Febi’s Trader Interview

Tell us about your background

I was born in Jakarta, Indonesia and moved to Europe in my teens. I have lived in the Netherlands before moving to Sweden and completing my Undergraduate studies. I hold a bachelor’s degree in economics and master’s degree in finance from Jönköping International Business School. After graduation, I started my career as a research assistant to Professor Andreas Stephan at Jönköping International Business School. At the same time I was a teaching assistant in Corporate Finance. Ultimately, I received a full scholarship in the form of an employment as a PhD candidate in Financial Management at the school of business, economics and law at University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Last year, I decided to resign from my PhD since it wasn’t the right specialisation for me. This was my story before I decided to pursue a career as a full-time trader.

What motivated you to become a funded trader?

I have been interested in trading since I was in college and I took a crash course in technical analysis then. However, it wasn’t until last year during the start of COVID 19 outbreak that I started to depend my knowledge in trading through YouTube videos and began live trading on my own account. I don’t believe in the get rich quick mindset in trading. Given the risk that I am willing to take, I know that it will take some time until I can double or triple my own account through trading without leverage. On the other hand, becoming a funded trader means that I have better access to capital and an opportunity to double my capital faster when I accomplished a profit target. Besides, I want a track record that showcases my ability to trade as I progress through trading the live account and achieving the junior trader’s 6% target in the first year.

Why did you apply to Alphachain?

I wanted to develop my trading skills and learn from professional traders. I resonate with Alphachain’s approach to trading. Alphachain has a systematic trading approach to discretionary trading and put a considerable focus on the psychology of trading.

What has been your best performing day? 

March is my best performing month so far, and I made most of my good trades from trading EUR crosses in March. My approach was mostly shorting EUR in March. Yet, my top 2 best performing days that I would like to share here is when I took advantage of EUR strength against USD. Firstly, on March 11th I applied my setup and long EUR/USD. In this trade, I took benefits of a temporary USD weakness due to US treasury yield retracement after its sharp hike in early March. Secondly, I took advantage of FOMC announcement on March 17th, when I applied my setup to long EUR/USD.

What have been your strengths while managing a funded account?

My strengths are my ability to comply with Alphachain’s risk management and stay level-headed in drawdown situations. Besides, I think I am pretty good at identifying good trading opportunities.

What has been your worst performing day and why? 

My worst performing day is when I went into a trade assuming my customized settings (fixed to 0.01 LOT) were still there.  However, the default setting of 1 LOT was in place and I accidentally went in with that.  Realizing my mistake, I exited the trade as soon as possible with some technical difficulties. This resulted in my worst performing day since I started trading the live account at Alphachain.

What has been your weakness while managing a funded account?

Sometimes I can become very loss averse, and this is the major cause of losses since I manage a funded account. Nevertheless, I am working on this issue and I have become less loss averse these days.

What challenges have you faced? 

The biggest challenges as I manage a funded account is to master my own psychology and the lack of interaction with colleagues during the current COVID-19 situation. I am however glad that there is a performance coach at Alphachain that gives excellent support in trading psychology and performance.

When do you feel stressed and why?

I feel stressed when I failed to plan my trading properly and this occasionally happens on Monday. This could lead to indecision, thus, causing anxiety and stress. To avoid this type of stress I try to improve my Sunday routines. And I always make sure to focus on the process and preparation before thinking about entering a trade.

Which benefit have you enjoyed the most at Alphachain and why? 

The benefit I enjoyed the most from Alphachain is the daily webinars, e.g., I enjoy the daily market brief since it is a good source to cross check the market sentiment and important price levels of assets that I trade.

In addition, the teams are very supportive. It is always good to feel supported in this trading journey.

What areas are you looking to improve? 

I am interested in improving my skill to trade naked charts.

Beyond that, I would also like to learn to automate my trading strategy as a hedge for my discretionary trading.

Where do you see yourself in a year’s time? 

I would like to already hit the first 6% target by then and be able to gain 3%  per month trading forex. In addition to forex I hope to trade cryptocurrency.

To complement my trading activities, I would also like to pursue writing on financial market in general and the crypto space specifically.