“We implemented other more aggressive strategies with a higher size.”
Pablo Martinez Garcia
We continue our series of interviews with mentors who won WSDT I.
We have already published an interview with #1 team leader Stelios Stelianou. Today we present an interview with a top-notch mentor, member of I&CB, whose team placed third — Pablo Martinez Garcia.
How does it feel to be an accomplished Team Leader of WSDT? Does it feel like an important milestone in your mentoring career?
Leading the Spanish-speaking team has been something special that has made us even more responsible for our community of traders and, without a doubt, better traders.
How would you describe your overall experience with the competition? Was it more of a challenge that you took seriously or more of an entertaining event for you and your team?
We can say that it was an initial challenge and training at the end. The competition was hard because it made me operate with more stocks than I usually do.
Join WSDT – Spring games – 2021
Your team
Do you have any message for your team at this very moment?
The only thing we can say to our WSDT Team is THANK YOU because they have demonstrated TO BE THE BEST. It has been all very fast and intense but, finally, we were the third team in the classification: THANKS TRADERS!
What advice would you give to novice traders who have tested the waters of day trading with you in the competition and are preparing to tackle the challenges of the real world?
I hope you enjoyed the experience of American Stock Trading and, most importantly, that this has helped you to make the decision to start in this exciting world of American Stock Trading.
Was it hard to coordinate such a great amount of traders? What are the new challenges that you had as a mentor?
Coordinating our team was not difficult because the majority used to be with us in the DayTrading sessions that we do every day on our Youtube channel. Messages we wanted to transmit, arrived perfectly.
What kind of feedback did you get from your team? Will it affect your approach to leading and mentoring in the future?
In general, the opinions received from the members of our WSDT team have been very positive, it has been a great experience and sure they want to repeat!
What was the overall sentiment within a team? Were they competing with each other, or preferred to help each other out?
We helped each other. We started the live trading session on our YouTube channel and that allowed many traders to start each day following through.
Trading
How was paper trading during the competition different from trading on a real account? In terms of emotions and technicalities.
Trading with a real account is completely different from doing it with a competition account. You do not manage your capital, risk or your goals in the same way. The emotions are completely different because you do not perceive that you are earning or losing your money as if you were operating with a real account.
Did you change your trading strategy to adapt to the competition? Maybe took more risks or played safer than usually?
In our case, we implemented other more aggressive strategies with a higher size. If we wanted to try to win the competition, it was necessary to risk more with our own accounts.
Was there anything special about the market during the competition? Any events that affected your strategy?
Not that I remember. Some news injected volatility into the market but that happens almost every day. Remarkable how active the ROKU action was during the competition … I think many participants took advantage of some of the excellent opportunities that ROKU offered.
Mentoring during the WSDT
Were there any key moments that set you on the way to where your team has ended up – planned decisions, luck or crucial mistakes?
No, for us every day was day 1. The main thing we shared with our team was that they should be careful during the last days of the competition especially when they saw their ranking compared to the rest.
What did you have to change in your mentoring style to adapt to the competition conditions? (Change your communication channels, engage with your team more than usual, change your trading strategy, etc.)
The truth is that we did not change anything because we do live trading every day on our YouTube channel and we did exactly the same during the competition.
What factors, in your opinion, kept you from taking the first place?
It is my first time in a competition, as many members of our team. For the next WSDT, we will be better prepared and we will do better
