February 2023 Trading Review

February was a month of phenomenal mental growth. I have deepened my dedication to self-mastery and destroyed some of the old limiting beliefs. For example, I believed that it's impossible to trade from the beach because I thought that to trade seriously and manage your risk wisely you need to be in an emotionless environment and basically anywhere that is not an office or doesn't remind of an office doesn't suit well. But after some profound realisations that everything is happening in one's mind, I understood that the problem is not about the environment but about the mind that is just not yet ready to raise to the new level. Thankfully, I did achieve the next level!

We traveled to southern Spain for a week, together with the soulmate. It's winter but at around 10am the sun starts to shine in a really friendly and inviting away. At this time I'd move my laptop to our terrace and I'd lie on a sunbed, enjoying the sunny tranquility while waiting for trading setups. One day after lunch the soulmate was about to walk to the beach. I said: "I'll go together". And here I was, enjoying the beach and getting paid for it from a semi-passive income stream (trading)! It felt like a dream coming true because I remember the words of Dr. John Demartini - you need to identify your highest values (what is the most important for you), then work and live your life according to your highest values and find a way to be handsomely paid for doing that. It took me so many years to come to this point... I was a slave in my own made-up prison and deep down I couldn't believe it was possible until I finally broke through my limitations. One wise woman (whom I call angel) once told me: "According to astrology, you have an incredibly strong support from the Universe for financial work. However, what you do has to feel easy, don't take it too hard, don't beat yourself up because you will reach your goals without doubt so don't rush and don't forget to enjoy life along the way, because what's the point otherwise." I understood the part about astrology soon afterwards because I started to feel it strongly in myself, as my transition from web developer to financial trader started. While trading I strongly feel the support from the Universe and the only times I screwed up were the times when I'd let my mind to create greed in me and that would lead to irrational decisions. However, the angel's part about "take it easy" was still unfathomable to me for years to come. I'd often beat myself up to the point of exhaustion while learning to trade because that was how I used to work in the past. In programming I made my own way from being a nobody to earning 6x the average wage all from the comfort of my couch at home. But programming was a constant battle for me as it's very mind-intensive and the challenges that I was often solving were very difficult. Coming from the world of programming, I had to kill the habit of working too hard and transition into "work smart and don't exchange your life hours for money" mindset.

Actually, how did my technical setup look like while trading from the beach? I wouldn't like the idea of having my laptop open at the beach for several reasons: the battery would be drained, there's a risk of sand/water coming in, the sun will overheat it to the point of 95% lag (not a problem in Spanish winter, but definitely a problem even in Lithuanian summer) and it would also give me a feeling that I'm working like a slave even at the beach. So how did I do it? Last month I have upgraded my trading tools by building an EA which continuously scans all the currency pairs for potential opportunities without actually opening those pairs. If it finds opportunities, it opens the chart for that particular pair. Once all opportunities are opened, it fires an alert which can also be sent as a mobile notification to my iPhone. My MT4 is running on a Windows VPS (remote computer/server) because it's more efficient and also because I'm a MacBook user and the MT4 builds for Mac are shitty and they don't support certain tools that I use. So when I get the notification to my phone, I open the RD client app on the phone to evaluate the opportunity. I go through my checklist and I also use my professional understanding about how the FX market works to decide if it's a good setup. If not I close that chart and move on to the other, if yes I obviously hit Buy/Sell for live market entry. Then I open my laptop for a minute, connect online via mobile tethering, adjust the exit orders (because it's quite hard to do it on the phone) and that's it. I close my laptop and I check how my trade is going via my phone whenever I like, usually every 15min. There are certain early exit signals that I'm using in my trading and I have made my EA respect those signals and close the trade automatically if it happens. That removes some of the unnecessary manual work and allows me to enjoy the beach more! As you have probably understood, I am not using EA as a trading robot because I don't believe in automated trading, but I use it to help me find opportunities and also to help me in managing an active trade, but entry decision is always made by myself and exit decision in most cases as well. It really was a dream coming true - integrating my life with trading and no longer seeing those two as separated activities. After getting back to Lithuania, I am continuing to use this approach whenever I feel like I got bored of sitting in the office! How this became possible? Technical tools play just a small part, the biggest change was in my mind. True spirituality is doing what you love at any price and not doing what you don't love at any price. When you live your life the way you want, you can remain calm no matter what's going on with your trade in the market and remain present in the moment even while making love with your loved one! Because in your mind you've grown bigger than your trading and your inner voice became louder than the external voices, including those voices coming from your mind-memory.

Soon I'll be starting capital management work with an investor from Malta who was also trained to trade the professional side of the FX market like myself. It's really a relief to work with somebody who can understand you and who is on the same page. There has been a huge amount of hate coming to my side from other traders in the forums and that probably blinds other people who would like to connect with me but they get side tracked by all the false information that is being written about me in those forums. The haters are so advanced that they manage to turn any word that I say into something negative. For example I made a video about risk management (very important topic for traders) while being in Cyprus. So instead of learning something valuable from that, they told me I'm now "busted" because I'm in Cyprus. They probably think I'm a scammer working together with brokers for commissions (IB). Basically talking bullshit to attract clients to a broker and also earning money on youtube. It's ridiculously hilarious and sad at the same time because none of that is true and those people are simply drowning in their made-up world of illusions. Apparently, that's how the 90% of losing FX traders act because they're probably very angry about themselves and instead of trying to pick up my knowledge and learn something from it, they choose to live in ignorance. They just can't think straight and keep their attention for at least 1 hour. When I point to the moon, they keep looking at my finger. But it's perfectly fine and the way it should be, I believe. We're all here to help each other and I can see how those haters are helping me on my path as well.

I also talked to another investor who initially offered me capital in exchange for real estate collateral, which I, of course, refused. I offer capital management service not because I need it but because I want to genuinely help other people who want to enrich their lives. Borrowing money from the bank is a much easier alternative for me and I don't need any collateral for that - why would I ever want to put real estate on that. Besides, in the PAMM account the investor retains control of trade operations. He can literally create a fake blow up situation in that account by coordinating this with a broker and then bring this to court and steal my real estate. After a while, this investor contacted me again offering to promote me on a popular copy service at RoboForex. I declined this offer because I do not want to participate in any publicly available copy services. Since I have a professional understanding about how the FX market works, I'm aware of why and for what purpose those copy platforms were created and the best thing that I can do as a professional FX trader is to stay 100 miles away from such platforms. I'm OK trading my own capital, I'm also OK to use bucket shop services to a limited extent (prop firms) and I'm also OK to work with private investors capital. Actually by "trading my own capital" I'm not actually in the market because I'm using a publicly available broker and those brokers are also bucket shops. For now it's OK because these bucket shops allow me enough leeway for withdrawals at my current level but it won't last forever and in the future I'll consider about how to progress further and protect my own and investors capital. One of those ways is becoming a market maker.

In the previous article I mentioned that I will do research about providing signal service. I did, and most likely I will not be providing such service in the near future. If I find creative ways to limit its spread around the web and if there's an actual demand from genuine people then maybe, but it's a big maybe. Because the risks are great and the reward that I'd get is relatively small unless I charge premium price for such service. But then from investors perspective why he should use such service if he can make benefit from my full-fledged capital management service? The idea of signal service is that it's a low-barrier entry for smaller investors who do not have enough capital for the capital management service (€60,000 minimum at the moment). But what I was thinking of lately that instead of signal service I could offer fixed term deposit service to such people. It could start as small as €1,000 with a 1 year term and 18% interest. Principal plus interest would be returned after 1 year. It would be guaranteed with a promissory note personally signed by me. The upside for investor is that it gets guaranteed return but the downside, of course, is that if they went with my capital management service their annual return would most likely be significantly higher. If you're interested, feel free to contact me.

UPDATE (MARCH 14th, 2023): I actually decided to start offering forex signals service, after much consideration! Check out the article.

Have a brilliant trading month ahead.