295 · Steve Ruffley - Animal Speed, Size, and Being Right at the Right Time
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You can't focus too much on what you don't and never may understand. Yeah, lots of things are going to be said. Lots of things are going to happen. But is that going to make you money? Not necessarily. You know, there's lots of things happening in the world and there's lots of things happening throughout trading. And I've seen it change in front of my very eyes. I've seen the media and its attitude, how it presents data change. Everything you see doesn't have to necessarily be taking a pinch of salt, but it's not necessarily there to make you money.

So the best thing you can do as a trader or a retail trader is kind of fade out a little bit of this news. You know, look at the screens.

What are the markets telling you? How are they moving? Don't get too pigeonholed into listening that some hedge fund manager is going to tell you what the next big stock is going to be because they're all out there to make money. You know, this is a, it's a tough, hard game. And it's like I said, you know, back on the floor, no trade is going to tell you exactly what they do because that's their edge. So be very kind of wary about what you're being told and expecting it to give you instant results because they don't, you know, the biggest things that are going to kind of move the market to the unexpected things, but

but there are so few unexpected things because of that underlying narrative. And the big thing that will come, you probably miss it because it will be so big and so quick, you haven't had time to prepare. Markets, speculation, and risk. This is the Chat with Traders podcast.

Yeah, we're back in chat with traders. Thank you, all of you listening from all over the world. That's just so cool. This is episode 295. I'm Tessa Dow and my co-host is Ian Cox. And we're hoping that you're doing great in every way. Now, I would love to get you straight to Ian's interview with our next guest today. His name is Steve Ruffley.

He trained as a professional and now defines himself as a pro retail trader. He's now spent nearly half his life honing his craft in the market, spanning a couple of decades, making the largest amount of money that he can from the least amount of time spent day trading, such as achieving five figure gains in a couple of minutes. Steve trades best

Big size with three trade types and two entry styles, which we'll hear more about as we get into the chat. Having been a trader from the trading floor in a highly competitive environment to then switching over to trading as a retail trader, a professional retail trader, makes it a very interesting perspective. Steve's entrance into trading wasn't planned. It was a mix of ambition, timing, and the right connections.

Leaving university early, he took a finance job moving to Gibraltar in the southern tip of Spain, where he met traders running a new trading floor. Intrigued, he joined their intense graduate program, enduring the six weeks of brutal tests where failure meant dismissal. The trading floor itself was an adrenaline-fueled world, rows of screens, high-stakes trades, and the culture of both camaraderie and competition.

Definitely this experience had to have shaped his trading mindset, philosophy, and technique, where risk is not a dirty word and size and speed are essential. Steve's also a trading mentor and author of his latest book called The Pro Retail Trader.

By the way, this wasn't planned, but we included a little bonus snippet of a short conversation with Steve after the interview for those interested in hanging around just for a couple of minutes more. So without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, we are so pleased to present Steve Ruffley, currently based in New Zealand. Well, Steve, I'd like to welcome you to Chat with Traders. Thank you very much. Where are you now and where did you grow up?

Well, I'm now in New Zealand, but it's far away from where I grew up, which is Bolton in the north of England. You may or may not have heard of it. And so tell us about you kind of growing up in Bolton and kind of how did you first get interested in the financial markets?

Sure. Okay. Yeah, I mean, a fairly typical upbringing in Bolton. It's the biggest town in Europe. It can't be a city because something that happened in the past, I don't know, I wasn't really kind of big into history at school. But basically, my kind of route into finance, I guess, was I went to university for a couple of weeks to study economics. And

And I wasn't particularly interested or particularly connecting to what was being said. And I spoke to the lecturer at the time and he basically said, well, you'll never get a good job. You'll never do anything without a degree.

I kind of left and to prove him wrong, my first job was for PricewaterhouseCoopers as a graduate, funnily enough. And I was basically started placing investments for high net worth individuals. That's how I got to know a little bit about the finance world. And yeah, that kind of piqued my interest. From there, really, again, bizarrely as my life does, I had the opportunity to live in Gibraltar, which is the southern tip of Spain.

And I was in Gibraltar for a while and I was down at one of the ports, Port of Benus, quite famous down there and well known for its luxury, its yachts, its fancy cars. And I just bumped into these guys and yeah, that's what they did. And after a general chat, they said, well, we're traders. We've started a trading floor in Gibraltar. I'm like, well.

That seems like something I could be interested in. So basically went for an interview and yeah, I was one of the original first Revco grads it turned out to be. And that's really how my trading career started. So what year was this? Well, it's from way back. It's probably early 2000s, 2004 maybe. Oh, okay. So this is after the dot-com crash.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just before the trading floors and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, I'm still a relative, you know, kind of newbie, I guess, in trading terms, you know, 20 odd years. You know, it's not that long, I guess, compared to some other people we've had on the show. And so what kind of describe for us, what did you first do at this group?

Well, it's very interesting, actually, because basically we're all based in Gibraltar. So we got sent over as part of an international thing with other people, other officers around the world. And we all basically camped out in Old Court in London. We had a big flat.

And I guess in some ways you could say it was a little bit like The Apprentice. So we went to the Liverpool Street offices every day. There was a lot of intense training and, you know, kind of tests and you had to kind of prove you could perform under pressure. And they said, you know, if you didn't pass milestones, you know, daily, weekly milestones, you were fired. And people were. So it was a little bit brutal. So, yeah, we had about six weeks of that. And, yeah, I passed. And then the kind of...

the prize or the goal of it was to actually be backed by Revco and be a trader on the floor. So my first experience of kind of floor trading was when they took us onto the live floor

And it was like something I'd never seen. You know, you've got rows and rows of people, you know, guys with eight, 10, 12 screens. This place had its own deli. It had its own arcade room. It was just like an atmosphere I'd never seen. It was, you know, for a boy from Bolton, it's pretty unbelievable. So yeah, when you actually get to sit down on your own desk and you're around, you know,

you know some legends was andy priston sat on my floor back at the time braveheart you know so some big names people making huge amounts of money and um and yeah so that was that was basically it that was my introduction to trading and uh it's just it seems like a million million million years ago and it's so different to what i do now obviously being sat home with my own screens in my own home office but uh yeah great experience and uh and something that i'll that kind of made me

Not the trader I am, because I do see a big distinction between the pro world and myself as a pro retail trader. But it certainly gave you all the ambition, should I say, to follow this through and to see where it could really take you. So yeah, great time, great experience. So you sat next to traders on your left and right that were trading, is that right?

Absolutely. You were on rows and rows. So, yeah, I mean, it was, you know, again, it's when you're the newbie just coming in, you know, you don't get to talk to the big guys straight away. But obviously, you know, kind of being on the floor, socializing, you get to know people. Traders like to gossip.

But everyone kind of quickly knew pretty soon who the big guys were. And it's aspirational, but also a little bit intimidating. So, yeah, I mean, talking about a baptism of fire, that was one way to kind of put it. So did the big guys share any of the trades that they're doing? And was it common for certain traders to piggyback off of other traders and simply copy? Or was that even allowed?

I mean, sure. I mean, listen, it's a bit of a boys club and it's, you know, a bit of a hierarchy, um,

This is the thing, you know, everyone, you sit next to somebody and as a newbie, the first thing you ask is, what are you looking at? What are you going to trade? And these guys have been doing it for years, you know, and they'll share a little bit of information, a little bit of knowledge. You know, traders, you know, they're just blokes, you know, they love a good gossip. But, you know, all we talked about was, you know, kind of what the markets was doing and money. You know, it all came back to money. I know that's a...

a faux pas thing to talk about money in trading, but that's what we're all sat there for. You know, we're all sat there, you know, guys were going out on the lunch breaks, buying a Rolex when they had a good day. You know, it's not all for Wall Street stuff. That's a whole, that's a whole, you know, kind of different side of it. But yeah, there's a lot of guys there that were there to make money. And, you know, people,

You wouldn't necessarily think of traders. You wouldn't be able to spot a trader if you walked past them on the street. You really wouldn't. They just looked like normal blokes. And they were all blokes. I think there was maybe one woman on the floor in the entire time I was on there. So it was a very male environment, very bravado. And yeah, I mean, information...

Was passed around and shared, but listen, nobody's going to give you their edge. Nobody's going to sit there and tell you what to do. And that was the whole point of the whole kind of graduate course. It's like they will teach you all you need to know about maybe charting, all you need to know about, you know, the market structure, products, et cetera. But they don't tell you how to make money.

And that's something I didn't get originally. You know, it's kind of you either have something in you that you can make money or you don't. And they were that brutal. If you couldn't make it, you know, you just burn out. You just went away. You didn't make the money. So it was it was quite an interesting I don't know if you call it experiment or what you call it. It's quite an interesting way of finding, you know, who could actually do it when it really mattered. So, yeah, quite a quite an interesting time.

Why wouldn't they teach you how to make money? I mean, don't they want you all to succeed? Isn't it to their benefit? I don't know. You'd have to ask them. I mean, at the end of the day, you know, that was what they gave you. And, you know, it's, you know, we'll give you all I can. We're going to back you. You can have as much size as you want, you know, and do it. I mean, it's like all these things, you know, it's just a numbers game.

People can press the button to trade and have a multitude of reasons for doing it, your technicals, your fundamentals, but it's the guys that press the button that

when it counts with the right kind of size when it counts and meets those big numbers and that's either in you or it isn't and it's almost when you i have described it in the past you don't want to meet people that have it you know you can't describe it in her quotes but somebody has that something present about them they trust the gut they're confident but they're not arrogant okay so that's what that kind of environment brings out you can either do it or

or you can't. And some people born with it, I believe, and we've all met those people, I presume. And some people have to manufacture it. I don't necessarily think I'm arrogant enough, Riley, so to say, that was born with it, but I had something, but I had to create my it over time. And yeah, I mean, my only goal was to use as much size as possible and to make those big wins. And that's really what trading is.

on the floor perspective is all about. Everyone's there to grind, to make money day to day. But you have to remember, there's such high costs in pro trading that you have to be making money, sizable amounts of money all the time. Otherwise, you can work for a year. And by the time you pay your tax, you're coming out with nothing. So it's not something to be taken lightly. And you have to remember, as a trader, as a pro trader, there's no wage. You don't get paid. So that's why the whole

mentality of the floor traders are. You're there to make money. You're there to use size, trade the opportunities when they arise. You're there to be fastest finger first at the time, you know, back in the day. You know, you're there to listen to the big news events and the big data events, you know, because that's where you're going to make your money. And listen, every single trader, professional trader I know, has a big win story. Every single one. They've done it when it counted. So they all have a big story to tell on their wins. Do they share about their losses too, or...?

Yeah, absolutely. Generally, you see the losses. You know, back in the day, it was a different kind of vibe. A lot of floor traders had come to the screens. So you'd see mice, computer mice flying across the room, people standing up and shouting and swearing. You know, it's a high pressure environment and that's what they were used to. But yeah, I mean, people were never shy about saying the losses.

But I mean, again, you know, it's communicated through people that trusted each other. It's not like you have to stand up and say, I lost this today. You know, end of the day, the way trading is on the floor, and as it was your own business, you know, you're literally your own business. You're an entity within, you know, the kind of the framework of the house. So yeah, your business is your business. You want to tell people you had a good day, tell them. Maybe you told them a bad day, tell them. If you don't, you don't. I mean, like most things, you know,

It's generally the quiet guy sat in the corner that's trading thousands of lots and not making a sound. It's the people that control the emotions. But the old guys from the floor and that kind of stuff, they had a lot of emotions. Didn't say they weren't making money. Sometimes they were making money and still angry about it. There's a very different time back when I started. I think the transition through to more screen trading has led to a different type of trader over the years.

So how long were you there and what were some of the things, I mean, how was the process of learning while you were there and what were a few key takeaways? You mentioned size was one of them. Yeah. I mean, size really is, is the ultimate aim, you know, but size like leverage, like all things is a dual edged sword. So there wasn't really a lot of mentoring, a lot of help, a lot of support to be honest. It was just generally who you became friends with, you know,

I became friends with the risk manager and, you know, he taught me some things. He saw a different side of obviously the other side of what the traders were doing. And you get information where you can. I mean, the end of the day, as I say, you know, it's just the same for any trader. I just did it in a, I guess, a more kind of concentrated stint.

everybody likes to think if they know a bit more about technical analysis or they know about the fundamental side, if they just knew a bit more knowledge, then they'd be able to trade. But as I said before, what you have to learn is the psychology of understanding yourself, understanding what's important to you, what gives you the confidence and commitment to put that trade on. And everyone starts off with small size. But again, you were discouraged from starting from very small size or even using demo accounts.

you know, simulators that were available because you can't attach that emotion to it. So really, as I say, you're pretty much left to your own devices. And, you know, it was down to you to pick knowledge from other traders where you could, or, you know, just to kind of sit there, watch price action and just, you know, to kind of test it out. I mean, the best lesson in trading for anybody is the more you trade, the more you know about yourself. Everyone thinks of some magic trick

or some book or some webinar or some course. But to get to that next level of when you can press the button and trade and make money and do that consistently and have those larger wins and also manage the losses, it's all done through experience. So it was just a lot of that. It was a lot of that just screen time and experience.

That was it really. You know, um, I got to a certain level and, you know, unfortunately it's kind of, I'm not from money or anything. It's kind of after a year or so of trading, you're thinking, well, I'm paying my desk fees. You know, I've had like 10,000 pound days and, you know, the end of the, you know, the kind of year you're drawing out a couple of thousand to live off. It's like, well, this is not the kind of life I expected from a trader. So that was kind of a turning point for me. You have to remember when I started the, uh, this grad, uh,

scheme, to be able to buy yourself out of that grad scheme was a quarter of a million pounds. We were talking 20 years ago. So that's a sizable amount. You had to make that in order to pay Revco back to then go on a different split or maybe back yourself. So really, after a year or so of doing this and not generating enough money to get by and stay in the game, I wasn't being able to draw enough money that made what I saw as my time investment pay.

So I had a talk to the guys and said, you know, it just isn't working for me. And they said, well, you know, you're getting well with the risk manager. Why don't you work in the risk department and, you know, see what that's all about? I thought, well, yeah. I mean, I'm still in trading. I'm still on the floor as such. And yeah, so I spent just over a year actually in the kind of risk room. And that's really...

When I knew, everybody knows about the size element and the money element and what can be made. But when you actually see it in real time, I'm not just talking about one or two traders. You get to see what every trader does in real time. So instead of your trading screens, you have big screens full of traders' P&Ls.

And your job is to manage those P&Ls and to understand what the market's doing and where the risk is for the house, where the risk is for the trader. So when you spend a year or so looking at multiple accounts over anything from a non-farm payrolls to an interest rate decision, you get to see patterns. And really, patterns...

the more I looked into, you know, kind of, you know, I'm a big fan of things like Fibonacci, but that's just one thing. You know, I'm a big fan of seeing patterns in everything. When you see patterns around activity, patterns around movement, patterns around how traders enter and exit trades, also the kind of correlation between, you know, the severity of the event or the importance and the size used, the time they stay in trades,

I started to put together my own framework of what would happen if I was to go back to trading because that was always my ultimate aim. Nobody wants to be a risk manager. It's the most thankless task. Why is that? And being a risk manager there for a year, learning what you learned, did it make you more conservative about risk or more appreciate risk? Nope.

Risk in the professional world is not a dirty word. You are there to risk. That is your job to risk. Calculated risk to make money. Retailing on the other side, you're told all sorts of levels and rules, all completely constricted, stick to this, stick to that, conserve capital. In the pro world, you are there to make money. So all I saw was a load of guys making money. And my experience of risk was...

You know, you have to be a fairly, which I am, affable guy. You have to be shouted at. But when you ring somebody up, it's never for good news. When you ring somebody up on the floor, it's always for bad news to be stopped at. The only times traders like you, when they knock on the door and politely ask if they can have 1,000 lot limits in the bond,

just in case something happens, then you're all right. So yeah, the connotation is that the risk is negative for traders as in the risk department because they will stop them trading to protect their capital, which is a good thing. And that's the thing, you know, retail traders, I guess, don't necessarily have. You have to be your own risk manager. It's your money. You can do whatever you want. But,

On the floor, I guess you split into two types of traders, own account traders and back traders. So the back traders are backed by their house. So they have different risk parameters. And this is always money. It's never a percentage of account like you're taught. It's never 1% or 2% of your capital. It's like a daily stock. It's like, right, you're 1,000 down in the morning. That was bad. OK, so you've got another 1,000 pounds in the afternoon to make you back. You can't trade till the afternoon. And that's it. That's how the risk worked.

So it's nothing to do with how retail think, and it's more to do with you being able to understand what that trade has done in the past, you know, what you can do in the future. And,

And, you know, many a times, you know, traders would lose in the morning, end up winning in the afternoon. But it's having that somebody else outside. And it obviously is there for a reason. It's someone outside of the floor, outside of you that says, and you've got to be very tactful. And sometimes I got this wrong. You know, I got shouted at. And that's fine. You know, this is how you kind of, you figure things out for yourself and how you kind of, you know, get through and grow and understand what traders are going through. But yeah, plenty of people that, you know, kind of,

would lose in the morning than winning in the afternoon or winning in the afternoon and it looked like they were starting to lose money and sides up and try too hard. So you go and have a word and say, well, that's a pretty good day. You're up X amount. Maybe you should call it a day. And it's having that external influence. And it's not to say I've got more experience. I just, I see what everyone else is doing. And you say, maybe that's enough for today. And I think that's something that really is missing today.

from, uh, the kind of retail side and just guys doing it on their own. Who've they got to talk to? Who's there? You know, you have to do it for yourself. So having that kind of risk manager experience mentality and that kind of stuff, it's something that brought something else to my trading. And, you know, as I say, a lot of traders, uh,

Even big traders on the floor, they can't go into the risk room. You're not allowed. You're not allowed to see other people's P&Ls. So I got an insight into what people did that many, many, many traders will never get to see. And I'm not saying that I saw the matrix and cracked the code or anything. I just saw what was actually achievable and people really, really doing it. And some of the kind of aspects and key points that I took were speed and size, and that

And that really hit home with me. And that was something that when I was to go back to trading, that was my aim. My ultimate aim was speed and size.

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Absolutely, right at the right time. You know, when you see an opportunity and everything's aligned, and you know, the flaws were great for that because it was almost like you'd have a hush and then a buzz. You know, like people would know when things were going on. You know what other traders traded, so you'd hear like maybe them say something or shout and be like, oh, well, that's obviously he's long the bun and it's going down. What's that doing to my market? And, you know, there was a lot of kind of,

Obviously, these flaws existed for a reason, to create that buzz, to create that sense of urgency and bravado and to push you to do better. That works to a certain point, but what I found is, after we will continue on without my story, is it can be a little bit counterproductive. Always being in that pressurized environment where you're trying to be the absolute best, it can be disheartening.

So you mentioned about retail traders a couple of times in your latest, in your latest book, you talk about the common traits of retail traders. Could you go into that for us?

The whole point about the retail market and retail traders is there's a lot of people that say the pro word, and they kind of bash it around like it's the answer to everything. Pro is just a mentality. Pro means you do it for a living and make money from it. And I think a lot of retail traders fall into this category of an endless doom loop of trying to

And that's all they do. They try to learn more technical analysis. They try to understand all the different parts of the fundamental analysis that makes up the market. And they don't progress because they don't get the confidence to press the button when it matters because everything seems to constantly conflict. So traders, the retail traders, will try and get that consistency. That's all traders that I've mentored and kind of worked with over the years try to do.

is get their consistency. And when they get that consistency, they'll size up. There's no easy time to size up. There's no easy time to kind of make that next psychological step. You just have to do it. And that will be different for every trader, every trader's personality. But on the trading journey, as I call it, every trader,

You know, the professionals, the retail, the good, the bad, the ugly, they will go on this journey. They will hit different points at different times, but it will still be the same journey for everyone until you actually get into a point where you're confident to press the button and do it consistently for yourself.

So the main retail kind of traits that I see is that people lack the ability to give them permission to know what they need to do anyway. Everyone can say, this is what I'm going to do. This is what they say my plan is. But very few people actually follow it through. And very few people follow it through with a plan that actually relates back to money.

So this is the other thing why I was talking about money. It's all very well saying that, yeah, I'm consistent. I made 10 winning trades this week and I've made $100. Okay, well, $100 a week, $400, four and a half grand a year. Is that worth 10 hours a day sat at your screen? No, so you've got to kind of make these things worthwhile. And your time's important. Time's much more important to me these days than money. And it always has been since I kind of, I click, air quotes, got it.

So that's my balance from my side, because I do class myself as a retail trader, because I am. I trade in a retail platform. I may be at a pro level of money, I guess, to some extent.

but I'm still a pro trader. So what I'm always doing is balancing out, do I need to be sat in front of the screen trading or could I be doing something else? When I'm in front of the screens, it's for a reason. I'm not sat there necessarily waiting for something to happen. I have alerts. I have things set up on my charts. My office is always open. I'm generally around the house or nearby. So I can go back to the screen when I need to trade and do something. And when I do,

It will be for whatever reason, and it will be degree of size and to make a degree of money. I'm not just clicking the button for the fun of it or for the sake of it or just to kind of be in the markets. I'm purely there to make money. And that's really what I kind of get confused and concerned with the retail traders is because they want to make the money, but they're not doing the right things in order to do it.

So you said in your book that you try to identify one big trade a month. Could you break that down for us? What are we looking for when we're looking for the big trade for the month? Well, I mean, a big trade is...

you're either looking for something to shift the narrative that's going through the market or something to correct. So, I mean, all the big trade means to me, and it's different because I only have three trade types and two entries. So the big trade for me is a time thing.

All my three trade types revolve around time. I've got a scalp that lasts up to 15 minutes, an average trade which lasts up to two hours, and a day trade that lasts up to eight hours. So a big trade for me, a big trade means staying in a trade for a longer amount of time, which can be up to eight hours. So some of my trades have been minutes.

seconds even. So minutes, hours are a long time for me in trading. I'm predominantly a scalper. But if I'm looking for a big trade, something to break, something to break out of the trend, and that can be triggered by a piece of data. It can be triggered by a comment, or it can just be triggered that I will want to leave some money on the table. This is important. So when I'm a scalper, I try and take the profit the first time it is offered to me.

Okay. So I'm trying to take money out of the market quickly and not leave it on the table. So when you do an average trade and you bring the element of time in, especially a day trade, your P&L will fluctuate. It will go up and down. So I don't like leaving money on the table. So if you're leaving something and you think it's worth holding the time risk, you're going to be seeing that P&L fluctuate and going down, which is counterintuitive for me. But

The big trades, I generally use smaller size on. So I can make bigger wins with, I guess, less perceived risk by letting time come into it. Because generally, the shorter the time I'm in for a trade, the bigger size I'm using to compensate for the small amount of time in the market. So...

What you're looking for is a time element. I'm looking for the market to make a directional shift. And it's not, it's the absolute high or low. It's from the current trend. It's moving out of what it's doing. And this could be anything. It could be, you know, a reaction to data. It can be a reaction to something that's said, you know, it could just be profit taking for the big players. You know, at the end of the day, you know, things will range and they will move.

And that's, you know, kind of good for scalping. And then when markets break out, sometimes you have to add the extra element of time and position yourself in a different way to benefit from bigger pip tick movements. So you mentioned the time element. So these are tied again to some kind of news release that you're anticipating some kind of reaction to that may come around periodically, but it's not necessarily that common. I mean, you're

Because you're waiting for these announcements, correct?

Well, I mean, you're waiting for announcements or a technical setup. I mean, again, I think people rely too much on this idea that fundamentals will give you a big opportunity. I've traded plenty of big fundamental events and made sizable amounts of money. But these are unexpected events. These are not what the market is expecting. So if you think you're going to trade the non-farm payrolls here piece of data, that's actually quite a dangerous piece of data to trade because the market in the short term can do the exact opposite of what you think.

to what you're really trying to do, you know, and that's what any tribe is trying to do is seeing how the narrative, how the market has built up its sentiment, what it's thinking and will it continue or will it reverse? That's all you ever, I'm ever really thinking. And all I'm ever thinking is, is

Is this a short opportunity to scalp within that range or that breakout? Because again, I've got two different entry types. I either follow the market or I feed what I see. So is this a 15-minute opportunity of volatility? Is it a two-hour opportunity of volatility? Or is it a day trade opportunity where the market will move, consolidate, and then continue? Because that's the biggest trade in pip-wise you're going to get.

When something consolidates, it's confirmed confirmation, and then it continues. Because when I'm scalping, I'm never looking for confirmation. I'm just looking for price action and the market to get to levels that I set. And I incrementally increase my size to have more risk and to have more

short-term pain in order for the market to pull back quickly. So it's all, everything I do is based around looking for types of movement and volatility and how I can apply my framework in time work in a timeframe to what's happening in the market. So how do you set your targets? And how do you, do you try to vary them depending on the type of news and the type of events? Is it, how does that work?

I mean, everything revolves around the size of the account that I'm trading. You know, I'm not like normal traders. I will trade multiple accounts. I have different reasons for doing that. So when I'm trading, you know, accounts where I've had wins, you know, and I'm on a good streak, I might try to do more, you know, kind of average trades or day trades.

and then leave the scalping to another account to build that up. So I'm always looking for certain types of movement, and it's either very, very quick movement that breaks out of the range. And again, that could be from something that said, anything can move the markets. Look at Trump right now. He's back another four years. He didn't mention crypto in his inauguration speak, and it dropped. Now he signed an executive order just today, and it went up, and then it dropped. So that's

things that can now change the market sentiment in the short term and provide short-term opportunities. But I mean, you either have to be sat there waiting for these events or sat in front of screens waiting for Trump to say things, or you can trade it more from a technical perspective where it's not necessary the levels are going to be hit. What I set my alerts for is

how quickly levels are hit because that indicates the volatility. And I'm a very visual trader. And I trade visual things, visual patterns, as I said before. And when I'm trading, I know intrinsically how much size I'm going to use based upon the trade type. And I've got a good idea because I've done thousands and thousands of scalps, what I can make of particular types of movement. And it's always monetary. So it's like, well, that's a quick scalp, couple of minutes. I might make 10,000 pounds.

$10,000, whatever. That's fine. I have an idea of what I can do. Now, the markets move so quickly, and this comes back to the pro side of the days on the floor, that you used to speak. That's what you pay for, direct market access. You can lead on the bid and offer. You could be in and out. You can't necessarily be as quick as you can on a retail side.

But there is an element of that. And that's why I scale into positions quickly. And I have almost like I would, I think I call it in the book, a muscle memory. I'm just so used to seeing something and clicking. I've been able to change my size on the keyboard quickly to be able to get in. And that's my edge. That's my element of being able to take short-term pain and to think extremely quickly is that I know the outcome is going to be an amount of money I know I don't want to lose.

and I'm out, because I have one simple close all. I'm in or I'm out for profit or loss. And then when a profit comes on side, I do things again. When you talk to other traders or the experts will say, never look at your P&L. Well, you have to look at your P&L. It's your P&L. The big thing retail traders don't understand is when you're trading retail, you're not trading directly in the market. You're trading simulated markets. So what I see in my P&L could be there one second and gone the next.

So when I'm scalping, I might see big numbers. And I have to be quick to press that button because I can flip back to a break-even or a negative position in a matter of seconds. So what you're seeing on a retail perspective is not what you'd see if you're trading on a TT screen, direct market access, for instance. So there's lots of nuances that I've picked up through trading over the years that do distinctly separate the way you can professionally trade and the way you can trade on a retail platform.

Speaking of narrative, you mentioned in your book that you used to believe that narrative was 80% or trading was 80% technical, 20% fundamentals, and now it's shifted to more to 50-50. Why is that? If you could go into that.

Absolutely. I mean, yeah, I mean, over the last 10 years, obviously I've had a, you know, enough screen time and, you know, I watch the news like everybody else. I think, you know, we, we, we can't not listen to the news. It seems these days. And I think, you know, what we've seen after, you know, big events like COVID, et cetera, uh,

And, you know, what we're coming to now, you know, the climate change, net zero, things have gone on for a long time. There's been a lot of narrative built up that, you know, there's a problem and there's a fix. OK, and you're given information and then you're meant to agree with the narrative because the fix, you know, has to be better than the problem. And what I've seen, you know, that's news. We all have to live with that. You know, what can we do? Not, not.

not listen to the news anymore, basically just to shut ourselves off. We can't do that. What I've seen, especially in the news from the business side or financial side, is there's a narrative building up again. We've got this narrative right now where the economy is great. It's stock markets making all-time highs. That's great. Well, number one, the stock market is not the economy. So there's lots of things building up that I see.

to kind of bring people in to say, yeah, okay, everything's working. It's good. The stock market's good. But then we're ignoring the jobs, the job revisions, you know, the facts, you know, the non-farm payrolls that are made up of basically part-time jobs. We're not seeing the massive amounts of layoff that's happening in tech. You know, we're not seeing the kind of consolidation of businesses. So when you talk about, you know, the kind of fundamental side,

For a pro trader, and again, I'm talking about the institutions and that kind of stuff, they can build their positions of views over a long time. And the narrative seems to support them until the time comes for them to pull. And then the institutions make a lot of money and the pros and maybe the retail will lose quite a lot of money. You don't want to go into this stuff too much because it starts to kind of, you get this

Tim Foyle hat mentality where everything's against you and, you know, that there's a big conspiracy. All I know is money makes money. And all I know is I know some rich people, much, much richer than, you know, kind of the Elon Musk type characters, you know, billions and billions and billions. And they know what the rich people and you see it with the media and you see it with, you know, business, everything's getting consolidated and rich people talk to rich people. They're so

What I'm saying is, especially again for the retail trader, you can't focus too much on what you don't and never may understand. Lots of things are going to be said. Lots of things are going to happen. But is that going to make you money? Not necessarily. So what I'm a big believer in, listen, I wrote the book. I have to write the book. I'm fine. I can sit my days trading. That's fine. But I had something to say. I want to put it on the record that

You know, there's lots of things happening in the world and there's lots of things happening throughout trading. And I've seen it change in front of my very eyes. You know, I've seen the media and its attitude, how it presents data change. So I just want people to be prepared that, you know, everything you see, you know, doesn't have to necessarily be taking a pinch of salt, but it's not necessarily there to make you money.

So the best thing you can do as a trader or a retail trader is kind of fade out a little bit of this news. You know, look at the screens. What are the markets telling you? How are they moving? Don't get too pigeonholed into listening that some hedge fund manager is going to tell you what the next big stock is going to be because they're all out there to make money. You know, this is a tough, hard game. And it's like I said, you know, back on the floor, no trader is going to tell you exactly what they do because that's their edge.

So be very kind of wary about what you're being told and expecting it to give you instant results because they don't. The biggest things that are going to kind of move the market are the unexpected things. But there are so few unexpected things because of that underlying narrative. And the big thing that will come, you probably miss it because it will be so big and so quick, you haven't had time to prepare. So I mean-

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. You know, I've seen the kind of shift and what I've kind of done from my perspective is that, yeah, I'm okay. I could class myself as an economist. I've been a trader for long enough, but you know, I don't take too much notice, um,

of what the actual data is or what it said. I'm much more concerned about how the market reacts. So again, the non-farm payroll is a great example. It could be a strong market payroll number.

but then the market, like the S&P or whatever, the NASDAQ, et cetera, sells off because the narrative then, the economy is very strong, so we don't have to put interest rates down, which net-nets are negative for stocks. So you can end up, like the technical analysis, have so much on your charts and so many indicators that you get trading blindness. And the same thing can happen with the fundamental side, is you hear so much that it stops becoming useful to you, and it just becomes a distraction.

So really, again, for my advice or my kind of view on this, I've done it myself, is I'm much less interested in what the actual data is in the narrative or the long-term view. I'm much more interested in what it does to the market. And if you don't know what it's going to do to the market, don't trade it. You can let the market trade for the next five minutes and still have an opportunity for a pullback or continuation and still make your pips.

The end of the day, trading is about being right at the right time, not picking the high and the low, not riding the trend or the trade as long as you can. That's for people that use small size and have to have time. If you can use any kind of reasonable amount of time, 20, 30 pips is enough to make you some good money from a trade. And there's less risk involved, as I see it. Just for our listeners, 20 or 30 pips is equal to what? Two tenths or three tenths of a percent? Or how does that work?

It depends what you're trading. From a retail perspective, when you're trading a pip movement, yeah, you're talking about 20, 30 pips on the kind of whatever instrument you're trading. So it's not necessarily like the futures. You're just actual price increment movements. In your book, you said, I am an animal when it comes to trading. Tell us about what it's like to be an animal. Yeah, I mean...

As I say, when I'm in the trading zone or I'm trading, a lot of what I saw back in the day and how I saw people trade is,

Everyone likes to think that you can take the emotion out of trading and the emotion out of life. Maybe you take the emotion out of trading with a stop and a take profit. Maybe you can to a certain degree with investing when you're trading over months, years, and decades. When you're trading for minutes, seconds, or very short periods of time, you're going to have some emotions.

And, you know, what I try and do is I harness those emotions. And it's a combination of fear. It's a combination of greed. You know, it's a combination of I know whatever I do in that short period of time is going to be uncomfortable.

But you're trained to do it. You know, when you see and you put big size into the markets, you know, you're paying a spread. And certainly when you're fading the market and you're putting bigger size and you've seen the bigger numbers add up, you're minus P&Ls. You know, you have to be some ways, you know, right there in the moment, completely focused. Nothing else can see you. But also be able to take a step outside of your body almost and say, well, you've been here before.

You've seen these numbers before. It's nothing new. You've done this hundreds, maybe thousands of times. You know, you just have to ride with it. You have

You have to do it. So the animal side of it just comes with speed. And I can sit there and I can click my mouse with 50, 60, 100 lots multiple times in quick successions. And I don't hesitate. I don't think about it. I don't fear the outcome. I know the outcome. I'm either going to lose money or I'm going to make money. But that's what makes me an animal. Otherwise...

I guess the animal, I don't know really well why I describe it as the animal. Maybe it's because I feel like I'm not normal to the perception of what a trader is or what the perception of people think traders is. Back on the floor, traders were aggressive.

You know, they were blokes, you know, they were, they were manly, you know, they, you know, very much all about the bravado. And you have to somehow put that into your personality when you're on the screens, because, you know, that doesn't matter. Nobody else can see you. Nobody else can see what you're doing. Nobody else, you know, is around to pat you on the back or tell you, you know, that was stupid. So you just sat there on your own in your office, like I always am. So you've got to be almost become something else, become something a bit different than human. You know, I have to be able to do things without fear.

and without hesitation and understand that this is something I've done for a long time and keep continually doing what I know is right, even though it's uncomfortable for the short time. What do you think is the biggest lie about trading that most traders accept to be true? Interesting question. There's certainly a few.

I think the biggest lie that traders are told is that once you're consistent, you can scale up. You know, that really for me is that, you know,

It really doesn't work like that. And, you know, scaling up can be anything. You know, the difference between making hundreds in a trade and thousands in a trade consistently, you know, is very tough to get, you know, especially the retail traders and even some pro traders, you know, that I've managed over the years. But, you know, that difference between getting from thousands to tens of thousands, you know, even I struggle to get into hundreds of thousands for a trade. You know, it's just only so much.

There's only so much of a level you can reach. And after a period of time, one to reach, you know, if I was going to be, you know, the million dollar trade trader, I'd have done it years back. So the level everyone gets to where even you're uncomfortable with the time or the size you have to put in or the person maybe you have to become. So really for me, you know, for the average person, the biggest lie is that if you're just consistent and you follow all the rules, eventually you'll get there.

Well, you might eventually get there, but that might take you 10, 15, 20 years. You know, what retail trader or trader's got that time to spend and invest in this? So at some point, you have to get outside your comfort zone and start moving up. Or otherwise, you just run out of interest, or you run out of time, or you run out of money. Say, but for traders who are not yet consistent, how do they scale up safely? Or is that even possible? I mean...

The scale obviously can be done gradually. I mean, when I'm mentoring people, generally people come to me and they're trading micro lots or one lots. So the first thing is, well, you just start trading two lots. You know, not a lot of difference, you know, between one lot and a two lot. And then when you've got maybe a few wins under your belt,

Maybe try for a three lot. And invariably, that first trade is a loser and you go back to square one. So it's all, I mean, the thing is really with that kind of stuff, that's a difficult question to answer because everyone's different. So people have personalities, markets have personalities because of the personalities that trade them.

you know, what you have to get into is that it's very hard to trade, to change a person's personality. So a personality will have a trading style, you know, be introvert, be an extrovert, be a risk averse, you know, being very, you know, kind of appetite, you know, for risk, um,

And what you have to try and do is kind of play within people's tolerance for what they think is achievable. And I've always done it the same way with money. You set a target you want to make for a month, and then you work it backwards. What can you then make in a week? What can you make in a day? How many trades do you want to do in a day? And then you start to build up.

you know, the scale up of the size to reflect the smaller traits, you know, the individual traits that make up your days, your days that make up your weeks, your weeks that make up your month. Then you can see that you're achieving it. There's no easy way to scale and there's no easy way to get over that mental hurdle of being able to do it. And the gap between one, two, 10 lots is pretty the same. You know, it can be difficult. Once you get over, you know, kind of a hundred lot on building positions up to thousands of lots, you know,

that's something that takes time and something that I think that's just in you. You have to have believed in yourself or seen something like I have, and you have to want to do it. So my aim really, you know, it was, I wanted the money for sure.

but I needed to see if I could handle the size. I needed to know if I could do it. And that's what pushed me through. I just kept clicking bigger numbers because I knew I had to do it. And I knew if I could do it, there was a future ahead. If I couldn't do it, I didn't see the point in trading. So I forced myself to do it.

Kind of like going to the gym and doing repetitions with weights. With trading, is it similar? We have to put in the reps with trading to get our confidence up so that we can get comfortable with size. I mean, I've done it so many times.

Absolutely. I mean, everything's repetition, isn't it? Everything. You know, anyone can be trained pretty much to do anything. You know, you could train somebody to be a brain surgeon with enough time. Would you want them to operate on you? Probably not. It's the same thing. Do you want someone doing it for the first time? They can probably do it. Or a doctor that's been proven to do it. You know, it's like everything. I don't have any magic answers. I don't have any universal way of how anyone gets to

Be me. And I don't ever tell people to be like me. I don't want anyone to trade necessarily like me. They need to find their own path, their own way, and what resonates with them. Make their system, whatever that might consist of, you know, their own. Because owning something and have ownership of it is the only way that you can be truly free in trading. It's your decision. You live and die by your sword. You know, keep trying to follow somebody else's system. We all take elements from things. That's just human nature. But your system has to be your system.

You have to be able to rely that when your system or your thinking or your mythology in trading is triggered, you then do something based upon what you have seen. In your book, you said that managing the onside-offside part of the day trade is the hardest thing for me to do. Could you expand on that?

Yeah, I mean, the day trade, you know, I do find difficult because, as I said, it comes back to this idea of leaving money on the table. So, again, I tend not to trade maybe as much size with these types of trades, but then you will build into the position. But then it's a lot of waiting. You know, I have a lot of time to talk yourself out of trades. Now, the less I think in trading, the better my results are. I'm much more kind of click and do.

So I'm not saying that I have the markets figured out or anything. I don't. I've got my head, to anyone's extent, figured out. So I know when something happens or I'm doing a certain type of trade, I can do something. So when it comes to the day trade, as I say, that involves up to eight hours of trading.

of watching, should I say, mainly. Because once you've got your on-side position, now, yeah, sure, I could put a stop in the take profit and leave it. That's just not what I do. So obviously, when I'm trading the day trades, I'm expecting movement. I'm expecting something to happen. Now, it might be initial movement, consolidation, as I said, and then more movement. Or it might be quick movement, a little bit of consolidation, and more. You just don't know. And the thing is, when you're holding positions, I don't put stop signs. I'm always watching the markets because something can change.

You know, something can happen. So I'm constantly, you know, monitoring that position. And maybe that comes back down to the risk management days. But my hardest part of the day trade is, you know,

And continually watching that P&L fluctuate and that constant kind of doubt that comes into your head. Should I take it now? Or is it going to go to this level? And yes, it might be easier to put a stop in with a take profit, but that's not how I trade. And I don't want to trade that way. And that's just it is. So yes, it is very difficult for me to do those day trades. And yes, I have made big money from them. And I guess in risk terms, they require a little bit less risk.

But I'm much more of a scalper and short-term trade. You know, I want to be in the market quickly. I want to take my profit out. And that really comes down to what I've seen on the floor, what I did on the floor. You know, my heart of hearts, I am a scalper. But as the markets, you know, evolve and change, you know, you can't just be one thing, I don't think, anymore. You can't just be one style of trader in one market. You know, you can't. You know, you can't.

That's fine. But I found that over time in the last 10 years, by having three types of trade that incorporate time, I can trade one of my eight products and I will get a good opportunity for a day trade every month, plenty of average trades and plenty of opportunities to scalp. And that combined means that, you know, statistically, you know, that I will make the money I need to over the year. In your book, you say that 80% of your trades are shorts.

Why is this? And is it challenging to find trades in a rising bull market? Yeah, I mean, again, this is the thing, you know, what I like to do is to see the markets spike and, you know, get those quick pullbacks. So a lot of you'll see a lot of spikes and you'll see a lot of these kind of, you know, big individual candles, but they won't be there for very long. So it's not for everyone.

And the thing is, you know, it's, you see, you see a lot of them and, you know, I, you know, I see a lot of them, the kind of smaller timeframes with the five and the 15 minute. And what you'll see is when you generally look at the hourly is you'll see the wicks left, but,

What I see is whatever those kind of moves are. And yes, we've been at bull market in pretty much everything, haven't we? Everything's at record highs. But, you know, you're going to see profit taking. You know, you're going to see the market pull back. When you're only looking for small amounts of movement like I am, you know, you identify these moves that seemingly will come out of nowhere. And, you know, you can short them with big size. And, you know, you just take a small percentage of that move. And that's what I like to do. I mean, the thing is, I do have a favorite movement

trade type. And, you know, that relies on speed. It relies on my animalness, my aggression. And that's what I look out for the most because although it's,

a short period of uncomfortableness or, you know, getting in that mindset of trading. I can do that, you know, maybe a couple of times a week and I can, I can make what I need to make from the week from 10 minutes work, but you've got to be patient. You know, you've got to wait for these things. You've got to wait for the right kind of move and whatever, you know, my statistics of what I've done over the years, that just seems to be the most statistically accurate,

you know, kind of relevant trade that I have an edge. But I mean, it's just a constant, isn't it? It's a constant of looking at the market. There's a constant of knowing when the volatility is going to come, you know, based around calendar events, based around technical levels, based around, you know, certain types of movement. So all I'm trying to do is come to the market when I know something has happened.

and then trade accordingly, or come to the market before it happens, and then trade accordingly. So I'm either fading what I see, as I say, or trading the follow-through of what's going to happen, then trying to apply a time framework around that, which encompasses my risk and my size. So as I say, I don't think

retail traders should spend 10 hours in front of the screen every day, because you're going to see an opportunity to trade and you're going to get bored. You know, you're going to do a test trade or you're going to do a boredom trade. You know, when I sit in front of the screen, I'm trading and I keep my clip, you know, uh,

purposely high, that there is no kind of boredom trade. You know, you put that trade on, you sat in front, you know, you sat up in your seat, you're engaged, you know, you're not playing around with size. It's not a game, you know, that size in the market. And I know once I put size in, I'm always going to average. It's going to be more. So, you know, you know, when you, this is the thing, you know, if you're there to make money and,

be in front of the screen and trade, there has to be a reason. If you sat there in front of your screens, you know, for hours after hours, you will always find a reason. So what I've been able to do over the many years, what I've been doing is, is, you know, I still have screens on. I still have my, my, you know, accounts ready to trade, but I'm not sat there waiting for something. I think there's enough connectivity, enough information, um,

around there to be sat at times where the market's going to move. And we're going to see much more of this with Trump. That's what we saw for the last four years when he was president. He would come out and say things, and the market would react in some ways, and it would quickly spike in one direction. Then it would consolidate. It would come back. Because he says a lot of things, it doesn't mean necessarily they're going to turn into something. So

So that might be an advantage, you know, if you do have a squawk service or you do have a Twitter feed up and you can watch things and watch the markets react. But then again, I find that is more the entertainment type trading. These are guys, you know, that want, you know, I made 100 pips on that. Okay.

Okay, so you made a few hundred dollars, so what? I want to be trading when I see something or hear something or I'm ready for something that I can commit to and use the size that I want to do. And again, that's all the book's really about is my journey to size. And yeah, it didn't happen overnight. I went through my own trading journey just like everyone else. And yes, I'm not saying I'm the best trader. I've got hit plenty of times in trading and had losses. And a lot of the times, my biggest losses have been around data.

And, you know, my ego's kicked in and I've thought this is what a market should do. And I've held the trade for longer than I should. It's like, well, it has to turn now. The market has to do it. I'm Steve Ruffley. I'm right. I understand this stuff. Then you get more pain and then it's like, oh,

So yeah, I mean, this is the thing. I've learned by making money and certainly learned by losing money. But again, all I've done is condense this into a relatively simple framework of time and entry styles and being able to understand how much money and how much size I can put in each one of those trades each time. So yeah.

that's really how I got to where I am by that whole journey of the things I've seen, the things I've done. And yeah.

Excuse the last interruption here. This is Tessa. We hope you're enjoying this episode so far. If you love the podcast, please give Chat with Traders the best review you can on whatever platform you're listening from. This will help us to keep the episodes coming. Also, if you haven't subscribed to our email list, please hop on to chatwithtraders.com and click on subscribe so we can keep you posted of information that may be of importance. Thank you. Now back to the chat with our guest.

In your book, you mentioned, quote, when the markets hit an extreme, it will always pull back. So how do we measure what is extreme and kind of what are some technical indicators do you use to measure what is extreme or not?

Well, the extremes, again, will be based upon the range and that kind of stuff. I like to measure extremes by previous movements. So as I said before, I'm a big fan of Fibonacci. So I'll use Fibonacci expansion points, you know, to kind of view where I see the extremes of the market. So they can be very useful in the upside and the downside. So generally, you know, that's what I'm looking for. But also, you know, it's a very visual thing. When you see candles as they form and as they move,

Again, you start, and I don't want to sound too brain-manned here, but you start to see patterns in how they move. And that's, again, when you're talking to the professional side, you'll have professional software like CQG, they'll have market debt, they'll have a lot of information that retail traders want. So my kind of experience

extremes of the market, you know, based upon looking on, you know, candlesticks and, you know, on a, on a retail platform. So there will be delays sometimes, and it will be kind of Jake. So I have a set framework for every single product that I trade. Um, my charts that I wrote, well, I had them written for me. It's my IP about nine, 10 years ago. So my levels are already predetermined. So every single chart I have, I have predetermined levels. So I know for me, um,

But I think based upon my experience on mathematics and all the kind of, you know, the technical analysis that I've kind of gathered that works for me, I know if a market hits certain extremes based upon my levels, that's what I'm classing as an extreme. It might not be the extreme to you, might not be the extreme to, you know, the market as such, but the levels I've used and I have confidence in them. So this is the difference, you know, when you're looking for somebody else to tell you, you know, oh, that's a big daily level according to,

you know, this, you know, analyst. So what? I'm not interested. I'm interested in my levels in things that I've traded, you know, thousands of times. And that gives me the confidence to trade to and from these levels. So everything's based upon my framework of what I've had written for me. And yeah, most of the time, you know, it's fairly accurate and sometimes it's wrong, but that's when the kind of, you know, picking the kind of right trade type comes into play. I mean, there's lots of things when you trade at speed like I do in size,

You know, you have to make split-second decisions. And, you know, that's part of the game. That's something you can't really teach. That's a combination of experience, as I say, the animalness, the aggression-ness. You know, if you want to be...

like me that does what I do, then it isn't... If you don't do something outside of the box, then you're just going to end up like everybody else. And the stats on retail traders is probably 70% to 80% of retail traders lose money when trading. So if you want to be something else, maybe you have to be doing something else. Never saying go to my stream or do what I try and do and what I do. But you have to do something maybe...

at least slightly different, you know, because otherwise you're going to end up with the same results. So to wrap things up, is there anything that you've been working on that's exciting, exciting for you? What more exciting than the book, the book that took three years writing. Oh, yeah. I mean, what is the name of, what is the name of your book?

Well, the book that I wrote was The Pro Retail Trader. That's just been kind of released in November of last year. So that's still pretty new. So I spent a lot of time writing that. As for new stuff, to be honest, I've done thousands of webinars over the years. You know, I'm probably just going to kind of take a step back for a minute. I'm just going to, you know, trade what I do, you know, trade my size,

And yeah, I don't know if there's anything trading-wise that's going to be particularly interesting. I mean, people always ask me to come up, you know, start up webinars again and, you know, kind of live trade rooms. You know, if there's enough interest in that stuff, you know, I will do. But the thing is,

everyone's trying to copy what someone else is trying to do. That's what I say. And everyone's trying to kind of, you know, watch what someone else is do. But the fact of the matter is, you know, all my years have been in the markets and the different types of traders environments I've been in, it will come down to this, that those who can do it, have it in them or can create that in them. If you can't, you're just going to be finding more and more reasons to prove that you can't do it. So yeah, maybe, maybe I'll try and, uh,

try and do an expansion on that, maybe an add-on to the book or something. I don't know. But yeah, I mean, just for me, really, it's been interesting to do a podcast again. I've been working on the book. I've been quite quiet from a kind of ego perspective of kind of getting myself out there and talking to people. But yeah, it's been nice. You know, it's been nice to kind of chat to you guys. I've followed you for a long time. So it's quite nice to be on here, to be honest. Yeah. Well, Steve, thanks for coming on Chat with Traders.

Great. Thank you very much. Yeah. How can our listeners reach you? Well, Google SteveRuffley.com, Twitter at Steve Ruffley, YouTube at Steve Ruffley, essentially at Steve Ruffley. Everything's Steve Ruffley. Great. Fantastic. Thanks for coming on. Thank you. Hey, stay tuned for my quick conversation behind the scenes with Steve after the interview.

There were a lot of golden nuggets there that I took for myself too. I'm an active trader, but it's hard for me to become an animal because I...

I try to like size up. I'm, I'm at the point where I am getting more consistent and I do want to size up, but that is like psychologically so hard. And I do did push myself. Like what you said, I did incrementally sizing up a little bit and it's just putting in the reps and just trying to do it. But it is so, so hard because I just, it's just that my, I don't know. I just don't have that aggressiveness in trading, but I'm trying to push myself to be something I'm not. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, no, no. I mean, you have to remember there's two things here. OK, so the first time you kind of size up, you generally lose because that's just how life is. And, you know, you have to bounce back from that. And the second thing is, you know, you don't necessarily have to be a different person or an animal.

You know, I've had clients in the past that put on personas. So I've had, you know, quite successful people, you know, surgeons and that kind of stuff. And when they speak to me, they made them call me a different name. So they're not the surgeon person anymore. They're a different alter ego. I'm not saying go to that extreme. But as I say, you know, when I do my kind of animal thing, it's funny because I didn't even know I'd written that that way.

when you brought it up. It is. I'm only battling with myself and I go into a state and, you know, I'm hyper focused. I'm aggressive. I'm a little bit frightened. There's some fear and greed in there, but I'm not letting the fear and greed get to me. I'm using it to my advantage. I'm saying, I've been here before. I've done this size before. You know, it's trying to test you. You know, it's trying to push you and it will, you know, your averages are there. You've done it for long enough. It will come back to you. So it's just,

constantly pushing yourself and pushing yourself and knowing that if it's in you, you can draw it out from yourself. It is in, I do believe that level of it is in everybody. It's just how hard you want to push inside and how you want to ask the difficult questions of yourself. Yeah.

That, that is awesome to hear. Yeah. Another thing too, but I have one more minute, but I just want to, another golden nugget for me was the PNL thing. I, you know, I hear people say, don't look at your PNL. And you said, oh yeah, I mean, you do. And I'm glad that you said that because I do. And I thought I was being crazy, but I'm like, I need to see what's going on.

Of course you do. Of course you do. And the thing is, that's for an investing thing. You don't look at your P&L because you've got your stop and you take profit. That's fine. You can walk away. I don't walk away. I'm looking at my screen there and then. And you have to remember that your P&L is your P&L. I trade big enough size. I'm not going to move the market. But I can shift the broker's book.

So some of the orders or some of the trades come in, my profit, there was 10 grand in profit, could be switched to one grand in profit in an instant. So I'm looking, I'm looking, I've got a big close all button and I'm looking, I'm watching the patterns in the P&L, how it jumps. And when you know when it comes right, you see a big jump, especially with my size, kicks in for my average scalps and then bang, I'm taking it. Because that second hesitation, something could be there one second,

and then it's gone. So when you're short-term trading or trading retail, you have to look at your P&L. It's imperative. You've reached the end of this episode of Chat with Traders. But rest assured, there are more episodes loaded with real market insight and zero hype on the way soon. So to stay updated with each great new release, subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. And we'd love it if you'd leave a rating and review. We'll catch you next time on Chat with Traders.

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