On November 16, a competition among novice traders will begin at the Higher School of Economics. Within a month, participants are given the opportunity to trade on the stock exchange using starting capital. Each of them will strive not only to save their money, but also to increase it. In order to find out the details of the upcoming competition, as well as to discuss what it is like to be a young trader, we met with Roman Vishnevsky, founder of United Traders, and Sergei Volodin, senior lecturer in the finance department.

Young traders competition

10.11.2015 21:00
On November 16, a competition among novice traders will begin at the Higher School of Economics. Within a month, participants are given the opportunity to trade on the stock exchange using starting capital. Each of them will strive not only to save their money, but also to increase it. In order to find out the details of the upcoming competition, as well as to discuss what it is like to be a young trader, we met with Roman Vishnevsky, founder of United Traders, and Sergei Volodin, senior lecturer in the finance department.

Good afternoon, Roman. Tell us why you, as a young graduate of the HSE Faculty of Economics, decided to leave well-known trading companies and start your own?

Roman Vishnevsky: Good afternoon. At first I worked in a trading firm, but they did not provide opportunities for growth and development, as in other similar organizations. Therefore, I left it, and together with other traders we decided to create our own company, without this drawback. We have an ideology: “Better Place for financial traders,” that is, we give traders all the conditions so that they are satisfied, earn the maximum and can develop with us if they have such a desire.

So the competition that will be held at HSE is a kind of demo version of working in your company?

Roman Vishnevsky: Yes, in some ways that’s exactly it. You trade using a virtual account, you have 100 thousand rubles and a month to show the best results. Then those who are at the top of the ranking based on these results will receive real money under management. And then, if we understand that a person is motivated enough for further development in this profession, he can become a full-fledged trader of the company and work with us on an ongoing basis. For us, competition is an opportunity to select capable traders for our company. In America, for comparison, such competitions have been held since schools, and, on average, 5-6 thousand educational institutions participate in them annually.

Are there other reasons to participate in the competition? Not everyone will be able to show good results and then work as a trader.

Sergey Volodin: The fact is that at HSE, even in financial disciplines, the emphasis is often on theory. To work freely in this direction, practical classes are required, which are given in a small volume. If a student takes part in the competition, he will already know exactly how the stock exchange works, how market assets are traded, and how to practically apply the knowledge gained in lectures.

What else, besides experience, will participants of the competition be able to gain?

Roman Vishnevsky: The most important thing is that participants will see how the market works in practice: they will learn what a trading terminal is, what it should look like and how to use it; will understand when trading sessions open and close, what clearing is and much more that any trader needs.

Sergey Volodin: Students will study more deeply the various aspects of trading and in the future will be able to make more intelligent investments. For example, do not invest in mutual funds, losing on management fees, but create a similar portfolio of shares yourself. And if a person really has experience and understands that opening an account and buying and selling shares is easy, then there will be no insurmountable obstacles for him.

What restrictions are there for participants, who are you waiting for first?

Roman Vishnevsky: First of all, these are young people or girls over 18 years old who have a desire to make money on the stock exchange. That is, there are practically no restrictions. The main thing is to have a desire to develop in this direction.

What qualities should a person have to become a successful trader?

Roman Vishnevsky: Not much is needed for this: firstly, a penchant for analysis, the ability to interpret the information received; secondly, the attitude towards risk: on the one hand, this should be a person who is ready to take risks and make a deal, on the other hand, he should not risk everything, like in a casino.

Are you expecting students from any specific faculties or not?

Roman Vishnevsky: No. As I already said, the main thing is the desire to understand how the financial world works, to gain real trading experience, but this still cannot be attributed to any specific faculty. It is clear that most of the guys will be from the economics and mathematics faculties, but there may also be students of any humanities specialties.

Sergey Volodin: We are trying to focus the project on students from all faculties, since even among non-economic areas there may be those guys who will become successful traders, since they may have the necessary qualities without even knowing about them, since they have never tried themselves in this sphere. The competition is also a good chance for a student, including those from a non-economics department, to decide whether the financial world is suitable for him in terms of a future career, whether he is interested in it and whether he has any abilities here to understand in what field it should develop further.

Is any special knowledge required from those who decide to take part in the competition?

Roman Vishnevsky: No, you don’t need any additional, special knowledge. The educational information provided to the competition participants will be sufficient. For this purpose, a lot of special videos have been made that will help you get up to speed and get a general idea of ​​trading. There are short and long educational videos devoted to the following topics: what is an exchange, how to buy shares, how to trade, what is a trading platform, what is technical analysis, and so on. In addition, we will do a preparatory lesson, maybe even more than one.

Why did you choose HSE University to host the competition?

Roman Vishnevsky: Because Sergei called me and said that there was an opportunity to hold a competition. I have long wanted to organize something similar among students. We have already held similar competitions, so we already had the whole system ready. Now I hope that by teaming up with the HSE team, we will be able to hold a truly large-scale competition.

Sergey Volodin: And from the HSE side, it turns out that the idea is that students acquire practical knowledge of trading in stock markets. They will learn to practice and then, when they graduate from university, they will already know how this is all done and will be able to work in this field. Otherwise, now, when a student comes to get a job, for example, in a brokerage company, he has to be taught everything again, sometimes starting from the basics.

Your company employs a lot of newly graduated students and those who are still studying. What advantages do students who are still planning their path to stock trading have over experienced economists?

Roman Vishnevsky: A student does not have incorrect patterns in his head. An experienced person with an economic education has a formed and, in his opinion, correct picture of the world, his own understanding of how markets work, how macroeconomics works, how the interaction of financial institutions works, and so on. And he projects this vision onto his transactions. The student doesn’t have anything like that in his head yet, and he just watches what happens and draws conclusions from it. He has a more flexible mindset, which makes it easier to navigate the real market.

How to combine competition with studies? After all, it is difficult to follow the trading session while taking a macroeconomics class.

Roman Vishnevsky: Now, thank God, from 10 to midnight there is time to compete. That is, at 10 am the Moscow Exchange opens, and until midnight the student can trade: during the day, shares of Gazprom, Lukoil and others, as well as futures, in the evening only futures: for the dollar, euro, gold, RTS index. Therefore, nothing prevents the student from actively participating in the competition: bachelors will be able to take part in trading sessions in the evening, after classes, masters, on the contrary, during the day.

How will the competition take place? All you need is Internet access and the ability to work with the terminal in your free time?

Roman Vishnevsky: Yes, the strategy will be something like this: students will be able to come to the presentation (it will take place on November 11), then there will be an introductory lesson, and then the whole process will take place remotely. Trading on the exchange will begin on November 16.

You can find more information in the competition group.

Roman Vishnevsky is one of the successful traders, owner of a hedge fund, co-founder and managing partner of the brokerage investment company United Traders. What is he known for, and how will his experience be useful to practicing traders?

Biography and path to trading

Photo by Vishnevsky.

Roman is a native of Cheboksary, but he spent his childhood in Germany, where his parents went to work. As a teenager, he returned to Russia with his family, but moved to live in Moscow, where the future speculator went to study at a physics and mathematics school, after which he entered the capital’s Higher School of Economics. It was there that he learned what stock and currency exchanges are, what types of assets there are, and what trading is in general.

For reference! From a young age, Vishnevsky dreamed of becoming a banker, and in his third year at the Higher School of Economics he began to think about what he should be: go to work in a bank or become a trader.

The desire to learn to trade on the stock exchange won out, as a result, Roman began to master the basics of speculative business at the age of 19. The trader’s first attempt was crowned with success; he managed to get as much as 30% profit from the invested money that his parents gave him on Gazprom shares. Before the first impressions had time to cool down and the euphoria had passed, the value of the assets collapsed, and Vishnevsky suddenly lost everything.

But the money had to be returned, so he decided not to quit trading, but to continue his activities on the stock exchange, but start with training. Moreover, the future owner of the hedge fund went to gain knowledge not just anywhere, but to a Canadian company (which one Roman is keeping secret). But it is known that this is a prop trading organization, where Vishnevsky also worked. In a very short period of time, having started his education from scratch, he went from a beginner to a successful trader, achieving high results in scalping on American stocks.

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More than 20 years in the Forex market;
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At the same time, Vishnevsky received a specialty as an economist of stock and financial markets and successfully defended his thesis, in which the question was addressed: who trades better, a robot or a person? In the final part, Roman argues that the best option is to wisely combine both methods.

Starting a career and business

In 2009, Vishnevsky earns his first million dollars, based on the consequences of the American financial crisis. While working and studying at a Canadian company, he met his future business partners:

• Dmitry Belousov;
• Anatoly Radchenko.

This risky trio comes to an agreement and decides to create their own prop trading company, United Traders.

Naturally, this required large investments, but each of the partners could afford it.

For reference! Prop trading activity involves trading a variety of assets using your own capital, and not using client funds raised for trust management.

As in any prop trading company, at United Traders managers increase income only through their own earnings, without attracting other market sources of profit.

Each of the partners in the company has its own area and responsibilities, but decisions are made collectively. For example, Roman is responsible for interaction with international business partners and government agencies in different countries.

Kvadrat SPC

Official website of the fund.

In July 2013, a hedge fund was created on the basis of United Traders, the strategy of which is much higher in terms of profitability than other banking instruments, and both individuals and legal entities can invest in Kvadrat SPC.

Nuance! Vishnevsky's hedge fund does not pay dividends. The profit is accumulated, and only after a year the investor has the right to sell all or part of his shares.

You can sell assets directly to the company, and the price offered is based on the last day of valuation. The maximum drawdown observed in Kvadrat SPC is only 10%, and the risks are 3%. The company offers work with thirty highly profitable strategies: from 10 to 50%. Thus, an investor can increase his capital by an average of 30% per year.

To start activities and join Kvadrat SPC, you must fulfill a number of conditions:

1. Invest a capital of at least $5,000.
2. If the invested amount is up to $100,000, the fund charges a 30% commission on each profit and another 3% for conducting a financial transaction.
3. When investing more than $100,000, you will have to pay a 20% commission plus 2% for transferring profits.

Unfortunately, there is practically no information on the company’s official website, so to clarify the details you will have to contact one of the three managers whose contacts are provided.

It is interesting that this organization does not have specific regulators, but its reliability is guaranteed by the most authoritative structures in the world, for example, Deutsche Bank and Wedbush securities. The fund is not audited.

Why is Roman and his company interesting to traders?

Vishnevsky does not blog or publish analytical videos on YouTube, unlike many experts. But these specialists do not own their own brokerage company and hedge fund, but Roman does, so he has a busy schedule. On the Internet you can only find his page on the social networks Instagram, VKontakte and Facebook, as well as interviews and articles published in world-famous publications, for example, Forbes.

There is an analytical website of Roman Vishnevsky, but it is difficult to say whether it belongs to this particular person. The main publications on the resource are about the US economy, Donald Trump and his influence on the financial life of America. If you register on the site and subscribe to news, you can gain access to closed articles.

Home page romanvishnevsky.ru.

But a prop trading company may be of interest to traders, although becoming its client is not so easy, since the owners prefer to work with serious and purposeful people. For example, a beginner needs to make a deposit of $300, and investors and clients who prefer pairs trading need $5,000, although there are no special restrictions for those interested. But the company provides a trading platform of its own design plus access to the most popular and functional platforms.

To become a member of the organization, you must do the following:

1. Register on the official resource and download the platform.
2. Top up your deposit depending on your preferred trading system.
3. Login to UTChallenge.
4. Make successful trades for 30 days.

The winner of such a competition becomes a full member of the team and receives several million rubles for his development, having the opportunity to increase profitability up to 60%.

Interesting! At United Traders, cases have been recorded (and managers claim that there is evidence of this) where a trader became a millionaire in a short period of time.

Both to work in a prop trading center and to manage hedge fund assets, it is proposed to undergo training:

1. Course for beginners - basic fundamentals and individual selection of the best trading strategy.
2. For professionals, 20 strategies are provided for operating large capital and improving their skills.
3. Individual courses are negotiated for each individual client.

The best students have the opportunity to join the company's staff and become one of the managers of the Kvadrat SPC hedge fund.

It’s difficult to say what the secret of Roman Vishnevsky’s success is. In any case, he states that he owes this to himself, to his ability to maintain composure in the most unpredictable situations. Among traders they even said at one time that he was the most unemotional speculator of all known. The main principle of Roman’s activities is that if you can lose, then you need to be able to gain, there are no other options.

“Are you making money? “I’m making money.” The first conversation between the three future founders of United Traders, Roman Vishnevsky, Dmitry Belousov and Anatoly Radchenko, in the St. Petersburg Terrace restaurant overlooking St. Isaac's Cathedral was short. In the trading environment, it is not customary to discuss strategies in detail. A mutual acquaintance introduced them to each other as “the best traders,” which surprised all three: each of them considered himself the best in the profession. Vishnevsky and Belousov, going to St. Petersburg in May 2008 for this meeting, rented a Mercedes S-Class. The pathos turned out to be inappropriate: a colleague from St. Petersburg met them in a tracksuit.

Less than a year later, all three of them quit their companies one by one to start their own. The partners were barely 20, and they quickly found a common language. All three were not satisfied with hired work for a small commission of 20% of the profit and the lack of opportunity to use more promising, from their point of view, strategies. So in March 2009, the United Traders company appeared, its main activity is prop trading (from English proprietary trading - own trading). Prop traders trade with company funds and on its behalf. Typically, a trader makes a security deposit into an account with a company, which increases it several times. Thus, he gets the opportunity to trade with a leverage of, for example, 1:50, which is impossible when working through a regular broker. A prop trader's losses are limited: as soon as a negative result exceeds the deposited amount, the account is blocked. If successful, the trader is paid from 10% (the rate for beginners) to 90% of the profit he earned.

Vishnevsky and Belousov had experience working in such a company - before creating United Traders, they worked in the Canadian Swift Trade and were part of a global network of 4,500 traders built by Hungarian-born businessman Peter Back. An extensive network allowed Beck to bring the company to the top ten largest brokers in terms of turnover on the Nasdaq stock exchange. Young students were hired as traders with low salaries in Russia, Romania, Nicaragua, China and other countries. After a short introductory course, they received a trading account with leverage using the company’s funds.

Over a couple of years, in 2007-2008, Vishnevsky and Belousov earned approximately $2 million each for Swift Trade, of which they received a fifth. Their main strategy is scalping, making hundreds of speculative transactions within a trading day, each of which can bring a small profit. They made the biggest money at the height of the crisis: they shorted securities of the financial sector and made money on volatility.

At that time, Radchenko worked at the St. Petersburg company Title Trading; he was closer to the intraday trading strategy, which involved concluding fewer transactions than with scalping.

The partners invested $80,000 in their own company, then reinvested most of the profits into development for three years. United Traders rents a dealing room with 100 workplaces and an area of ​​500 sq. m. m in the business center near the Aviamotornaya metro station. The company acts as a service provider for approximately 200 professional traders and more than 1,000 beginners. There are 70 people on staff, half of them are key traders for the company, their income can reach 80% of the profit received.

United Traders has access to $200 million in intraday funds from overseas partners. To trade them, the prop company’s own funds must be at least $5 million.

Partners of United Traders name Swift Trade and Hold Brothers among their direct competitors. Both companies are known for using the layering strategy. It is based on placing a large number of buy or sell orders, creating the impression of a large supply or demand. As a result, ordinary investors make transactions at prices at which they would not otherwise enter into them, and manipulators make money on the difference in prices and volatility. For this, Swift Trade and other Peter Back companies paid with fines imposed by British, American and Canadian regulators.

The American Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) fined these companies $500,000, the Canadian regulator OSC - $400,000. The OSC also banned Beck from holding management positions for two years. The largest American self-regulatory organization FINRA banned Beck from having relations with all its members. But the largest fine - a record for manipulation - of £8 million was imposed on Swift Trade by the British regulator FSA. As a result, the company officially ceased operations two years ago. Hold Brothers received similar claims for $4 million for manipulation in 2009-2010 last year from the SEC.

What does this have to do with United Traders? Vishnevsky says that when he collaborated with Swift Trade, he developed his own trading strategy, which became widespread throughout the world, but it was modified by Chinese traders, after which it became known as layering. “All United Traders trading strategies are legal and profitable,” says Wisniewski.

At the beginning of the year, the company launched the Kvadrat Black hedge fund: the estimated volume of funds under management is $100 million, the target return is from 30% per annum and the risk of losses is up to 10%. Stock indices are growing at a more modest pace. But for traders who, like Vishnevsky and his partners, make money on arbitrage strategies, such profitability does not look exorbitant. Before entering the retail market, United Traders won the Best Private Investor award twice. The company's trading robot showed the best results in terms of profitability both in 2011 (7833% in 2.5 months) and in 2012 (5288%). Profitability of this level can be shown on a small volume; the starting amounts of the competitors were 50,000-150,000 rubles. The higher the volumes, the lower the profitability: testing strategies for the Kvadrat fund over the past year on an unaudited account with $5 million shows 40% per annum.

Investors with a minimum amount of $300,000 and an investment horizon of one year can join the Kvadrat Black fund. The Foundation is registered in the Cayman Islands under English law. There are three main trading strategies: statistical arbitrage of Russian futures, “volatility smile” arbitrage of options on American stocks, and trend algorithmic trading of American stocks. Strategies allow you to profit from differences in prices for related financial instruments. And the rise or fall of securities. The fund employs eight traders and programmers.

“You can invest in algorithmic funds provided that the investor understands the manager’s strategy well and feels comfortable with the level of risk inherent in the algorithm,” says Anatoly Tsoir, managing partner of the Granat Equity Fund algorithmic fund. Perhaps for some, understanding the financial “black square” will be more productive than the work of the same name by the world-famous Suprematist.

According to statistics, the word “Forex” is searched in search engines more than 600,000 times every month! But, despite the abundance of information, many still consider the foreign exchange market to be something like a lottery or gambling. But real Forex success stories prove that anyone can truly master the secrets of profitable trading!

In this article we will talk about who and how made a fortune on the foreign exchange market.

What results can Forex legends boast of?

In 1987, Larry Williams managed to turn $10,000 into $1,100,000 in less than a year. The maximum profit on Forex brought Larry a clear victory in the Robinson Cup futures trading championship.

Legend has it that in 1992, George Soros brought down the Bank of Great Britain. Having collected about 5 billion pounds sterling in the assets of his fund, on September 15 he exchanged them for German currency. The British government declared a crisis, and the British national currency depreciated. Soros earned about two billion dollars from the legendary deal.

This fantastic story has already been repeatedly refuted both in the press and on the Internet. However, many investors still believe that one person was able to “break” the Central Bank of an entire country.

Richard Dennis earned his first million at the age of 25, starting with just $1,200. After 10 years, he managed to turn $1 million into $200 million. By 2000, his personal capital was already $300 million.

Ingeborg Mootz achieved the status of “Germany’s most successful currency trader” when she was well over seventy. During the period of active trading, the pensioner earned a fortune of several million euros! On trader forums she is jokingly called “Million Dollar Grandma.”

In 1998, Ed Seykot became a millionaire, having earned approximately $14 million in Forex trading.

Having emigrated to the United States penniless, former Odessa resident Alexander Gerchik, a few years later, became the managing partner of the largest American trading company. In 2006, he was recognized as the “safest trader”, having not had a single losing month since 1999.

Alexander Elder fled to America during the Soviet Iron Curtain period. In the USA, he worked as a psychologist, while practicing trading. Today, about two-thirds of Elder's transactions bring him a profit of 70%.

Russian Roman Vishnevsky earned his first million on Forex at the age of 26, having developed a unique trading strategy called layering. Today he is the managing partner of the investment company United Traders.

The speculative account of another Russian, Alexander Rezvyakov, in 2007 increased over the year by 1426%.

Practicing since 2004, Stanislav Bernukhov successfully trades without using indicators based on analysis of price behavior and teaches this method to everyone.

How did they do it?

Each Forex legend, of course, has his own style and style of stock trading.

However, all successful traders have several important principles in common:

— Forex “stars” focus on the medium and long term;

- they are not subject to either excitement or fear;

- everyone developed their own trading system, which they strictly followed;

— at any moment of trading, successful traders are ready for the most unexpected scenario;

— they cut losses as early as possible and allow profits to grow to their maximum.

And now briefly about the secrets of success of some of the Forex “stars” presented in the review.

Richard Dennis

One of the most successful players in the foreign exchange market explains his success through his own research and constant analysis.

The basic rule of Richard Dennis is to strictly follow the trend and close positions at the first signs of destabilization. This principle allows you to avoid deep drawdowns and not lose profits already earned in the market. In addition, the “Prince of the Pit” (Dennis’s humorous nickname) always conducts a detailed analysis of all his transactions – both losing and profitable ones.

It was Richard Dennis, in a dispute with William Eckhardt, who proved that any person on the street can be taught to trade on the currency exchange! 23 random candidates were selected for experimental training. The “lucky list” included a security guard, a programmer, a lawyer, an Air Force pilot, an actor and a gambler. The group training lasted only two weeks, after which Richard allocated a million dollars to each “student” for trading. Five years later, the $23 million invested turned into $175 million!

A little later, the results of this unique experiment were described by Michael Covel in the famous book: “Turtle Traders: A Legendary History, Its Lessons and Results.”

Ed Seykot

Having started his career as a trader in a brokerage company in 1970, Ed Seykot developed a then revolutionary computer trading system for managing client accounts.

Ed Seykot explains his secret to successful trading by strict adherence to “three” simple rules: preventing losses, preventing losses and once again preventing losses. He considers any attempts to “recoup” during a period of continuous losses mortally dangerous for the trader.

For himself, Ed Seykot has set a 5% limit on possible losses, which he tries to never exceed. In his opinion, if a trader comes to the stock exchange precisely for profit, and not for the thrill, he must clearly define the goal, imagine ways to achieve it and concentrate all his efforts to make a profit.

Larry Williams

Larry Williams is sure that the main reason for failures in Forex is the excessive conservatism of traders. His “iron” rule: close trades on long positions as soon as the market turns in the other direction, without hoping for a miracle. In his opinion, you should only pay attention to the last signal, which automatically cancels all previous ones.

Larry Williams explains his approach to trends using the “freight train theory.” He compares an upward or downward trend to the fast movement of a freight train, which cannot be stopped instantly. The trader's task is to jump on the bandwagon of the freight train (trend) at the moment when it picks up speed.

And one more secret from Larry Williams: you should always raise bets not when you lose, but when you win.

Jesse Livermore

According to Livermore, a successful trader must make the two strongest human impulses work for him - fear and hope.

When the market goes in the direction you want, you should listen to the voice of hope and make the most of the deal without closing it ahead of time. If the market turns in the opposite direction, force yourself to “turn off” hope and “turn on” fear in order to exit the market with minimal losses.

Alexander Elder

According to Alexander Elder, the key to a trader’s success is knowledge of psychology. Moreover, not so much the psychology of “humans”, but the psychology... of the foreign exchange market itself.

Alexander considers the ability to manage your own funds to be the second essential “ingredient” for successful trading. In practice, Elder “allows” himself losses of no more than 2% of the total investment.

Alexander Elder’s book “How to Trade and Win on the Stock Exchange” at one time became a world bestseller. In this book, a trader with an average profitability of 70% advises focusing on relatively rare transactions, opening them during periods of market calm. Trading must be carried out according to a clearly drawn up methodology and not change the original plan until the position is closed.

Alexander Gerchik

Alexander Gerchik explains his success in the Forex market with a simple phrase: “To learn how to earn money, you must first learn not to lose.” In his opinion, every transaction (successful and unsuccessful) must be analyzed! Alexander Gerchik considers a detailed journal of transactions, patience, skepticism and independent judgment to be the best assistants to a trader.

Roman Vishnevsky

According to Roman Vishnevsky, anyone can learn the basics of trading in the foreign exchange market. But to become a truly successful trader, you need to have psychological stability, an analytical mind and a loyal attitude to risk.

Stanislav Bernukhov

Stanislav is confident that success in Forex can only be achieved after 3-5 years of constant practice. To make a constant profit in the foreign exchange market, you will have to “find” your own trading approach. An approach that will rely not only on the logic of the market, but also on the strengths of a particular trader.

Alexander Rezvyakov

Alexandra Rezvyakov believes that a successful trader must learn to wait patiently, fight emotions and... carefully filter information about the market. In his opinion, 99% of information in trading is fluff that should not be taken into account at all.

How to learn to play on the stock exchange?

Today, competition in the Forex market is much higher than twenty years ago. However, even now, any newcomer has a chance to go down in history and become on a par with the legendary traders of the foreign exchange market!

Dozens of practicing brokers offer free and high-quality Forex trading training! Regular earnings from currency exchange rate fluctuations mean understanding the laws of the foreign exchange market, practical experience and constant work on mistakes. Luck and luck have absolutely nothing to do with it...

founders, United Traders 04.06.2016 18:36

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If you enter the phrase “United Traders” into a search engine or on a YouTube channel, the algorithms will produce an unexpected result: serious video tutorials on active day trading in the US market or detailed analyzes of interesting transactions will be side by side with shocking rap-style clips, videos with Dzhigurda and someone dressed as a bearded mafioso “Trader Sea Buckthorn” throwing dollars from the window of a brand new BMW. Behind the creation of all this disparate content is the same group of traders.

Shocking behavior is in the blood of the guys from United Traders, which sometimes does not quite fit in with some of their more serious business areas (like their own profitable hedge fund). However, this does not prevent Roman Vishnevsky, Dmitry Belousov and Anatoly Radchenko, as well as their team, from building, perhaps, the most famous prop trading company in Russia. The founders of UT spoke to Financial One about how they manage to entertain the public while remaining professionals in their field. The interview was in the first issue of this year.

: Roma and I worked as traders in a Canadian company. Its representative office was in Moscow, and we traded American stocks. Meanwhile, Anatoly Radchenko, while in St. Petersburg, was doing the same thing, only in the representative office of an American office. Our company was called Swift Trade, the other company was called Dimension Trading Group.

It was subsequently bought by an American prop company. Now she is famous for making the Blackwood platform, which is now called Fusion. We worked there for literally a few months to understand that we are great (laughs).

: And it took me two years to understand that I was great.

Belousov: It took Roma seven months. I think it turned out faster thanks to perfectly streamlined business processes in terms of training new traders.

To set off on a further voyage together, you need to understand that the person can be trusted. Dmitry and Roman, how did you do it?

Belousov: We were just seeing each other off at 12 o’clock at night after work (laughs).

Have you discussed what other strategies can be used?

Belousov: No, we didn’t discuss anything. Roma simply treated me to different dishes: either swordfish or duck in grape sauce. So I realized that it is very beneficial to be friends with Roma. Roma knows restaurants.

How did Anatoly appear in this story?

Belousov: We looked for traders in any way. Having exhausted the resources of Moscow, as it seemed to us then, we gathered everyone we knew - about 15 people - who traded on the NYSE. Then we went to St. Petersburg to meet its best traders in order to recruit them. But then they were not interested in anything other than eating delicious food and having fun.

Anatoly, is there a difference between Moscow and St. Petersburg guys?

Radchenko: They arrived terribly pretentious, arrogant, Moscow. At that time I was not at all ready for such communication. In general, the first meeting was not very successful. Nobody understood anything.

Belousov: The result was negative. Anatoly and his comrades did not become our traders. We didn't start collaborating. But everyone remembered each other.

Radchenko: After a few months, the company through which we worked in America stopped providing us with good conditions for trading the so-called closing auction. Already at that time, this strategy worked worse than before, but still brought in good money. And I asked the guys if they had the opportunity to let us trade it.

: In general, we gave them money...

Radchenko: No. We gave you the money. And you gave us the opportunity.

Vishnevsky: We started collecting all traders of different stripes and strategies and began to learn how to work with them. That is, some needed closing auctions, others needed low commissions, others needed more buying power, and so on. This is how United Traders was born.

How many traders in Russia do you think now trade in America?

Radchenko: Do they trade or earn money? These are different things.

Belousov: It's not as obvious as it seems. People have been trading for years, they think they are making money, but they cannot be considered professionals.

Okay, how many first and second?

Vishnevsky: Those whom we consider traders are 200-300 people. This is probably even true if you count people in teams.

Radchenko: Traders don’t just appear. All traders came through Swifttrade, our company or Gerchik’s company. There were only three points. And they released a limited number of people. And those people who got in and managed to develop at the most favorable time - 2003-2005, and then in 2007-2011 held on and maintain their trade at a certain level, are no longer there.

They are added only as you study with us. When UT appeared, there were a huge number of companies that seemed to offer the same services: professional prop trading in America and professional training. Although, in principle, they were a class lower.

Vishnevsky: We outlasted all our competitors.

Belousov: You knock on the table! In general, we rarely pay attention to those who have achieved results in the Russian market. We have virtually no interest in those who trade Chicago futures. And they are the majority. One way or another, there are from 300 to 1000 “American” traders in total. We will be burned at the stake if we say that there are more than a thousand such traders in Russia.

When teamwork begins, when responsibility arises not only for oneself, but also for one’s business, new problems arise. What was the most difficult thing after you joined forces?

Radchenko: The most difficult thing was to study. We understood how to trade, how to work with traders, what they needed. It was necessary to hire people, build relationships. I think this was the most difficult thing, because we did not have such experience.

Vishnevsky: The hardest thing was not to screw it up.

What do you mean by this concept?

Vishnevsky: Working with traders involves big risks. Many companies fail because they do not know how to monitor risks. At some point, a trader may lose much more than risk managers think.

Who took care of the risks?

Vishnevsky: Historically, Dima cared about risks.

How was the history of the division of functions and powers built?

Vishnevsky: Tolya became our preacher. He opened America to people - no joke.

Radchenko: I am the first person to do a series of webinars where a professional trader spoke in professional language about the professional market. No one had done this before, so the audience quickly became interested. I remember that there was a limit of 300 people in the webinar room. People wrote to me asking me to open it earlier, since they couldn’t get in due to the limits.

I did my first webinars without video, and for some reason everyone thought I was 35–40 years old.

Which one of you is the oldest in the team?

Vishnevsky: The eldest is our first risk manager. He's no older than 40. He looks good.

What is UT's goal? Earn money?

Belousov: It is comfortable to develop any business within the framework of the existing structure. This business is now in finance, but sooner or later it will begin to revolve around anything. Now Roma and I were discussing the magnetic levitation train Moscow - St. Petersburg. An hour and a half before Moscow... Or landing traders on Mars.

Radchenko: One way or another, of course, the goal is to earn money. For a trader, the most important motivator is money. Recently Dima wrote me a letter, where the first sentence was: “The main thing is that we want to make money.”

Belousov: This is taken out of context. In general, we discussed the 2015 conference of NP RTS “Russian Financial Market: A Look into the Future.” There was no phrase that someone wanted to make money. All participants seem to be embarrassed or have forgotten the priorities of the companies they work for. As part of our investment objectives, we want to earn money without deceiving anyone and by doing large-scale projects that, perhaps, will remain in history.

In a situation where you quickly achieve results at the beginning of your career, you get the feeling that you are your own authority and there are no people from whom you can learn. Who motivates you, who can you consider your teachers?

Vishnevsky: I just like people who have built global businesses. It is difficult to single out a specific person. If we take the Russian ones, then I am very impressed by Galitsky, because despite everything that exists, he built an excellent business. He is the only oligarch from the top 20 who made money in the most white and clean way possible.

Radchenko: There is very little relevant information about how a person achieved something. All the people who could become an example are people from the 90s in Russia, who, one way or another, by chance, selling patches or computers, are now at the helm of the largest banks or state-owned companies. For example, you can say that I am motivated by Tinkov, or Gref, or someone else. But there is no exact biography or data on how they got there.

In general, any success stories motivate. I don't like to take American stories, since the reality in Russia is very different from what they have there. You could say that Richard Branson motivates me, but he motivates me in the same way that a new issue of your favorite magazine or a new video on YouTube of the channel you subscribe to motivates.

Therefore, I can say that they are strongly motivated by their successes and the successes of the company. In general, trading is such a philosophical thing, when you constantly analyze yourself, you learn more about yourself. When you understand where you are wrong and where you are doing well.

Who can you call your teacher?

Radchenko: I had a good teacher in elementary school.

Vishnevsky: I taught physics masterfully.

Belousov: I have a hockey coach.

Vishnevsky: But we learned from our mistakes.

And by communicating with people who are on the market, we come to the conclusion that we will have to do it ourselves. Because the person who knows how is either in great demand or does something of his own.

I watched your channel on YouTube, you have quite provocative videos. Why did you decide to promote your brand this way?

Belousov: These are not well-thought-out steps. This is just a video we made for fun. We think this will attract the attention of those who think like us. But we didn’t think through that it would attract so many people. These were chaotic marketing campaigns.

Successful?

Belousov: Unfortunately, we do not know how successful they were in terms of the final result. But they are definitely successful in terms of recognition.

They write different things about you on the Internet. How do you feel about different opinions and statements about yourself?

So you think that people just make things up?

Vishnevsky: They started making up stories about us when I was still in college. That we have a secret investor who sponsors us.

Belousov: That Roma’s parents are from United Russia and they are promoting their son. We are engaged in training, and this is not typical for companies that make money from trading. Therefore, this breaks the mold of ordinary people and professionals who do not know us... We simply strive to develop not only as traders, but also as entrepreneurs.

Radchenko: There is a demand for training. And from the very beginning, people began to ask us to train them. It would be strange to send them somewhere else, considering that we already trained prop traders. If we even take private traders-teachers, private managers, then due to the low regulation of the market there is a lot of fraud, deception, and people were deceived so often that it is easier to keep in mind the idea that in general everyone is a deceiver.

Prop Traders United Traders

Do you have any desire to somehow separate yourself from those who offer obvious fraudulent schemes?

Radchenko: Again, people can associate us with scammers only due to low literacy in terms of trade. That is, if he traded on Forex once and was deceived there, for him both the CME exchange is forex and the NYSE is forex. He doesn't know how to check whether he hits the market or doesn't hit the market. If a person uneducated in finance trades on the real market or forex, the broker will still be at fault.

Radchenko: I’ll tell you about my course. We've had it for two months. Lectures are given during the first month. Then comes practice, familiarization with the terminal. After this, as part of the training, we offer an account from the company, which future traders begin to manage, and if they succeed, then after that they need to go through certain steps, and we increase this account and risk limits. This is the know-how of a prop trading company. Ultimately, students have a chance to grow into our fund managers (Bloomberg: KVABLCK: KY)

If they fail, we give them the opportunity to prove in UTChallenge that they understood everything and are developing further. That is, the support does not end if a person needs a year - he will study for a year. The biggest problem for beginners who come into the market with a small amount of money is that they want to make millions with only $3-5 thousand. They cannot build a systematic development in order to ultimately arrive at this amount. They feel like they have to earn this money in one day.

Most likely, by increasing the risks for this, they will most likely lose their money. As part of the training, a person understands how much one can earn in the market, where profitability comes from, what supply and demand are. Such basic things are not some kind of surrealism like the Fibonacci line.

How much do you need to trade per day to make progress?

Radchenko: It’s like everywhere else. Professional trading is like professional sport, it’s like becoming a good lawyer. Preferably, of course, all day long. There is a “10 thousand hours” rule, which, in general, can explain everything. If you do something for a very long time, you will achieve average competence. Everyone wants to come and in a few months become that person who sits on the beach with a laptop, presses buttons and earns unlimited money. It’s just that for some reason marketing in this industry has developed in such a way that many people come for the sake of easy money. Sometimes you are lucky, there are good deals, but if you want to stay here longer, you will have to work very hard.

Do you have a hobby? What do you do in your free time?

Belousov: Lately the lights haven’t been going out in our office.

Vishnevsky: We have a new trend. In the world the trend is for a four-day working week, in our country the trend is for a seven-day one. If you come to our office on Saturday or Sunday, then with a 90% probability there will be someone working for us. And we are here seven days a week too.

No time left?

Belousov: I play hockey, but for the last few months I haven’t had any time for it.

Radchenko: Our company plays football on Fridays - a kind of team building. I have verified from my own experience that all psychological problems, if you do not play sports, cripple you more. The simplest thing is to come home after a hard day and run 5–10 kilometers. Such traditional good prevention, so as not to go crazy.

Are you scared of going crazy?

Radchenko: No, it’s not scary. I have been trading for 10 years, and during the development stage there were ups and downs, and these swings of joy and disappointment, they are, of course, very difficult. Not every person can handle this. Therefore, it is possible to go crazy in the market. Everyone associates the stock market with people who jump out of skyscrapers.

Vishnevsky: Recently a man worked at a startup, found out that it was all fake, and shot himself. And he worked for six years and believed that this was all real.

What books do you read? Perhaps you study from books or just love fiction?

Vishnevsky: I’ve been reading articles on a variety of topics lately. About social trends, about financial development, about business.

Belousov: We have a whole library on our shelves - this is what I read. There is both business literature and a little bit of fiction. The library is thinning out very quickly as staff clear out.

Radchenko: And I read the news. The news flow is increasing every year. There is more and more “noise”, it is more and more difficult to find any relevant news that can be used in trading.

Belousov: Books on psychology have recently helped me a lot from a marketing point of view. All marketing is based on psychology. Business books only cover the consequences; they never get to the physical causes, which start from chemical processes in the head and end with the purchase of a specific product.

What can you recommend?

Belousov: Probably the most powerful impression this year was “The Power of Habit” by Charles Duhigg. This book talks about the structure of any human habits. Starting with alcohol, ending with regular evening reading of a book. Describes how retailers predict future customer purchases. By the way, these methods came to retail from Wall Street. Every entrepreneur needs this book to understand how their customers develop the habit of constantly interacting with their business.

I really like taking business ideas from other industries. It’s interesting to take something from online games and repeat it in finance. At the NP RTS conference, the possibility of purchasing financial products through an application with one button was just discussed. Although all this has already been done in other businesses - for example, in the game Angry Birds. Everyone is trying to make Angry Birds on the stock market. Studying other industries will allow you to make a breakthrough in yours.

Vishnevsky: We are telling this because, in addition to trading, we have five more main areas: traders, a service for servicing traders, a training service, a hedge fund and another very promising project - a competition for selecting traders. This is an automated system that allows us to screen out a very large number of applicants for the position of trader in our company. This project is called UTChallenge, which has already been mentioned.

What percentage of people get to you?

Belousov: One out of 20 passes the first stage of trading on a real account. And then you have to go through five more steps.

Vishnevsky: That is, the system is structured like this: the applicant selects the market in which he wants to develop, pays for participation in the selection, and then trades on the account for 20 days. The system monitors how he trades, and if he complies with the parameters that we set, and sufficient profit is made on this account, then the next day he receives a contract with a login and password from the real account. This is how you can start trading and make a profit.

How do you apply advice from psychological books in life?

Belousov: Robert Cialdini’s book “The Psychology of Influence” describes research that is applicable to both business and private situations. This includes the availability of certain items on the menu. For example, the fact that people are scared by the choice: in a high-level restaurant the menu fits on one sheet of paper, in a restaurant in a residential area you see a huge book.

Vishnevsky: Or simply: if there is no “spend all the money” item on the menu, then you will never get a client who is ready to spend all the money and thus increase the average bill.

Radchenko: In any restaurant there is a bottle of champagne for 50 thousand rubles. It may not even be on sale. But there is a theoretical opportunity to buy it.

You read books and study on your own. Do you have any desire to go and get a traditional education, such as an MBA?

Belousov: We and the people we work with are moving towards applied goals. We don’t have a goal to get a crust and then somehow monetize it. We first think about what result we want to achieve.

Radchenko: In my opinion, the greatest value of an MBA is case learning. You analyze a specific case, work in a team. But the theory is in books and on the Internet. Every day we have a huge number of cases at work that need to be solved somehow. And what worked there may not work here. All the same, you will have to solve your case yourself.

Belousov: Actually, we are learning. The same book by Duhigg was recommended to me at a seminar on product metrics. If any problems or knowledge gaps arise, we first try to fill these gaps with the help of publicly available information on the Internet. Then we look among our friends and colleagues. For example, we found a person who is strong in game design. You are well aware of how terrible trading platforms look. That is, if you make the design the same as Angry Birds, then people will come.

If we talk about trading, then in 2012-2013 we had the task of making friends between manual traders and algorithmic traders. Then we collaborated with Arsen Yakovlev. His guys (NES teachers) gave us a short course on financial mathematics. It became clear that this was not enough.

We hired a teacher from the university and studied for several months. It is impossible to teach a trader mathematics in a few months, just like programming. But we have achieved that traders, mathematicians and programmers now speak the same language. This investment of time and money has already yielded results.

Vishnevsky: I took courses on legal aspects, running a business in the IT field, protecting personal data, and storing it. These topics are now being introduced and developed, but no one yet knows how to handle it. Of course, you can hire all these people, but it will be very expensive.

Belousov: In general, we come to the conclusion that it is impossible to effectively manage people without at least superficial knowledge of what they do. Maybe we are bad managers, or maybe there is no other way. We have been developing software for UTChallenge for five years now. And we come to the conclusion that the more we understand what the team does, the more effectively we manage it.

How do you divide your responsibilities?

Vishnevsky: We sit down and come to an agreement.

Can you argue about related responsibilities? When did someone leave something unfinished?

Vishnevsky: We don’t swear, but we express constructive complaints.

Belousov: This is a trading trick. People quarrel because of inconsistencies in expectations, and when a conflict arises, they cannot yield to each other. A trader trains the skill of yielding from the very first day. When the market acts against a trader, he must give in to the market. Either he is no longer a trader, he is bankrupt. And this is really trained and transferred to real life. People who go bankrupt at the age of 40 and jump out of windows are not traders, they are those who spent their whole lives wonderfully going to the top, but at some point they were cut off. And a trader is someone who is used to losing a thousand, earning a thousand, then 100, 200, a million. He is already prepared that at the age of 50, 90% of what he has achieved may evaporate.

Don't you want stability?

Belousov: We started doing a service business, rather than just trading ourselves, precisely because of the desire to achieve stability. Business at that time seemed to us something more stable than trading. In fact, we realized that everything is the same. You assume a risk, take a certain number of actions, achieve either a positive or negative result, or something in between.

Radchenko: Trading taught us that you can ensure stability for yourself by earning a lot in one month, and earning nothing in others - that’s your average income.

What if the month doesn’t come when you earn a lot again?

Vishnevsky: So it won’t come...

Belousov: In general, the fact is that we do not strive to earn a lot at the moment, either in business or in trading. We strive to be prepared for profits to come before expected. For example, we earned 10% in the fund last August. This is an abnormal return and we know it. It's too much. This means that there will be a period when we will not earn anything. Right now we don’t expect to earn 100% per annum next year. We know that we have earned our 10%, and we are ready for the fact that there will be 0 for three months.

Despite the fairly successful activity of your fund, investors are in no hurry to invest in it. What is the reason?

Belousov: For us, attracting investors is a relatively new activity, and we have not yet received an answer to this question. Hedge fund industry insiders say that once a fund has three years of audited accounts, institutional investors start investing in it. We will have reports for three years at the end of summer. So we'll see. In principle, there are already preliminary agreements.

For example, the most absurd thing for us is that investors want their money to be managed in their brokerage account. The argument is that this way they will see transactions and will be able to influence the situation if, in their opinion (!), it does not go according to plan.

Some people want to hear the details of the strategies we use. Moreover, they are not even able to understand their standard descriptions.

The most unpleasant problem with investors from the Russian Federation is currency control of banks. The launch of our fund coincided with two events at once: the introduction of anti-Russian sanctions and the revocation of licenses from banks. The foreign exchange control of banks is very afraid to allow clients to make transfers to purchase shares of our fund.

Some banks ask for additional documents or simply refuse, because they believe that it is better to play it safe than to figure out where the client is sending the money. Now we have already found banks in which all documents have been verified, and we can work normally, but at the initial stage we lost several investors.

There are also funny clients who do not want to enter the fund because they need to exchange their rubles for dollars. The fund is dollar. And they say: “Now the dollar will fall a little, I will change money and enter.” But this is heard before the first noticeable upward movement of the dollar.

Tell us in more detail about the work of the fund. How many people are directly involved in maintaining existing algorithms, and how many are involved in developing new ones? Which direction in developing trading strategies, in your opinion, is the most promising? How important is the speed of order execution for you?

Belousov: The main feature of our fund, which distinguishes us from other funds at this stage of development, is the presence of a large number of strategies independent of each other. They are implemented by different people with different approaches. This allows you to achieve a unique level of diversification, which funds with assets up to $100 million are not able to provide. The strategies have one thing in common: they are all algorithmic. We do not have a division of roles between developers of new strategies and those who support old ones. Except perhaps for those who must monitor the work of the algorithms in the fund right now. We have three of these people. Three more connect periodically. There are 15 people in total who are involved in developing fund strategies.

The question about strategy is generally the most difficult. Firstly, these are algorithmic strategies. Secondly, we trade US stocks. In general, we trade everything that moves. Literally. It is promising to be where money changes owners - these are the most liquid and volatile markets. Speed ​​is important to us when we are talking about milliseconds, which is not God knows what quantities. We do not use HFT strategies in our fund. And it makes sense to talk about execution speed in isolation from the speed of everything else only in the case of classical arbitration; it is also called low latency arbitration. We don’t do such things in the American market, where our competencies do not provide any advantages. You already have to go there “with a soldering iron and a shovel.”

We use high frequency algorithms in other markets where speed is of course important. But that is another story…

Interviewed by Liliya Zakirova and Anna Nekrasova