Jaroslav Kohout
My journey begins at the edge of the new pandemic era. An era that will change everything. As someone who left everything behind to come to a foreign country to succeed in this craft, learning from the best, I was both full of optimism and courage, but also full of doubts and worries. It is important to understand the context I was facing. For the last two months, I have been seeing the brightest Axia Elite traders making seven and eight-figure trades right in front of my eyes, executing their craft. The craft of trading that has been learned, stress-tested, and fine-tuned over many years of trading grind. Those traders perfected the edge over the years, they all faced many dark moments as well as moments of glory to reach the point where they could with courage and confidence harvest the fruits of their hard work. To put on trades with massive size, patiently sitting in trades understanding that this is the time like no other. The asymmetry of this job in the making was happening in front of my eyes and Axia traders were putting on the biggest trades of their careers. Meanwhile, I was putting in long hours to learn as much as I could, getting more and more anxious if I can really one day make it in a way they do. How long will it really take? When can I be like them? When will I finally arrive? Trading on its own is hard already, but I felt like my learning curve is starting to stall and reverse. I constantly felt like my time is running out and I began to wonder if I am learning enough, doing enough? I was feeling worse as days went by. Alone in a city where I knew briefly only a handful of people. In a city that looked like a ghost town due to pandemic with everything being closed and everyone under lock-down. With my health conditions slowly deteriorating, getting home every night into my empty flat, feeling that I am actually getting more and more lost. I was starting to question everything. And then, as I was walking home that Friday night, beaten by the day, disappointed, sad, and anxious I have realized that I had no idea what this game is about.
I have realized that I won’t be able to learn a pattern or strategy from an Elite trader and just copy and paste it. I have actually realized that the senior traders have never “finally arrived” as traders but continuously perfecting their craft. That there are no dark secrets and that’s why these guys can make it. I have realized that this game is so complex, ever-changing, that simple “copy and pasting” does not work. That your edge is not the strategy, latest footprint setting nor some secret order-flow pattern, but me! I am the edge! All my deep practices executed religiously are part of my learning architecture and that learning architecture is my best bet on how I can succeed in this game in a long run. Suddenly everything changed, I could drop all the hopes for those secret strategies and focus on perfecting my system of learning. How I observe things, document them, and deeply reflect on them. How I build my trading mental models and my trading principles. How I can verify them in the markets and use the deep know-how of senior traders on the floor to stress-test them, day in day out. That is my edge to how to succeed in the long run. I am the edge!
That Friday night as I have finally arrived at my apartment I could not sleep. My brain was on fire. Being exhausted but full of thoughts after many intensive weeks, I have finally fallen asleep. When I woke up the next morning, I immediately started to sketch how my learning architecture can look like. To this day I have not stopped, but I have encountered many obstacles along the way. Some so severe that forced me to stop trading and return home for a moment to realize something I would never be able to if I was not forced by circumstances. But more on that in my next blog post.
JK
