Interview With Powerful (DARWIN $ABH)
Powerful is the trader behind DARWIN $ABH, third in last June’s final DarwinIA standings and present in 5 of the DARWIN Exchange’s default filters. He is also the author of DARWINs $DZL and $DHJ.
So, tell us a little about yourself. How did you get started and how long have you been trading for?
I’m 34 years old, born in the Soviet Union. 12 years ago I moved to Germany to study in the institute; after graduation I stayed there to work as self-employed. Now I have my own consulting company.
First I was interested in the FX market as an investor. At the beginning I made a lot of wrong investments and lost money, like many of us.
The second step for me was manual trading where I lost money, too.
After that, I concluded that the best way to trade is algorithmic trading or robots. Robots do not make mistakes and they are devoid of emotions. The last 6-7 years I studied algorithmic trading. I started with risky strategies like martingale, grid and other toxic strategies. I tried different trading styles: news trading, trading on the breakout of channels and so on. In the end, I realized that it need to trade the shortest timeframe I can and close positions as fast as possible.
About your trading strategies: what pairs do you usually trade? Do you always trade the same timeframes?
I realized that for me psychologically the best option is trading when the market is calm. I traded myself in the evenings and realized that this type of trade is suitable for me. This style of trading does not require a lot of time and does not interfere with my main work. My basic indicator is the Bollinger bands, the others are right for close positions, for each trading pair they are different.
At the moment I trade only 6 pairs: AUDCAD, GBPCAD, GBPAUD, EURCAD, USDCAD, USDCHF.
I always try to remove pairs if they show bad results and add pairs that show good profit in the test period.
What would you say is your greatest strength?
I can’t answer this question; I think it should be decided by the people who are around me. I think it’s my family. Thanks to them I have achieved good results in my live. My family has always helped me; I am very grateful for that.
And your biggest weakness?
I can tell you the weakness of my strategy: this is the speeches of Trump or other official persons during my trade time, when this information is not available in the event calendar like news from North Korea in August 2017.
Our algos tell that your DARWIN ABH is very good in 9 out of 12 investable attributes. Any ideas for other traders who need to improve on those attributes?
Honestly, I do not pay attention to this, for me saving the deposit and even growth of it are more important.
What is the most important lesson you have learnt in your trading career?
I think it’s one of the Murphy’s laws: everything thing that can go wrong, will go wrong.
Previously, like many people, I always made a plan for the best result. The last few years I learned to prepare for the worst possible concurrence of circumstances. Especially in trading on the foreign exchange market.
Any books you like to recommend to fellow traders?
Many people already know these books:
- Market Wizards
- Updated: Interviews With Top Traders
- Pit Bull: Lessons from Wall Street’s Champion Day Trader
- Reminiscences of a Stock Operator
Finally, any comment you’d like to share with the fellow traders and investors who read this?
I always advise my investors not to invest at the peak of a profitable series of months. It is always better to invest after a negative month or several unprofitable trading days. It allows getting extra super profits. The most important thing is whether you trust the strategy or not. I trust my own Algo and I use this method for my own trading too.
