link to my channel as well, and we really appreciate it. This is David Jaffee with beststockstrategy, Alex, what's the name of your. It's Alex Douedari, basically my, my, my personal name. So I don't have like a, a, uh, a headline or anything like that, but really great.
Thank you for having me. I really enjoyed this conversation a lot. Thank you so much. I hope that we really appreciate it. And, um, you know, it was very late at night for me and very early in the morning for Alex Douedari. So we took the time we made it.
So, um, thank you so much for accommodating the schedule. Thank you. Um, hopefully in the future, we'll be able to do this again sometime.
All right. All right. Thank you guys.
Bye bye.
2022-03-08 19:38
