Juraj Baráth has been trading with The Trading Pit for a while now and has achieved remarkable results, despite working a full-time job as a software developer. Let’s dive into his trading journey and learn from his experience.
Let’s jump right into your trading journey. You’ve been with us for a while and have had some success. It sounds like you're growing with us: the company is growing and you're growing as well.
Yes, yes, yes.
How did you first become interested in trading? What drew you to the charts and numbers?
I really like the uncapped potential of it. Every other job in life has some limits regarding how much you can earn with it and trading doesn't have such limits and that's what got me into it.
So, your initial interest in trading to make some extra money on the side?
Really, It's more about figuring out how to get to a career, which has an uncapped potential, without any kind of limit about how much someone can make. Yes, right now I'm still making less money by trading than at my regular job, but I hope as I get better and better at it, eventually it will significantly surpass my regular income.
Is your goal to eventually become a full-time trader, or do you plan to keep working even after hitting big profits?
I'm not sure yet. I really need to get there first—to those big profits. I really want to get to a point where I make, on an average yearly basis, at least five times what I’m getting with a regular job in order to even consider quitting my job, because I’m working as a software engineer. It sounds like a very good salary and everything. So I don’t really have reasons to quit.
Your introduction into the trading world was less challenging than the average person because you do know how to use a computer very, very well.
Yes, yes, yes.
Do you think this is an advantage for you when you're analyzing trades and charts?
I don't think that part is actually hard. The hard part is the emotional aspect of trading — being able to stick to the plan. If I, let's say, start making some plan violations, then I need to be able to stop quickly enough before the trading cone gets blown or something like that.
So the emotional side is the biggest challenge?
Yes, definitely. That’s the hardest part.
How do you stay focused and manage the emotional aspect of trading?
If I review my own performance, like when did I do well? When did I do better? Anything that limits trades, apps, and also limits screen time. So this means that, for example, if I already have funded accounts, that only applies to that because on the challenge they had very high goals that needed to be reached. But when I'm already funded, I should really have the best performance if I just limit myself to two to three trades every day and then keep grinding up the accounts and have all of those traits, like some set stop losses, take profits, and breaks in between them, and just accept whatever it is the market gives me. But it's very challenging for me to do that consistently. So that's the issue.
What would you say is like the best break to have to completely detach from the trading?
"I mean, I need to do something else. You can’t just stop trading and then keep looking at the charts—that will never work. I need to close every single chart, every single trading platform, and then do something completely different. For example, I can do some software development or even go out for a walk and then come back to see if there are any new trading opportunities. I also like to set limit orders for everything just to have a more planned approach and try to enter at certain levels rather than being in a rush and doing market orders.
What would you say is your trading style? What are your more preferred assets to trade on? What is your preferred strategy?
I like trading NASDAQ futures, and I'm mostly scalping them. Somehow, I'm having better performance during the London session than during the New York session. I am not sure why that is, but usually, the reason is that I perform better when there is a sideways market where I can enter at the resistance levels and the support levels. It's not like a heavy trend when I have no idea when the trend will end and all of those things that I am trying to improve on. I want to be able to trade in both of these situations, but it's a bit challenging.
What are the steps that you're taking to keep developing yourself and keep growing as a trader?
I have multiple things that I'm doing. First of all, I'm trying to set a certain size and just do that to see how many trades in a row I am able to make at that size. I'm also trying to scale up in terms of trading multiple accounts, multiple firms, and also my own personal accounts. That helps a lot if I am able to actually be successful and get to the payouts, but if I don't, then it can hurt a lot.
I will be kind of careful with this, but overall I think I have been pretty successful with three different prop firms, including The Trading Pit, where I already got to five-figure payouts. So that's pretty good.
Do you usually try new assets, new trades, or do you stick to the core?
The issue is that I usually get burned when I try to deviate too much, so the better I stick to the core, the better the chances of winning trades are. But I am mostly doing some experiments with the New York session nowadays to see if I am able to learn how to catch those bigger moves as well, because I think that's what I'm kind of lacking. I’m good at catching the smaller moves, like five to 10 points per trade on Nasdaq, but catching the bigger moves, like I said, 30 to 50 points when it's trending, is what I am trying to get better at.
How would you describe your daily routine when you're sitting down for trading?
I don't have a very set routine from that perspective. I am still doing software development full-time, so I'm still trading on the side. What I do is be observant of the time of day. If I start trading, I know what kind of volatility I should expect based on the time of day, and I try to trade the strategy based on that.
For example, if I trade the Asian session, I really need to expect very low volatility. If I trade the New York session, then that's very high volatility. So I need to always be aware of that—not just starting at a random time.
I also have specific times when I believe the market often reverses. For example, one to two hours before the New York session, it tends to reverse to the opposite direction and things like that. I consider all of these factors when trading, but I don't really have any fixed times that I only trade between certain time periods or something like that. I am just trying to focus on choosing the correct strategy for the correct time.
Do you have a favorite indicator that you like to use before starting your trading session?
One of the things I do during the New York session is mostly looking for real breakouts. If a certain level gets broken, then I expect it to move like 20 to 30 points in that breakout direction. That's what I'm going to get better at because it doesn't always work out as it should.
So, I need to add some better filtering to be able to figure that out. I'm also using quite a lot of trend lines to know what to break, so I'm looking at both the horizontal support and resistance levels and also trend lines for support and resistance.
It sounds to me like you’d like to keep it simple; you have your own specific method, but you tend to use more classic indicators.
Yes, yes, yes, I do believe that all of those indicators are just making me kind of frustrated because I expect them to work, and then they don't work, which is kind of problematic. So I just prefer to use support and resistance and trend lines.
I also do multi-timeframe analysis. If I see a higher time frame trend, then I know it's usually better to go with that direction when there is a trending time of day, such as during the New York session.
But when there is a London session, I really want to see on the higher time frame that it's ranging to confirm that it's ranging daily. Because sometimes it can even trend during the New York session or the London session. So yeah, I need to be aware of that.
What is your opinion on people who are using AI or robots? Do you like AI? What are your thoughts?
Yes, I already gave it a try to call the trading bot, but I wasn't able to get any consistent results with it. The results were completely different for each year, each backtest. Because of that, I am just sticking to manual trading because I'm able to better adapt to market conditions.
I think that's the hardest part of developing a trading bot: being able to correctly detect the market conditions and, based on that, formulate a strategy, rather than just having a strict strategy that only works in one particular market condition.
How is your trading journey so far in 2024 compared to the previous year?
Honestly, it was better the previous year. This year, I am at about half the amount of payouts compared to the last half of last year. It was often the case that I almost got the payout and then screwed it up on the last trading day, or while I was waiting for the approval.
Actually, The Trading Pit is pretty good from that perspective because it immediately locks the account after you reach the profit target. So there is no way to screw things up after you have already reached the target. So that's a very good thing.
It sounds like a painful experience.
Yeah. Because there are prop firms out there that each make you wait two weeks just to get paid, and you can still continue trading during that time. But if you screw it up, then it's over. So, you can either completely stop trading, but then you won't be able to get the next payout because of that, or you will just need to wait even more time.
Or you can continue trading, but you need to do it in a way that doesn’t affect the payout that much. So yeah, my goal is really to get to a point where I can get multiple payouts from the same account. That's very hard to do.
What is your most favorite asset to trade right now?
Nasdaq.
What is your least favorite asset or the asset that betrayed you the most so far in 2024?
I had my biggest losses when I tried to trade smaller stocks for earnings. I tried to buy them before the earnings report, anticipating that it would be good, but it turned out bad more times than it turned out good.
The interesting part was that when I started doing that, I was actually winning two or three times in a row, and after that, I lost five times in a row, losing more than I won with that. So that was kind of bad, and I'm not doing that again anytime soon.
I will be doing it with very reputable call plays, right? For example, if I have Google earnings, then I will have a position open for that, but I will be aware of the sizing, so I will try to size it lower and only trade these earnings on the bigger companies, not the smaller ones.
What would be the number one tip you would give to a trader?
I have a bunch of steps to it, but getting some consistency would be the first step. How to do that? Firstly, finding a strategy, backtesting it, and figuring out that it actually works, and then trying to implement it.
I would suggest that the strategy really should have fixed take profit and stop loss levels, just to keep it simple — like a fixed amount of points as take profit, a fixed amount of points as stop loss. And have a trade limit that allows only 2 to 3 trades a day.
Additionally, it’s important to set a minimum delay between trades, such as at least a 30-minute delay between trades. Then just see with a constant size how many days in a row they can stick to that particular strategy.
So, have a trade count, limit between trades, stop loss and take profit — keeping it there and seeing how many days in a row they are able to mentally adhere to that without breaking the rules.
Watch the full episode here
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