Interview with Okane – Five Years In the Making Series
ThatSucks.com (former BinaryOptionsThatSuck.com) celebrates 5 years in the making with 5 interviews you must read!
Q: You joined us 3 years ago and have since then been contributing to the BOTS growth. Tell us why you joined our team and your personal experience of working on various projects.
A: I joined the CommuniTraders forum in 2013 because I believed that I needed to be surrounded by pro traders in order to succeed in trading – and I was right! Thanks to the pro members in the forum and after studying a whole lot about trading binary options I had new experiences to share from a newcomer’s perspective and that’s why I was invited to join the BOTS team as an author. Together with the team, I have since then been working on many projects where the focus is often about proper trading education and exposing scams.
Q: The forum has evolved since you joined years ago, tell us about your favorite part and why?
A: My absolute favorite is the Members War Room because as I mentioned earlier, I wanted a place with real traders doing real trading! When you read a trading journal, you will learn from that trader and as a diary keeper you can get feedback from the pro traders.
That’s why you will often see me in the forums recommending newbies to open their own trading diaries just like I did when I got started.
Thanks to the steady growth, today, the “diary room” is full of trading diaries from all sorts of traders. This is a goldmine and some newbies don’t realize how spoiled they are to have access to so much trading experience in one place.
– Haha, spoiled?
Well, you see, back in the day, I had to Google till my fingers were numb and read anything I could find but I would often only find scams so my best friend was “trial and error”. So if you tell me you don’t have time to read through a few trading diaries or watch a 10 minute video then yeah – spoiled is the right description.
Q: You have helped expose many “Get-rich-quick” scams such as Autotraders, do you have anything on your mind to share about these schemes?
A: Yes! I have reviewed many of them but the funny thing is, once you have reviewed one such scam service, you notice they are all the same but with a new name and a slightly different pitch. The scammers call it the “suckers pitch” which is often a long video created to trick people with amazing promises of riches and they want to sell you hopes and dreams – all achievable through their “secret”. Their “secret” is always something unbelieve, a “magic system”, a fool-proof strategy, government experiments and other made up nonsense stories. While they lure you with awesome promises, you forget all about looking for any evidence and put logic away. However, even though these scam services are all the same, it’s crucial that we keep exposing them. I think this way we can help many people from falling victims and teach them how to trade instead.
Q: How did you first come in contact with trading?
A: I had just travelled back from a trip to Japan and I noticed that I had made a good deal on the SEK/YEN exchange rate and I thought to myself; “hmm, why not buy and sell currencies, it seems fun and I can make some money”. But there was one problem; I had no idea on how to get started on this. That’s why I started researching on how I could make money off of the currency market and off course, the “get-rich-overnight-ads” kept showing up and the journey had begun!
Q: Do you see any differences between the trading world/industry now as opposed to when you started trading?
A: When I started, there was no such thing as regulation so you had to rely on reputation but there weren’t many sources like CommuniTraders and BOTS with real comments from real people. Today, you can most definitely find a whole bunch of people trading with the broker you are interested in and ask them about their experience. Furthermore, I see two major differences currently in the industry:
1. First: when it comes to regulation, most authorities are getting tougher on unlicensed brokers and that is (for the most part) a good development.
2. Second: lately, a new positive trend has immerged from some brokers. Rather than trapping traders with bad bonus policies and annoying account managers, they try to be appealing by creating unique platforms, offering beneficial bonus policies, decent payouts and hassle-free withdrawals. I hope this will remain the norm in the near future!
Q: Describe your trading style
A: To make it easy for myself, I am a technical trader who uses “price action”. But I guess that doesn’t really say much? Okay, so to make it easy for the readers: my price action trading involves reading the candlestick charts, setting up targets using trendlines and support and resistance lines. I analyze multiple timeframes and trade based on my targets. By now, my eyes are used to recognizing patterns, trends, highs and lows, strength of support and resistance lines and I have learned to understand the unique features of the assets I trade. I guess I didn’t make it easy after all? Haha… Well, who said making money was easy? But hey, I already do live webinars and recorded tutorials on how to use price action, what more do you need? You can find them on the CommuniTraders-Live YouTube channel, remember what I said about being spoiled ;).
Q: Do you believe that trading is a sure way to a steady income? Can someone live exclusively from trading?
A: Not for most people. Overall, it depends on your situation. Do you have a house loan, kids to feed or do you own your house, live alone and don’t have that many bills or mouths to feed? What I mean is, the less you have to worry about, the easier it will be to handle your emotions and remain successful. If you want to live off of trading, you must be able to shrug away a bad trading month or two. But if a losing month makes you panic because your bills are unpaid and your wife is threatening to leave you… then don’t rely on trading for a steady income! I would also recommend that you trade for a “longer period” and make sure you can actually trade well and handle both wins and losses in a professional manner. Unless you haven’t done all that first, don’t quit your job.
Q: You write for BOTS, help traders in the forums, the Skype group and the YouTube channel plus your own trading. How do you manage all of these tasks?
A: Haha, now that you put it that way, it sounds like a tight schedule. Well, the good news is that I no longer have a day job, or rather a night job so I have lots of free time lately. By the way, oftentimes I do several things at once. I am using two monitors (soon to be three) and while waiting for a trade to finish I can help answer newbies in the forums, the Skype group and when the market volatility decreases I even have time to write an article or two. By the way, the weekends are a great time for writing what I have kept in my mind during the week because the markets are closed and no trading means free time for writing!
Q: Why don’t you simply trade and forget about writing? I mean, why bother with writing if you are a trader?
A: To understand that, you must first ask yourself: “why do people write at all?”
People write because they want things off of their chests and it is also in our nature to share our stories with others! Imagine if everyone kept everything to themselves… Besides, I just can’t stand watching all these scam artists and their nonsense without interfering. Oh, and one more thing, reviewing so many strategies and writing about binary options in general made me the kind of trader I am today. I think anyone who is writing a trading diary can agree on how helpful writing is!
Q: I know this might sound like a job interview question, but I have to ask: where do you see BOTS in another 5 years from now and what are your goals?
A: BOTS is already where you need to be if you want to have a positive experience as a binary options trader. In 5 years however, we will definitely be an even bigger community with many new and exciting ideas that have hopefully been well-executed. My personal goal is to keep improving the Members War Room so that everyone who joins can learn the difference between real trading and gambling. Meanwhile, I have also been working on increasing our appearance on social media like YouTube and Facebook – which have thus far been predominantly controlled by scammers. Watch out scammers, here we come ;). Thanks to our readers and forum members, these projects are going well and in a few years it can only grow bigger.
Q: And where do you see binary options in 5 years from now?
A: A recent trend I have noticed are all the partnerships between binary options brokers and Football leagues. Therefore, who knows, in 5 years from now, binary brokers could be sponsoring presidents and prime ministers? Then they will make the governments revoke taxes, instead you will have to deposit all your salary with a broker, accept a bonus and trade. Haha, sounds like a good start for a conspiracy movie. Okay, back to reality. I think the industry will become strictly regulated but I am not sure how the authorities are going to battle the bucket-shop scam brokers who show up, run their scam and then shut down and rebrand and popup again. Perhaps they can fight them by cooperating with the banks but whatever they do, I hope the industry will become similar to the Forex industry – cleaner and serious.
More 5 Years in the Making Interviews: