Interviews

Funded Trader Interview: Vince, from the Philippines.

Updated on: 2022-11-10

We want to share with you today this interview with Vince: a Futures Funded Trader from the Philippines.

Originally published by Earn2trade, you can read the in-depth review and obtain a special discount here.

Vince is a funded trader since December 2022.

Vince makes a living out of trading CME Futures yet he lives in the Philippines: the world's 3rd largest economy by nominal GDP in Southeast Asia, according to the IMF, second to Indonesia and Thailand;

it's a country made of over 7000 islands (how difficult must it be to govern such a country?!), and here is the most important piece of information: the 2022 GDP per capita is equivalent to 3.858$: considering 250 working days/year (for simplicity) that comes down to about 15$/day output per person to the economy.

What an amazing opportunity it must be for a citizen of Philippines, like Vince, to obtain access to the CME Futures where 1 point of E-mini S&P500 is worth 50$.

Let's hear from Vince how he managed to get funded in just 15 days with Earn2trade, and of course: CONGRATULATIONS on making it WITHOUT risking your savings!

Your opinion.

Your opinion matters! Come visit my Instagram or Facebook page, leave your comment: I post every video about the funders on my Instagram TV, let's have the conversation over there so as to include as many people as possible.

Raffa

Darrell

Who are you? What’s your background?

I am a day trader and have been trading for 15 years. I started with options to quit my day job and now trade options and futures on a daily basis.

I have a bachelors and masters but they have nothing to do with finance.

I bought courses, went to seminars, and most importantly found other traders who knew how to trade to learn from them.

Can you tell us a little bit about you as a trader? 

I am an intraday trader.

I focus mainly on futures scalps and trend trades. I also trade options when they are mispriced.

What’s the biggest achievement in your life?

A successful marriage of 17 years with 2 amazing children held together by a relationship with God.

Some people say that Trading success is due for 80% to the right psychology, would you agree? What’s APEX Investing training approach?

I 100% agree that psychology is fundamental to trading that is why apexinvesting.com/mindmastery was developed for traders to be able to master the psychological part.

We also provide simple yet in-depth systems at Apex Investing for traders to learn to trade with defined entries, stops, and take profits.

What is your personal key to success?

I agree that the personal life can pour over into your trading decisions.

A healthy life definitely contributes to better trading decisions.

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?

There are definitely plenty of snakes out there.

It is important to find a solid community of like-minded individuals like at ApexInvesting that are committed to helping traders.

Our policy is Traders Helping Traders and we have over 30k members over the last 13 years. So it's definitely a solid community that helps traders.

Learn more about Apex in our review.

Get FREE access for 30 days, then 1$ for an additional 30 days, to have FULL ACCESS to APEX suite of Indicators and Strategies for Scalping Futures.

Then enroll in their trading challenges and Get Capital to trade.

For more interviews go to the Interviews page here.

Raffa

Karim

Who are you? What’s your background?

My name is Karim Yousfi, and I am the Founder and CEO of Audacity Capital (read our in-depth review here). Our company is situated in London and mainly deals with prop trading since 2012. I started my career as an intern in a German bank, and over the years, I developed the necessary trading skills. I am now a trader by profession.

When working for the bank, I traded for my employer using various financial instruments and in different markets. Apart from forex exchange, I also traded in stock index figures, equities and options. In other words, I can say that I enjoy my profession as I have a deep passion for the financial market.

Can you tell us a little bit about you as a trader? 

As a trader who has developed trading skills over many years, I understand what struggles other traders face. This is why I founded Audacity Capital to fulfill the needs that were bothering me. I began developing Audacity Capital when I had just left my cushy job at a major bank to venture on my own. I was risking everything I had achieved to satisfy and fulfill my dreams during that time.

When my employer knew that I was planning to leave, he offered me more money so that I could stay. However, I declined the offer and proceeded with my plans because I wanted freedom. Along the way, I faced many challenges, and one was a lack of finances. Anybody who has ever ventured into this financial industry will confirm that you need to have enough capital to succeed.

What’s the biggest achievement you have had from AudaCity Capital thus far? And in your life?

My biggest achievement in life is Audacity Capital. When I left my job at the bank, I was committed to following my dreams, which was developing Audacity Capital. I sacrificed all I had achieved to see my dream come true. Today, I can proudly say that Audacity Capital has assisted thousands of traders get the capital they need to begin trading. The program makes it possible for all traders to achieve and fulfill their goals and dreams in life. It is something that I have wanted to achieve ever since I started founding the organization.  

Some people say that Trading success is due for 80% to the right psychology, would you agree? What’s AudaCity Capital training approach?

I agree with the statement that psychology plays a significant role in trading, and it is important to understand how you can use your own psychology to your advantage. I am sure that in my case, I have been able to identify my tendencies and have learned ways to avoid making mistakes by improving my psychology. Even though sometimes you might fail due to a lack of capital, psychology in trading will help you succeed as you can avoid common mistakes in trading.

This is why at Audacity Capital, we do not train our traders the same way a trading school does. We expect our traders to use their psychology to maneuver in the financial market. We do not focus on providing an education that will make you rich. However, we encourage our traders to be prepared to learn new things in the market. By doing so, they are guaranteed a rewarding career.

What is your personal key to success?

I suppose the first thing that comes to mind is a little common sense. I would say that having a good understanding of how the market works and being able to develop a trading plan with clear objectives, risk management rules, and money management rules is the key to success.

There are tons of different business strategies out there, but for me, the most important part about trading in the financial market is having your personal strategy and then just committing yourself to it 100%. The next important thing is that you have to be disciplined. It's easy in this business to get excited or overconfident, but you can't let those emotions take over.

I always ensure I am in control of my trades to run my business effectively. I don't want to be the one who's being driven by the market. Rather I want to be the one who drives the market. I do this by setting up clear trading rules that help me achieve my goals and stay focused on what matters most.

While discipline, risk management, and trading skills are important to becoming a successful trader, I also believe that a healthy and satisfied person can become profitable in the financial market.

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?

I have had my fair share of ups and downs in my years of trading, but what is important is never to give up. It is important to understand that many trading myths make people believe that trading is a scam. Trading is a real profession, and here at Audacity Capital, we do our best to encourage our traders to improve their trading skills by allowing them to test their strategies. Our program promotes a continuous learning process for all traders. 

Learn more about AudaCity Capital in our review: get instant funding! Or the Ability Trading Challenges.

For more interviews go to the Interviews page here.

Raffa

Tiziano

Who are you? What’s your background?

I have been a full time trader since 2014, clearly my studies began a few years earlier, trying to make my job coexist with the study of financial markets.

In 2016 I learned about Savius and a public contest sponsored by the infinity futures broker.
I sign up and qualify for second place after exchanging the first position with the winner practically every day, eventually finishing just behind.

Savius still decides to reward me, having seen that for the entire duration of the contest I had been playing for the victory, giving me the opportunity to manage a funded account.

From there, through many ups and downs, I went from Junior trader to Senior and since 2018 I have become an integral part of the company with the role of risk manager.

In 2020 Savius was acquired by a new owner and I am offered the opportunity to fill the role of CEO, a position that I fill with great enthusiasm today.

What is Savius today and what will it be in, let say, 2025? Will you add Forex as well to the challenge?

We are investing and growing a lot on the Italian market and beyond.
I believe that in 2025 we will be the reference reality for the European market at this rate.
We currently do not operate on Forex or CFDs.

We specialize in futures and we strongly believe that it is worthwhile to operate on regulated markets. Furthermore, with the arrival of micro futures CFDs are becoming less and less useful even for low-capitalized traders. As regards currency pairs, we offer the opportunity to operate on their respective futures currencies.

How do you see the future of trading? More and more small proxy traders or will the robots take over? :-)

Robots or rather AI in general is growing very rapidly in all sectors.

I believe that there is still room on the markets to invest with the discretionary human component.

In my imagination I still see the man able to beat the car (I'm an 80 ', grown up watching terminator and robocop)

Back to serious, I'm not entirely convinced that automatic systems, robot advisors, etc. will take over 100%, at least as far as our sector is concerned.

Who are the traders that enrolled with Savius in 2018 and have succeeded to get funded? What’s the “secret” of those who perform well and obtain funding?

In 2020 we mainly restarted from the Italian market, therefore for now we have a majority of Italian traders. They are predominantly male and 25 years of age and older. We currently have some traders in the bargaining phase who will start “live” shortly.
The secret, after years of monitoring, I believe is to proceed step by step.
All those who exaggerated in terms of size and careless risk management did not last long.

It is essential to have the patience to grow your equity without excessive shock by controlling the risk as much as possible. Performance in absolute terms is of little use if the risk profile adopted is oversized. Remember that we operate on futures and that market swings are sometimes violent and without warning.

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?

Good question that deserves a very detailed answer.
First of all, it is not certain that a strategy used by one trader can be good for another ..

It is often not understood how important it is to develop a “tailor-made” methodology.

Each of us has a different personality, comes from a different social and cultural background, has their own beliefs matured on the importance of money and consequently each trader has his own risk profile and his own personal approach that cannot be replicated. faithfully.

Mismanagement of size is often the main cause of the negative loop on a psychological level.

My advice is to create a "confident" operating environment within which there is the margin to collect losses without excessively affecting the economic and above all psychological capital.

Once we have learned how to manage emotionality with small sizes, the gradual transition will lead us to progressively rise in level, a bit like a sportsman who lifts weights in the gym.

I am affiliated with Savius hence I'm able to offer you DISCOUNTS:

50€ for the evaluation program click here Limitless, and e-mail me for the code at raffa@funded-trader.com .

100€ for the evaluation program click here Limitless Pro, and e-mail me for the code at raffa@funded-trader.com .

Raffa

Chris

Who are you? What’s your background?

My name is Christopher Gray, and I am the Lead Education Coordinator at Earn2Trade. I have been an active forex/futures/options trader for approximately 15 years. 

Can you tell us a little bit about you as a trader? 

As far as my trading style goes, I am strongly rooted in price action, and piecing the “puzzle” together with coordinating time frames. I generally start my weekly analysis on monthly candlestick charts, marking off key levels, and progressively working my way through each adjacent timeframe lower. I tend to execute around 2-5 trades a day.

What’s the biggest achievement you have had from Earn2Trade thus far? And in your life?

Personally, I am not the type to boast about large winnings, and as such , I would say my biggest achievement in the trading world is my ability to be in a position to work with traders from around the world on a daily basis. This allows me to feel a sense of true worth when I see them better themselves after my help.

Some people say that Trading success is due for 80% to the right psychology, would you agree? What’s Earn2Trade training approach?

 I would say that psychology is easily one of the largest factors that determines the success of a trader, but obviously a sound strategy is also a requirement. At Earn2Trade, our examinations help candidates to refine their psychological approach to trading by maintaining their discipline and not breaching any of the well-defined rules.

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.

The most important thing I personally focus on, is my mental state as well as my discipline while trading. I make sure I am not allowing myself to become emotionally compromised, positively or negatively, while also adhering to my predetermined rule set to allow post analysis/critiques to be far more possible due to constants.

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 financial world is indeed a world full of snakes and scams, but, it would be incredibly incorrect to assume that everyone is out here to take advantage of you. The trick is using common sense and asking questions to discover if someone really has your best interests at heart. 

I am a Funded Trader with Earn2trade, see how I passed my 150K$ Gauntlet Mini with my indicator.

Learn more about The Gauntlet here.

For more interviews go to the Interviews page here.

Raffa

Gil

Who are you? What’s your background?

My name is Gil Ben Hur. I am a forex trader since 2007. Actually I was doing my first stocks journey at age 18, but this episode last less than a year with my first losses.
I only got back to trading later at the late age of 34. Before that, I was always in a creative business. As an advertising copywriter, and a television producer and creator.

I started trading after I realized I know nothing about money and economics. My knowledge about business was too naive, I didn’t know what it takes to run a business properly. I had plenty of clients for my production company, but I didn’t make any money.

At one point I decided I had to resolve this ignorance of mine and went to study. I took endless courses and seminars on investments. Real estate, internet entrepreneurship, and financial market trading. I have introduced to Forex soon after and got hooked on this specific market. Mainly because I had only the nights to study and practice. So Forex was very accessible for me.

I was investing all my free time learning systems, looking for mentors, I taught myself to code MQL, and made hundreds of tools and scanners.

I had many downs, but the ups gave me the drive to continue and acquiring the profession of trading.

Up to 2011, I was a struggling trader like many, with ups moments and depressing regressions. Then I was introduced to the theory of Supply and Demand by Sam Seidan. Finally, I found a true logic and reasoned explanation for why the market behaves the way it is.

I joined a group of experienced traders who combined Supply and demand with advanced price action techniques. They were just have created their own platform, and I was lucky to join at the right time. With my experience in coding and the internet, my skills got to me to partner with them, and I was in the core circle of these traders.

Eventually, we were forming one of the most extensive free education community dedicated to price action, supply and demand and way beyond that. The name of the site was Read The Market dot com, it was my foundation to deeply understand price. A few months in this group I become a consistent trader.

Our community was prospering, we had nurtured great traders. Demand for premium education came from below, so we did that too. Eventually we had gathered few very top quality traders. I brought the idea we will create a trading community, and started working on that solution.

Long story short, when the fund was ready to start, the traders for some reason didn’t collaborate. So I was left with the business structure. And decided I am opening this for the public.

This is how I have formed The5%ers. With few tweaks in the model, it was ready to launch. I was very surprised at how well it caught and attracted traders.

What is The5%ers today and what will it be in, let say, 2025? Will you add Futures as well to The Challenge?

I think The5ers is a unique program in today’s funding industry. We are the only ones offering true funding of real trading capital from day one on the evaluation phase. And we offer a very hard to imitate growth program.

I am very proud of our achievement so far, but looking ahead years time, we are working hard to keep the leap ahead of the industry. I have a very creative team, and we have some surprises to be presented for 2020.

How do you see the future of trading? More and more small proxy traders or will the robots take over? :-)

I don’t like the word robots. But I do believe the future is going to be much more automated. But for the foreseen 2 decades human will still be needed to drive these machines.

Many think robots are set and forget tools that can rip the market. I know these robots will be a more and more sophisticated algorithm. But it takes a human mind to develop better code or to decode a rival machine.

We should not forget that the market is made to serve the human need for commerce and economics. Once these robots will divert the market aways from this purpose, and humans will not able to relay on the market for their commerce and business, the market will be no longer relevant and no longer tradable.

In other words, once the market stops representing true value for its assets, commerce and economics will for another channel for transactions. Meaning real commerce will always balance the mechanical algos.

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?

The majority of traders are male, at age 26 to 37. We enroll many traders at an intermediate skill level, and some good portion of pro-level although it is much less.
The reason for this is that the pro-level might already have enough funding to maintain a solid income. Among the pros, we have mentors and educators, and some that are just happy to take the challenge to climb up in our program for the 1 million accounts.

Intermediate traders find our program very rewarding. They have honed the skill of trading and now are looking for the right platform to help them leverage their skill with more capital resourcing.

The success rate really depends on the level of trading skill is. From our end, there is no consistency of the success rate throughout the year. We can only explain this by understanding that every season has a different blend of novice, intermediate and pro traders signing up. It really depends on what conversation had started on youtube or in a forum.

I can tell you, that our program is designed to be achievable. The simple thumb rule for if you can make it with the5ers or not would be two questions: Can you win positive pips in the market? Do you manage solid and healthy risk management? If both the answers are yes.

The majority of traders who get disqualified are usually the ones that are lacking a trading plan with poor or none risk management.

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?

The one thing you should be looking for is “Understanding The Why”. In your trading, you must be able to always explain WHY price did that or WHY price will do this…

And WHY I decided to play the way I do.

If you don’t have a decent honest answer for WHYs., and I mean answeres that have true logic. Not because price hit EMA 46 and STOCH was diverging. Not because someone told you this system SHOULD work. No. Know the WHY in the essence of the market.

And know the WHY in the essence of your reaction to market situations.

Once you know the WHY, you know the market and yourself well enough to play pro.

I'm affiliated with The5%ers that's how I obtained a 5% discount for you all!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

Raffa

Otakar

Who are you? What’s your background?

Hi Raffaele, thank you for the opportunity to be interviewed for the funded-trader.com. My name is Otakar Suffner, 29 years old, I was born and raised in Prague. Even though I believe there is no need for a university education to be a good trader or a businessman, it certainly helps. I have a master’s degree in Economics, which I obtained from a major Prague University. I also studied in South Korea for some time (Seoul Nation University). I have always had a passion for sports, when I was growing up, I played tennis quite well, but I wasn’t good enough to make a living from it. Nowadays I do sports 3-4 times a week, mostly just fitness, focusing on (calisthenic) and kick-box. After 11 years of relationship I married my first girlfriend, if it ain't broken, don't fix it, right?

What is FTMO today and what will it be in, let say, 2020? Will you add Futures as well to The Challenge?

FTMO today is like 2% of what it can be. The plans are huge. We are working hard to open a branch in Hong Kong, which is a well-known financial center and a gateway to Asia. My personal dream is to open an in-house trading rooms in multiple locations.

By the 2020 we might apply for a central bank license. With that license, we would be able to create a fund based on FTMO Traders and accept deposits from third parties.

How do you see the future of trading? More and more small proxy traders or will the robots take over? :-)

Before I answer this question, you must first think about why markets exist in general. Markets are here mainly not to make money on speculations, for this reason we have horse races. Markets are here to allow businesses and individuals to exchange currencies in order to facilitate trade more effectively and to hedge. As traders, we are blinded by the flashy indicators and price action and we tend not to see the real reason why markets exist. During my studies, I was lucky enough to work in a huge firm which is physically trading corn. In 2016, we were buying crop to be harvested in 2019 and already hedging the bought harvest using futures contracts.

Several times, my boss came to the office and told me to buy a huge position of corn futures contracts just because the corn was cheap in his eyes. As I was buying, the price went up. My boss had absolutely no knowledge about the technical analysis, SR levels etc. He did not care whether he is buying against the double top. This firm is just a needle in a haystack.

So, back to your question, I believe that we will see more robots executing trades, but I do not think that any robot will outperform an experienced trader with intuition and experience. However, the nature of markets will stay the same, because the volume from speculators is relatively small to what large institutions trade to facilitate their businesses.

Who are the traders that enrolled in The Challenge in 2018 and have succeeded to get funded? What’s the “secret” of those who perform well and obtain funding?

To be honest, there is absolutely no connection in the case of profession or age. Our capital is managed by CEOs, mothers on maternity and people with absolutely common professions. In some cases, our clients are wealthy individuals, who are not interested in the trading capital. They just want to pass the Challenge, use our applications, receive account analysis and start trading their own account. In many cases, these clients lost unbelievable amounts of money in trading, mostly because brokers wanted them to see trading as an easy endeavor. The truth is that trading is very, very difficult. Our Challenge gives everyone a reasonable boundary, in which their trading style should fit in.

As you probably guess, most clients are men, but surprisingly, women have higher success rate. What is interesting is that the highest success rate falls on traders from India. The general success rate fluctuates around 5-10 %. The key to success, as you probably guess, is discipline and strong work ethic.

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?

The basic principles of trading are simple: follow your plan, stop trading when you hit your daily loss etc., but who can do it, right? Most people learn it the hard way by losing money. They change the self-destructive behavior only when the pain is just too big to bear and there is no way around but to follow the plan. Many people just don’t want it bad enough and they stop or realize that trading is not for them, which is also good. Our performance psychologist is here to shorten the painful learning curve as much as possible.

I think that I might disappoint your readers, but I would recommend traders to base their trades on probabilities.

Visit FTMO and obtain 5% discount on any challenge! (valid only once for new clients), you may just apply for the FREE TRIAL but make sure to use my link so to obtain the discount.

Here are the challenges offered by FTMO in full detail.

I'm sure you'll be amazed by their support and proprietary tools!

For more interviews go to the Interviews page here.