PROP FIRM EXPERT - INTERVIEW WITH BULL.BEAR
“The shortcut is to stop looking for shortcut.” - Visualize Value
@Bull.Bear is a successful prop firm trader, and is having a 🔥 2022 year, managing to be profitable and consisting under the current extreme market conditions. This interview will help many of you, as our guest today has been in this game since he was 15, and share with us his routine and exceptional work ethic.
“Limit your losses. Don’t come in thinking the more you put into an account, the more money you’ll make. If you are in years 1-2, you need to start as small as possible; don’t dig yourself a deep hole and go broke as I did. “
I hope you will enjoy this interview with this talented young man as much as I did.
First of all, could you tell us a bit about yourself and what attracted you to trading? I was shocked when I learned the other day that you were still a student, yet managing to trade at a professional level.
Well, my mom told me that one of my relatives had left me about $10,000 for school once I graduated high school. But I wanted to use this money to make more money, so I started googling ways to grow your money. I came across a guy named “Tim Sykes” who later actually threatened to sue me, but that’s another story (Note from Retail Capital: see the tweet in the bonus section at the end). I was about 15 at the time, and I began paper trading and was pretty much hooked since (I’m 23 now).
I think that managing school and trading is just about being efficient with your time and focusing on consistency rather than intensity. If I backtest just five trading days a day during the week, in about 100 days, I’ll have two years of price backtested.
How much time did it take you to get consistent results, and how do you think prop firms have helped you achieve some of your goals?
I’ve been trading for about seven years, but two were paper-trading because I was too young to trade live. And I would say three of those years were spent wasting away, not taking it seriously.
This year (my 7th) has been my most consistent year ever and my first profitable year so far. I quit trading about a year and a half ago, came back, and took it more seriously after I worked a full-time job for a little bit and realized how bad I wanted to escape 9-5’s.
Man, prop firms have helped me and my trading in so many ways. I used to fund my accounts with like $1000-$3000, and it would be blown literally in a few days/weeks. Prop firms allow me to reduce my overall risk while increasing the amount I can make.
Compare me blowing $3,000 vs. spending $3,000 on $50k challenge accounts; even if I only pass ⅓ of them, I’d walk away with $200,000 in trading capital. Just that alone is a serious blessing.
Also, psychologically, I know that if I go haywire, I’ll only lose what I paid for the account, assuming I’ve passed the challenges.
How do you approach getting funded, or funded accounts in general?
My rule of thumb is to risk 5-10% per trade in Phase 1 and risk 2-5% per trade in Phase 2.
I know this sounds aggressive, but with you having to make 8% while only being able to lose 5% in a day and 12% overall, you have to risk it a bit unless you are just really hot.
But like I said earlier, even passing ⅓ of your challenges is enough to make good money.
What does a typical day look like for you?
A typical day for me is pretty chill, tbh.
I start my day with a basic routine, eat, brush my teeth, things like that. Then I turn my computer on around 9:00 am, check the news, and the overnight move.
From around 9:30 until 11 am, I look for market opportunities. At noon, I eat lunch and play the game Ghost Recon with my friend from Colorado. From 1 pm until 4 pm, I go back to the markets or do school work if I don’t like the price action. At 4 pm, I usually head to the gym before I go to class. I’m in class from 7 pm until 9pm.
After class, I do my trade reviews and backtest until midnight and then do it all over again.
Could you describe to us your trading style?
I’m fine sharing how I trade, I learned early on that even if someone shares there strategy, for the most part without the psychology to back it they won’t be able to do much with it.
I would consider myself a momentum trader if I had to categorize my trading. I say momentum because I generally try to jump on moves after they have already shown their hand. I found that guessing tops and bottoms is much more complicated and stressful than waiting for a move to happen and just tagging along.
I look for specific criteria in the market like strength and speed, which I’ve pretty much broken down to a few indicators (like EMA’s and VWAP) and their values. If these criteria are met, I look for a few specific technical patterns to show up so I know where to risk off and pull the trigger.
For exits, I still don’t have a clear plan. I generally watch price, my EMA’s, and take partials as it moves further in my favor. It complicates my trading that I don’t have an EXACT exit plan every time, but I have a few things I’m looking to implement to solidify my exits.
What is the biggest obstacle you faced to become consistent?
When you sent me this interview idk if you knew, but the answer below was here. But it is very much the same, which shows that many traders have the same problem.
My biggest obstacle, I would have to say, has been greed. I’m rarely satisfied with my wins and want to get back at my losses. I’ve gotten better as time has passed, setting profit targets and max losses. Not to say that I’ve entirely overcome this; it’s just become much more manageable than it used to be, enough to where I can turn a profit out of the market.
Another thing was system hopping; I would completely change systems after I hit a cold streak every time, which would just set me back to 0.
Do you have a mentor or someone you look up to in your progression as a trader?
Not a mentor, but a few people that I look at for trading motivation. One is @Stockgodd; when I first started trading, we were both in a group chat together and pretty much have traded together since then.
He’s one of the main reasons I’m trading now. I quit trading a year and a half ago as I was beat out of my socks with no money left to trade. During that time, I worked full-time while I was in school full-time and kind of got my life together outside of trading.
But I just happened to get on Twitter one day and saw how good @Stockgodd was doing in the market. Imagine the last time you talked to someone they were working a regular job, I think it may have been Walmart or something, and then boom, a year later, he’s living the life of his dreams as a full-time trader.
That shit inspired me to pick back up on my journey and make my dreams a reality no matter what.
What is your most memorable trade?
Idk if this sounds crazy, but I don’t have a most memorable trade. I think I have a most memorable time.
When I started trading again, I sort of learned some ICT concepts, and even though they weren’t exactly what he taught, I began to understand how the market targeted stops before making its true move, and I tripled my personal account and passed my first challenge since trading again.
The system I trade now still kind of goes off of the fact that institutions target liquidity even on the smaller timeframes.
If you could start from scratch tomorrow, what would you do from the beginning?
I would put a lot more emphasis on psychology and developing the right habits.
I would focus on standardizing risk on all trades anywhere between 1-3%.
I would come up with a daily trading routine that involved backtesting, system building, premarket-prep, trade review, and daily journaling. All this in about 1 to 2 hours a day
And while it’s not a habit, I would emphasize that learning to take trades based on your system vs. what you think is going to happen is a huge thing to overcome early. The most important work happens outside market hours, so learn not to intellectualize the market too much while in trades. When you have money on the line, every tick can mess with your head; having a system where you know exactly what to do in all cases clarifies the market for you and ultimately makes you a much better trader.
Where do you see yourself five years from now, and what does success look like to you?
Five years from now, I hope to be working somewhere remote as I’ll have my degree in Cybersecurity while I trade. I don’t necessarily not want to have a job entirely, and I know that sounds crazy coming from a trader. But I want to have the choice of working or not; if I enjoy my work in CyberSec and can trade at the same time, why not make another $80k while making more off of trading. Besides, I think focusing solely on the market is counterintuitive to the Quality>Quantity motto.
I have a vision for life beyond trading. I want to venture out in all directions of wealth-building, whether real-estate, dividend stocks, franchising, content creation, or anything else I would be interested in.
I think so many people see becoming a successful trader as the end, but for me, it’s the beginning.
Finally, do you have one piece of advice for the readers who are just starting their trading journey?
Man, limit your losses. Don’t come in thinking the more you put into an account, the more money you’ll make. If you are in years 1-2, you need to start as small as possible; don’t dig yourself a deep hole and go broke as I did.
Create a plan to scale up or use small challenge accounts for practice and limit the amount of them you can buy per month.
Whatever you do, don’t dig yourself a hole!
/END
@Bull.Bear, thanks so much for playing the game and providing great answers, even adding one question, it’s a real pleasure to see such a young talented man like you in this industry. I’m impressed by how much work ethic you got, and I hope it will inspire a lot of my readers.
I also wish you a lot of success and happiness, and I hope you’ll enjoy learning programming.
What’s next?
I will continue my Summer Python Bootcamp over the next few weeks where we build a trading bot from scratch, and most likely some market prep.
Finally, thank you to all my readers, it’s been a fun ride so far, and I’m very grateful that we are growing week after week.
Bonus
If you want to give a try to Apex, you can use my affiliate link here with my 50% coupon code: RETAILCAPITAL, which will always apply the best promotion available.
Apex is a community of traders founded by Darrell Martin, a rancher and day trader who has built a thriving community of traders into over 30,000 members in over 150 countries since 2008.