WRAP-UP OF INTERVIEWS WITH WSDT I WINNERS (Part 1)

The WSDT competition has successfully ended and we have announced it’s best competitors. In light of this, we have decided to show you some of the highlights and top comments from some of the winners.

We asked our participants a few questions to get to know more about them and their team, their winning strategies, feelings and overall perspective about the WSDT competition. 

A Diversity of Backgrounds

Competitors come from very different countries and diverse backgrounds. Among the TOP 10, we can find winners from Russia, The Dominican Republic, Lithuania, and California.

Some of them got into trading looking for a second income and hoping that the future would allow them to become full-time day traders, as Vilmantas (#2) told us. While others were dead set on a career change like Gary K (#10), who is currently working as a contractor.

Strategies and Tools

Aggressiveness and risk-taking were both pointed out as a must by some of the winners. Valdas N (#8) remarked how important it is in selecting a team with an aggressive approach in mind. That’s why he chose to be part of Stocklock’s team.

Vilmantas further added the importance of risk-taking in such competition if the goal is to climb up to the first position, with many participants and a handful of prizes for the very best.

When it comes to the strategies, the competitors used a myriad of approaches and creative dynamism. From specific tools such as support and resistance, round numbers, pivot trading and being aware of capital injection as Andy F (#7) reported, to fully developed formulas.

For example, Gary K  figured out that trading is about 80% psychology, 15% technique and 5% luck via breakout and breakdown strategy that includes looking for volatility and black swans.

Vladimir S (#4) states: “I got all the picks from all the analysts in the room on Monday, put them in a watchlist and then I created another watch list and put all the “cheap" shares from the 1st watch list there. Then, I choose 2 setups good to my mind from them and partially went all in. It brought me $21000 by the end of the day!”

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Education, support and Teamwork

All TOP winners had some form of knowledge about day trading, be it more informal by watching some successful traders or be it professional, explicitly mentioning some day trading service provider.

Some of them emphasized the fact that they had taken formal educational courses in day trading.

Vilmantas N, Vladimir S and Andy K told us that they were following Meir Barak and Stocklock respectively, while Gary K commented on the encouragement and support received from Tradenet.

Some participants did feel mentorship encouraging, while others focused exclusively on individual performance and did not interact with their teams that much.

Mindset and Emotional Well-Being

The diversity of opinions concerning the right psychological approach is remarkable and perhaps one of the aspects that you should highlight the most.

Some traders decided not to trade during all days to avoid exhaustion. Others made it clear that one would have to pay in the form of stress and discipline if you take up an aggressive and risk-taking trading style.

Gary K laid out his extreme discipline and slight disappointment together with some tips: “I was up at 3.00 am every day as trading starts at 6:30 in California, looking to see what my next trade was and formulating a plan. I was self-disciplined enough to stop for the day when I was very close to the maximum daily loss. Overtrading and trying to force trades was a bane to my existence during my last two days.”

Future participation & improvement.

Most participants are willing to participate in the next WSDT and all of them strongly recommended taking part because of the learning process and the possibility to trade with a fully funded account.

Andy F, from the Dominican Republic, went a step further by recommending his Latin American fellows to get involved in the competition since it is not easy to save up enough money to fund an account from the very beginning.

Some of them, like Vladimir S, was so happy with the prize that he does not think he will participate anymore.

A note for improvement to the organizers had to do with the waiting period for the final results and the importance to warn participants to close all positions at the end of the day since that is the reason why some people get disqualified.

And that’s all for now, folks. We will be also happy to hear from other participants’ highlights. Stay tuned for the upcoming World Series of Day Trading.