trends
TRADER 1. Family photo 1
2. A print by San Francisco muralist Amos Goldbaum
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3. Bloomberg Professional terminal 4. Jabra headset for virtual calls and meetings
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5. Notebook for brainstorming and keeping a trade log 6. TradingView charts for technical analysis and tracking real-time market action 7. Blue Yeti microphone
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ILYA SPIVAK Head Asian-Pacific Strategist at DailyFX Home/Office location San Francisco Age 38 Years trading 15 How did you start trading? I graduated with dual undergraduate degrees in economics and international relations, wanting to pursue some sort of hands-on macro research or analysis. I was also stubbornly dead set on staying in San Francisco. After almost a year of going to interviews for places I really didn’t want to work, I came across an ad for an entry-level sales job at the new San Francisco branch of a Wall Street FX broker. It opened with something like, “Do you love to talk about international events, markets and politics?” That was definitely me. I figured I’d try to get my foot in the door through sales and see if I could find my way to the analytical side of things from there. At the interview, I was
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8. Status Audio Between Pro wireless earbuds
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handed an article from The Economist that I was supposed to read and answer questions about on the spot. As it happened, I’d already read it because I subscribed to the magazine, and said as much. That seemed to go over well, and after a bit of deliberation they hired me. I fell in love with trading in the first few months on that sales desk. The ability to practically participate in everything I’d studied in school and was passionate about was almost instantly appealing. Favorite trading strategy for what you trade most? I trade from a global macro perspective. I follow global events closely and try to think about what is likely to happen economically and geopolitically from a broad, big-picture perspective in the coming six to 12 months or so. Then I attempt to figure out how the major markets might respond to various permutations of what I think might occur. Usually, I see most benchmark assets—G10 currencies, bonds and stock indexes, as well as key commodities
like gold and crude oil—telling the same macro story through their own lens. Then, I study the charts to gauge how the macro backdrop I envision might look in the context of current trend development. I am looking for price action to suggest that one of the macro scenarios I’ve considered is playing out, and then use technical analysis to find where a trading opportunity with attractive risk and reward parameters could be. Average number of trades per day? I might have as many as five or six trades on at a given time, or none at all. I tend to hold positions for weeks and months at a time, so there is no true daily average. I am not necessarily looking to trade on any given day, whether it be to open or close a position. What percentage of your outcomes do you attribute to luck? Everything I have learned over the years suggests it’s critical to get the influence of luck in trading outcomes as close to 0% as possible, for
Luckbox | May 2021
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