Welcome back to our second episode of Trader Spotlight: The series where we interview some of our favourite A-grade traders from the community, and learn about their trading journey, insights, and any advice they wish to share.

This weeks episode is a special one. We've discovered a rare hidden gem of a trader that has been flying quietly under the community radar with a follower count of under just 250 at the time of releasing this interview. It was only when he recently requested his own CMM Verification page that we noticed he was somewhat of a trading god.

(Request your own CMM Verification page here)

As of the release of this interview, he has currently almost doubled his starting balance of 18 BTC in around 2 weeks of trading. With a profit factor of quite literally "infinity" after a win streak of 14 trades and counting, allow us to proudly introduce this weeks trader spotlight:

Twitter: @RaoulDukeBTC

Trading Experience: 3 years

Grade: A+

Gonzo's CMM Verification page is available to view HERE

**CMM: Tell us a bit about life/background before trading? And what got you into trading? ** Gonzo: Like most others, I was a seeker, a mover, a malcontent, and at times a stupid hell-raiser. I was never idle long enough to do much thinking, but I felt somehow that some of us were making real progress, that we had taken an honest road, and that the best of us would inevitably make it over the top. I saw the 2017 ICO craze as an opportunity, took to trading like a duck to water, and went full-time crypto at the January 2018 peak.

CMM: Is trading your primary source of income? Gonzo: Yes

CMM: How long did it take you to become consistently profitable? Gonzo: Well, that depends what kind of trading we are talking about here. I was solely an alt-coin spot trader in 2017, almost always 100% exposed to alts, 0 to BTC. I was pretty much always profitable trading alts at first, as you could be in a bull market- with enough patience, and the right amount of greed, you could book some serious profits with ease on just about any coin. I did fine trading shitcoins, but when I was introduced to margin trading, the whole thing changed for me. Once the BTC balance became my focus when trading with margin, my spot alt trading really went extinct for the most part, but I wasn’t consistently profitable with margin trading til probably last year, largely due to the big run up to $13.8k.

CMM: With regards specifically to your trading style: talk to us about how you started, and how you got to where you're at today? Gonzo: My style initially was no charts, just watching certain coins on blockfolio and getting a feel for “normal” price ranges, and buying or selling based off these loose ranges in my head. I started to learn TA, but was still clueless for a good while into 2018, you can look at my early tweets and see some real garbage.

Once I got introduced to Supply and Demand/breakers, RM, and trading psychology stuff from Mark Douglas, I started to see a real change in performance.

TA doesn’t really matter that much what you use, just whatever makes sense to your brain. Horizontal zones are just non-negotiable, I understand them. Patterns and trendlines, to me, are too subjective: I’ll talk myself into seeing whatever pattern I want to be true, but I can’t argue with a horizontal, price is either above or below it/bounces off or breaks through it. Usually I know I’m on the right track when other traders with different approaches come to the same predictions. “Managing the downside” was the biggest change in terms of how I approached trading with leverage. De-risking and taking profits as they come, ditching the losers quick, yada yada yada. It’s not huge things that you haven’t heard before, it’s the cliched “boring” shit that makes you profitable I think.

CMM: How long have you been using CMM and how has it affected your trading? Gonzo: Started using it about 7 months ago I think, and it was a lot easier than the spreadsheet methods I was manually inputting every trade into. I remember it blowing my mind when i first started using CMM and I had like a 43% win rate but I had 3xed the account. I was super proud of that shit. I mean you could really flip a coin for long or short and manage it correctly and be profitable. TA helps us pick better spots of course, but those numbers were the proof of that theory to me, which I found really cool.

CMM saves me time more than anything else though. I worked to make spreadsheets with formulas to display a lot of this data for myself, but they quickly become a mess and a pain to manage with my frequent trading style.

CMM: Based on the experience youve gathered so far, what advice would you give to the version of yourself that first started trading? Gonzo: Keep it Simple Stupid. Do more hallucinogens. Stack Corn.

Gonzo's Final Thoughts:

"Let us toast to animal pleasures, to escapism, to rain on the roof and instant coffee, to unemployment insurance and library cards, to absinthe and good-hearted landlords, to music and warm bodies and contraceptives... and to the "good life", whatever it is and wherever it happens to be."

Want to connect with this trader?

Follow Dr. Gonzo on Twitter HERE

Want to appear on Trader Spotlight? We'd love to have you. Send us a message: support@coinmarketman.com

Or DM us on Twitter