{"id":625455,"date":"2024-05-08T14:40:17","date_gmt":"2024-05-08T12:40:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ftmo.com\/?p=625455"},"modified":"2024-05-08T14:48:26","modified_gmt":"2024-05-08T12:48:26","slug":"top-ftmo-trader-pepijn-better-be-safe-than-sorry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ftmo.com\/en\/top-ftmo-trader-pepijn-better-be-safe-than-sorry\/","title":{"rendered":"TOP FTMO Trader Pepijn: “Better be safe than sorry”"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the next part of our series on successful FTMO Traders with above average profits or consistent results, we will look at the approach of one of our youngest traders, Pepijn from the Netherlands.<\/em><\/p>\n

Pepijn started trading at a very young age, and like most novice traders, he was lured by the first significant bull market in cryptocurrencies in 2017, when cryptocurrency first hit a price of around $20,000 per bitcoin. After the price crash, Pepijn, like most retail traders, lost most of his money, but it was a good lesson for him. It can be said that losing an investment account is a problem, but if a trader\/investor can learn from it, it can be a very valuable (though not cheap) lesson.<\/p>\n

So, Pepijn was not discouraged by the setback and when a friend of his, who also trades with FTMO, showed him Forex trading, he stuck with it. Forex is simply a more developed and bigger market for him, where cycles do not play such a big role, and therefore it is much more interesting for him. This is also why he was very interested in trading and studied charts almost every day, even when he wasn’t trading.<\/p>\n

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You can’t trade seriously without a journal<\/h2>\n

After a few years he started to take trading really seriously and became a full time trader. In addition, he spends a lot of time on self-education and studying, watching online courses on YouTube and other platforms. For him, serious trading means keeping an honest trading diary and doing monthly and weekly analysis. This is where he sees the biggest difference from his early days. Without a journal and enough serious data, a trader simply cannot know where he can improve and what his strengths and weaknesses are.<\/p>\n

Backtesting<\/a>, on the other hand, is not something he spends much time on. There are quite a few differences between backtesting and live trading, according to him. For example, you don’t backtest emotions, which are a very important factor in trading. He did test his strategy, but he spent most of his time on live testing, which gave him the best information.<\/p>\n

Price action and Fibonacci<\/h2>\n

Like many successful traders, Pepijn uses a top-down approach, where he first looks at charts with longer timeframes, such as D1 or W1, and then resolves entries on minute, five-minute or fifteen-minute charts. He follows classic price action in his decision making and in addition uses Fibonacci levels in combination with liquidity zones, but even here he doesn’t want to have the chart cluttered with lots of lines.<\/p>\n