Interview with Liberty Market Investment and Volfix Founder: Vasyl Gryshchenko
Raffa
Vasyl
Who are you? What’s your background?
I’m Vasyl Gryshchenko, a co-founder of Volfix platform and Volfix limited CEO. In 2018 I became a co-founder of Market Investment.
I entered the trading business in 2003. In 2004, alongside a group of other traders, I made my first trades on CME exchange. I was trading the S&P500 futures, through the Refco broker.
In 2005-2006, when the key CME group floors began to switch from pit trading to electronic trading,the main session trading volume became publically available for all traders. That was the time we began our research to interpret the volume data. This is how Volfix 1.0 first appeared, which opened up new possibilities for a vast circle of traders, us included, to make full use of volume analysis.
Can you tell us a little bit about you as a trader? (Intraday or multi-day?)
I made my first trades in 2004 on the CME exchange on Big S & P500. We used to be day traders back then and our typical trade duration would be around 2-3 hours.
As the markets were progressing towards electronic trading, we came to a conclusion that however far you plan your trades, you need to be grounded on the intraday data to make your entries more accurate and reduce potential risks.
We, as a team of traders, are of the opinion that, for any trade length, there needs to be a thorough assessment of both long-term trends and intraday volume accumulations. The latter ones are capable of abruptly changing the trend at any point of time.
What is LMI today and what will it be in, let say, 2025? Will you add Forex as well to The Challenge?
At the moment, LMI is a company that unites the best prop trading practices under a single roof. We have great plans to become the most transparent, competitive and flexible company on the prop market. We would like our traders to have the best trading conditions, best support, fastest withdrawal options, etc. We always add features both to our trading platform and Recruitment Program as per traders’ requests and will continue to do so. As to Forex, we are currently doing market research regarding the viability of adding Forex markets. For now, we haven’t had much demand about Forex. And we’ve always believed that the Futures Markets with clear and visible trade volumes have a great advantage over a broker-dependant Forex industry.
What’s the biggest achievement you have had from LMI thus far? And in your life?
For me, trading has become a road to financial freedom. And even though my trading path was not easy, my experience with Volfix and LMI gives me an opportunity to share what I have learned from the markets. It is worth remembering that trading is always hard work, because it requires a lot of effort to change yourself and work on your discipline. Even if you have a reliable trading system, discipline should come first.
Each trader, whether starting their journey or well on its way, would always be exposed to the risk of losing their funds. The reason is simple – it’s hard for human nature to strictly comply with rules and discipline. That’s why if you choose to take part in our Traders’ Recruitment Program, it saves you from huge losses of your own capital. In fact, your expenses are limited to the cost of the Practice Session subscription.At the same time, you learn to control your losses and reach profit targets.
Once you are well trained and have a profitable trading strategy, we will fund you. Therefore, you gain invaluable experience without risking his own capital. I wish I had an opportunity like that 16 years ago at the start of my trading career. It would definitely help me cut the edge on my way to freedom and independence.
How do you see the future of trading? More and more small proxy traders or will the robots take over? 🙂
I believe that manual trading will never die and there are a few reasons behind that. First of all, it’s only the chosen ones who truly have access to the highly costly HFT technologies. Second of all, there will always be both big market players and small ones, like private traders. We’ve seen them fight for best prices and the more we study volume, the more effects of this can be observed.
Some people say that Trading success is due for 80% to the right psychology, would you agree? What’s LMI training approach?
We do believe that trading psychology matters. Having seen lots of people succeed and fail in the markets, I can say this. If you have the right trading system but can’t follow your own rules, you will likely over-trade, revenge trade, etc, and finally see your account ruined. And before you learn from your mistakes and get your trading discipline together, you might lose a few accounts. My advice is that those are prop accounts and not your live trading accounts! That’s why we are here to help our traders improve their psychology by taking part in a Practice Session without any risk to their funds. They can trade and rest assured that they have a personal automated risk manager that will intervene if the rules are broken. Moreover, one of the LMI advantages is that our trading platform provides for manual risk management tailored to your needs (e.g you can cut risks even further than required by the Practice/Qualifying Session rules).
Who are the traders that enrolled in The Challenge in 2019 and have succeeded to get funded? What’s the “secret” of those who perform well and obtain funding?
Most of our traders come from Europe and North America. A typical portrait of a proprietary trading firm trader would be male, between 20 and 50 years, having a full-time job. Having said that, we see more and more successful female traders coming in to get funded. Usually our traders start their trading career by looking at it as a backup job opportunity until they earn their capital and are able to actually make their main job part time.
The “secret” of success is as simple as you can imagine! A good basic understanding of what the market is doing and why. Are we trending or ranging at the moment? Is it the beginning of the end of this market phase? This market knowledge must go hand in hand with a great discipline – no more trading if profit targets or risk limits are reached for the day. It might sound simple, but from what I know, it takes at least 10,000 hours of screen time to achieve this level of proficiency. And understanding how volume works helps A LOT!
What is your own key to success? I, for myself, believe that only a content and healthy person can be a profitable trader: my performance improved drastically since I returned in Italy (from London) to my family and friends, and have an active outdoorsy lifestyle.
As I said earlier, one of the key components of successful trading is discipline and the ability to overcome stressful situations. It is sports and regular workouts that help me quickly develop these qualities.
I’m also positive that the family support, outdoor activities, travelling and close friends help us find the inner balance that we need so much to make important trading decisions.
If trading can be taught and learned in just 4 months, why isn’t everyone we know a profitable full time trader? The 1 thing you would recommend traders start doing today so to get better results tomorrow?
Everyone is different in their trading style, psychological habits, and the time they can devote to studying the markets. I believe that 4 months can give you some basic understanding of market behaviour, but hardly will you be able to sharpen your risk management/psychology. That’s the key reason why you need to trade a Practice Session in a safe environment, see whether it works or not, and if it does – get funded in less than a month! By the way, even if you fail in your Funded Session account, we are always there for you to provide a free Re-Qualifying opportunity so that you can quickly return to live trading and start afresh.
People unfamiliar with the world of trading believe it’s a nest full of snakes (Hollywood movies don’t help..), I’ve had very positive experiences so far from very nice and enthusiastic people: what can we all do to improve on this?
The best thing we can do is do our job well! Be clear and transparent with our trading rules, have great support for traders, and always keep our promises. There are lots of traders relying on us in terms of their trading career and we haven’t failed any of them yet!
I’m affiliated with LMI that’s how I obtained a 15% discount for you all!
In the meantime go ahead selecting which challenge is best suited to your trading strategy and give a go to the FREE TRIAL offered by LMI!
Read here why I strongly believe that trading in a challenge is way better than trading in demo!
For more interviews go to the Interviews page here.
