Rui has developed an automated system which covers many forex pairs in order to reach a good level of diversification and his performance seems to be very promising so far. He is using a real account and is posting frequent updates on his social page.
His main Trader account is “ruioliveira“. He has been trading for 37 weeks and has generated a 43% annualized Return on Investment (ROI) and 1.5k pips Maximum DD. The overall NME is currently very low at 364$.
Let’s meet Rui and see how he started his trading journey in ZuluTrade.
• Tell us about your trading background and how you got started trading.
I started trading back in 1993. I was at the university here in Portugal, and a friend bought some stock actions from a Bank that was being privatized from the state.
In 1990s many Portuguese companies that were held by the state were privatized. From 1993 to 1998 I made a lot of money that help me to buy a car and a house after finishing college.
I kept trading on stocks until 2008 when I lost a lot of money with the economic crisis and I left the trading. In 2011 I had cancer, and that made me think about what I really enjoyed doing.
During the healing period, a friend talked to me about Forex. That was my restart. I decided to leave my job and become a full-time trader and a blogger.
Initially, I lost a lot of money with Forex, but with time and some training, I improved my skills.
With time I started to develop my own strategies and to code it to make robots / EAs since the emotional control was my handicap.
And with my robots, I started to not only have results, but also to be able to help other traders, and that is what I like most about trading.
Make money, have time for me (by using my own robots) and to help others to make money also.
• When did you first discover ZuluTrade? What was it about ZuluTrade that got your interest?
When I started Forex, I also started a blog and in this blog, I also looked for some companies to work as an affiliate or to sell my signals. That was when I first discover ZuluTrade, around 2012 / 2013.
At this time, I did not have much visitors on my blog, nor my strategies were good enough to get followers. But I knew that once I could have a good strategy
that ZuluTrade would be a great way to both make money and help others make money since that is what ZuluTrade is about. A platform based in helping everyone to get profits from the market.
• Give us the basic structure of your strategy
My main strategy is to follow the weekly trend, and then to trade with daily supports and resistances, but always respecting the weekly trend.
I use several indicators such as ADX, Stochastic and MA. I use a general Stop Loss since I know that being in the weekly trend I don’t need to have individual SL to all trades.
For that reason, I have a winning rate between 80% to 90% of my trades. Since my strategy is automated, it trades 24/5. More opportunities = More Money.
• What’s your trade management approach – taking profit and exits, trade size and account- level risk management?
For a 1.000 USD account, I work with 2 pairs opening 0.01 or 0.02 Lot size, depending if my account is more or less aggressive.
In average my TP is around 50 pips, but many times if I see the price can reverse a little I close around 15 to 20 pips profit.
I also try to close most of my trades on Friday to avoid leave many open trades during the weekend to avoid gaps.
I try to follow the main economic news, since they may change a weekly trend in a couple of hours.
When big events are approaching I normally close or stop working with some assets that may become very volatile (US elections, Brexit, etc).
I also try to work with my margin level above 500%.
• How can your followers get the best by your strategy?
They need to use a good broker to be sure they have no issues with their platform, with requotes and all those bad things that can happen with bad brokers.
To have a minimum account of 500 USD (best would be at least 1000 USD) and to use the ratio 1:1 of my trades.
Example: if they up to 2.000 USD account to use the same lot allocation as I use. If they have 4.000 USD to double my lot allocation and so on.
They also need to be calm and work on the long turn, there are days that my trades fail, but any good strategy on the long turn gives us profits.
I had a bad comment from a follower on my second week only because I had 2 trades that I lost, and he left following me.
After that day I had 12 (and counting) winning trades. So, my main advice is to follow my strategy and to be patient.
• How do you feel when you have a good and a bad trade? How are you dealing with this?
It is normal to have bad trades, bad days or even bad weeks, if you can’t deal with that, then you are in the wrong industry.
When I take the decision to close a trade with a lost or when the system triggers the SL, I know that the market is the king, and I need to respect and keep working.
In the long run, I work with the market and not against the market, so with the time, I will have more profits than losses.
I can’t win them all, but I can win more than lose if I keep my mind focussed and believe in my system.
• Finally, if you could give some advice for the aspiring traders out there, what would it be?
Work hard
Believe in you
Don’t quit on the first losses
Live healthily
Be patient
If you want to become rich in one week, buy the lottery, here it will take years, but eventually, with all the above pieces of advice, you will get there!
And above all, be HAPPY!
More Traders’ Interviews to follow…Stay Tuned!