Dmitriy Lavrov — interview (eng)
Just less than a week ago an interview of Dmitry Lavrov, a member of Qurrex’s advisory board, was published in Due Diligence [ICO] by TopTraders. Today we are glad to give you the english version of the text. Enjoy!
An interview with the Top-1 trader of the global analytics site Tradingview.com.
Few traders started to trade on the crypto market when it began and even fewer believed in crypto or the blockchain. Dmitriy Lavrov became one of the first swing-traders on this market.
Trading experience of over 11 years; on the Forex market since 2007.
The Top Traders team recently invited him for an interview and wanted to share his interesting information about a professional vision for the market. Enjoy the read and learn something, friends.
TT: What role does bitcoin have from your perspective?
DL: Bitcoin is the leading cryptocurrency, and it’s entirely possible that it will occupy 1st place in the future as well. Reliability and trust from its community allow Bitcoin to occupy confidently the first place in the crypto world and set the tone for the further development of the crypto industry.
ТТ: What alternatives to Bitcoin do you see in the near future?
DL: I think Ethereum is next most important project after Bitcoin. It’s an entire ecosystem with huge possibilities and potential. Ethereum is not only an independent unit of payment, but also a platform for creating various projects. In my view, having such a complete ecosystem makes Ethereum a powerful project and an interesting alternative to Bitcoin in the long term.
ТТ: With what methods or tools can the crypto market be evaluated or predicted?
DL: Cryptocurrency markets have their own specifics but, globally, they aren’t any different from the Stock Market or Forex Market. So a lot of tools and approaches from traditional markets can be used to trade in cryptocurrency. Fundamental analysis helps you determine the movement of one coin or another months ahead of time. Technical analysis not only forecasts the possible direction of the market, it also helps determine the optimal points of entry and exit. If you want to follow the big money, try the VSA method (Volume Spread Analysis). There are a of tools for technical analysis and you need to choose the ones that go with your trading style, strategy and goals.
ТТ: What percent of your deals are successful?
DL: On average, about 60% of my deals are successful and in many cases this depends on market conditions. That’s why I use trend strategies (swing). The number of successful deals is higher for trend areas. When markets are moving sideways or during a market corrections, there are fewer profitable deals. The percentage of successful deals by itself is not very significant. It should be considered in conjunction with the ratio of risk to possible profit.
The larger the amount of potential profit in relation to a possible loss, the lower the percentage of profitable trades can be. And the other way around. My risk/reward ratio and percentage of profitable trades allow me to be profitable in the long run.
ТТ: What kinds of indicators do you use in your work? How informative is the RSI (Relative Strength Index) indicator for crypto trading, and what period is desirable?
DL: I trade with strategies based on signals and indicators. I use several strategies to have the opportunity to trade in various market conditions. In one strategy, I use Moving Averages to determine the direction of a trend at entry levels. In another strategy, the trend indicator Ichimoku fills this role. To confirm a bounce from important levels and lines, I use RSI and MACD histogram. Bollinger Bands works great for determining volatility while DMI works great for determining market conditions.
RSI, like other indicators, can be used with cryptocurrency trading. This oscillator helps determine when the market is overbought or oversold and also signals trend changes. The standard periods of 14 or 8 can be used. The period can also be chosen independently, taking into account the peculiarities of your trading strategy.
ТТ: How would you characterize your trading strategy?
DL: I trade on market fluctuations (swing trading). Medium and long term deals are opened only according to the signals of the proprietary trading strategies. This approach, combined with a conservative capital management strategy and discipline, offers stable profits in the long term and the possibility to trade without emotional stress.
ТТ: How do you build a balance between long-term and medium-term strategies?
DL: Since a large part of my time is spent developing my own project Tradunity, participating in side projects, market analysis and looking for trading opportunities, in my trading I have to focus on long-term transactions. They now make up the bulk of my portfolio. Medium-term deals are opened when there is a very promising signal and when it is possible to enter the market on time based on this signal. If I was to name in percentages my ratio of long-term to medium-term deals right now, it’s probably around 80% to 20%. This ratio can be adjusted in the future. If I have more time for trading, medium-term and maybe even short-term deals will be in greater quantity in my portfolio than long-term. It’s important to remember that your selection of a time interval for deals and investments must depend on your abilities. If you don’t have that much free time, focus on long-term deals. If you do trading for a living, you can create a portfolio of long-term, medium-term and short-term deals. You must select for yourself the ratio of deals within that portfolio.
ТТ: Why don’t you present your educational content on tradunity.com in Russian?
DL: My core audience on Tradingview.com is English-speaking. When I launched the Tradunity project, I took that fact into consideration and now my main task is to make the site accessible for novice traders from various countries. Maybe we will make a Russian-language version in the future. This will depend on the demand for our services in the CIS countries.
ТТ: How should novices start trading? What do you recommend? And what literature should they read?
DL: If you are just starting to trade on the cryptocurrency market, don’t expect everything to go according to plan. With my experience working with novice traders, I can say they really love to make all kinds of mistakes trying to make their first profit. Novice traders like to get into difficult situations because they have the wrong idea about what is trading on financial markets. As a result, many novice traders simply lose all of their capital or worse most of it. You must understand that in order to get stable profits from trades or investments, you need to have knowledge and experience in this field. Novice traders have neither. That is why the most reasonable thing is to start learning as fast as possible and forget your desire to get rich quick. To compensate for inadequate knowledge at the beginning, you can entrust your capital to a professional trader for management or begin by educating yourself. Once you determine what to do with your capital, you can start learning theory. You need to master the basics of Technical Analysis, capital management, and trading psychology and find an appropriate method or trading strategy for independent trading.
As for literature, I recommend reading the books of such authors as Alexander Elder, Erik Naiman, Jack Schwager, Steve Nison, and Katy Lin. These books will tell you about how to trade correctly on the stock market and Forex market, but much of this knowledge can also apply to trading on the cryptocurrency market.
ТТ: What would you forbid your students from doing in their first 3–6 months?
DL: First of all, I would forbid them from doing anything stupid. This is hard at the beginning, but will allow them to establish good trading habits in the future.
What you should not do:
— try to get rich quick
— trade without a specific plan for entering and exiting deals
— try to understand all market movements
— react emotionally to trade results and situations, when markets work against open deals.
I would absolutely forbid marginal trading, short positioning. I would also really not recommend trading large sums and opening lots of deals. In the early stages, it’s important to study basic theory, master the principles of proper trading and train your discipline.
ТТ: What crypto exchanges do you trade on and why?
DL: I divided my capital among 3 of the largest exchanges: Poloniex, Kraken, and Bittrex. First of all, I look at the reliability of the exchange and its reputation. Trading conditions and tools come second. There was a time when I had to leave Kraken because there were constant system errors, but they fixed those problems on the platform not that long ago, and I came back to the exchange.
ТТ: We learned that you are helping to create a unique crypto exchange by participating as an adviser in the ICO. Can you tell us about it and why traders should decide to trade there?
DL: Qurrex is the first hybrid cryptocurrency exchange. It combines the reliability and many other positive sides of traditional exchanges with the possibilities of the decentralized blockchain systems. It is an ecosystem for social and professional trading and investing in crypto assets. The platform is oriented towards a wide audience: natural persons, individual traders, major brokers, and institutionalized investors. Combining the idea of the blockchain and the traditional financial market allows for the formation of a new system which will be beneficial to all participants. The project creates a new quality, transparency, and reliability standards that the cryptocurrency exchange must have. That’s why this exchange will be interesting to traders in the future.
ТТ: The first problem for new exchanges is the lack of liquidity. How will you address this problem with Qurrex?
DL: It is really important to provide traders and investors with a reliable and comfortable trading platform, protection for their capital and good working conditions. Qurrex is equipped to do this, so there should be no liquidity problem.
Thanks again to Due Diligence [ICO] by TopTraders for this great material and to Dmitry for sharing his unparalleled experience with the community!
To find out more about Qurrex, please, visit qurrex.com or:
