This article is based on a conversation with trader Anthon. Conducted and edited by Owain Higham.

 

Can you tell me a little bit about your background? How did you discover trading, and how long have you been at it?

 

I came across forex trading when I was about 17, which is roughly 8 years ago. I don’t really know how it happened; but I guess I was lured into opening an account on a sketchy broker from some obnoxious advertisement. 

 

I remember trying to get the hang of everything being completely new to the space, where “youtube tutorials” and alike weren’t really a thing for trading back then. I got a hold of the book Trading in the Zone by Mark Douglas, and it didn’t take long after that before I got into stocks. 

 

Being from Sweden, we kind of really don’t have the best culture for one to start trading, let alone become a trader. Most brokers (FYI, we only have like 3 major brokers/exchanges) don’t even offer stop losses on foreign assets because the system is built up upon going long for 5+ years minimum. I obviously was more drawn to international/US markets, and of course, I didn’t appreciate trading so limited. 

 

When the crypto boom came along a lot of great exchanges opened up, so I hopped on the train. One thing led to another and I’ve been in the markets hard for about 3 years. The prior 4 years was mostly longs (not leveraged) and swings. Day trading has become a thing of today, and even more a thing of today because of Bookmap!

 

That’s Interesting about brokers in Sweden. Can you tell me how you discovered Bookmap? I would also love to know a little bit more about how you day trade now. What instruments do you prefer to trade, what’s your average holding period, etc?

 

Well, I tried hopping onto different trading discords where I found one guy posting some charts with TA I’d never seen before; and I saw him mention order book visualization in a post. Curious as I was, I tried googling different combinations of keywords to find a program that offered that service. And I didn’t find anything until I read this blog post somewhere about Bookmap, so I looked it up, found your youtube and vice versa. 

 

As mentioned, I was baffled that I’d been missing out on all this knowledge and was compelled to try Bookmap. Almost a month in and close to 300 trades I am convinced that this is something one should pursue to gain an edge in the markets—-at least for me! I day trade everything that I can get my hands on that has volume, just crypto, stocks, and crypto futures though. 

 

I basically sit all day long and scan, including on weekends. I kind of live by “Let the trades come to you” and just pick the trades that have the highest probability (by my conviction) of making the right move. The holding period for my day trades are mainly in seconds or minutes, which are basically gappers. Rarely hours, but if I hold for hours then it is mostly with lower leverage/margin. 

 

Fib levels are literally the bread and butter for my trades, and any super clean patterns or candlesticks on vital support/resistance. For example, if you have a stock retracing to 0.618 fib from its highs with an inverse h&s pattern forming its exit right above or below the 0.786 fib, almost 90% of the time it will break the resistance and retest 1. fib. Similar trades like that are the best. Where bookmap plays its part is that you know how strong support/resistance is, which is information that just puts you on top of the game.

 

What are your aims now? You are still quite young and the world is your oyster. Do you want to go deeper into trading or will it be something you do on the side?

 

Bookmap is like a total full circle for me. I really don’t understand why nobody is really talking about it either. There are some explanations for that of course. I’ve tipped all of my friends that actively trade to give Bookmap a shot, so far 1 is hooked at least 

 

Most definitely, I keep on digging deeper on a daily basis. However, I still view myself as a noob even though I’ve been at it for a relatively long time. And the beauty of trading is that you literally learn something new every day by just looking at charts. It’s really fascinating.