TraderDane

I welcome Performance Coach Evan Marks, a former money manager who left trading after a major panic attack and now coaches athletes, CEOs, and top traders through M1 Performance Group on the mental side of decision-making. We discuss his core idea that performance equals potential minus interferences, and why traders must identify and reduce impulsivity to access intuition, using “aggressive patience” as a calm-but-ready decision state. Evan shares tactical tools to become more conscious in the moment, including creating space, verbalizing key questions, and his M1 MIND framework: Make it visible, Interrupt the pattern, Navigate with intention, Develop evidence. We c...

I am joined by Jon Hoskinson, a Florida-based futures day trader, who shares his journey into trading. Jon explains how he spent about a year and a half studying ICT through a coworker-mentor, why the complexity made it hard for him to stay consistent, and how seeing that mentor’s prop-trading success motivated him. He shares how he transitioned to using VWAP because it’s simpler, rule-based, and makes wins/losses easier to understand. He emphasizes data tracking, minimizing variables, adapting to changing market conditions, and using discretion carefully. We also discuss market chop, avoiding “100% win rate” gurus and the impo...

TraderDane welcomes Kameron Evans, who shares how he began trading nearly four years ago after a coworker first had him organize finances in Excel, which he still uses. Kameron avoided “get rich quick” influences by learning from experienced traders, started in Forex (AUDUSD, EURUSD, etc), and earned about $11,000 in prop payouts before switching toward indices and futures, noting differences in volume, volatility, and stop placement. He describes his day-trading window, preference for mastering one asset, and ongoing struggle with managing floating profits versus drawdowns. Our discussion centers on accountability, journaling, and Kameron’s shift to trading the VWAP “double break” s...

This week, I welcome Jordan Stafford to the pod. Jordan got into trading around 2019 after seeing a friend’s lifestyle on Instagram, then realizing his entry point was an MLM focused on recruiting and hype rather than real trading, followed by further red flags with another “mentor,” copy trading, and paid courses. We discuss how scams pushed many aspiring traders to quit, Jordan’s preference for transparency and informal accountability over charging for coaching, and the challenge of sharing losses publicly, especially during choppy summer markets. Jordan describes his approach trading mainly NQ micros using London/Asia liquidity sweeps, opening...

This week i am joined by Ashley to talk about her trading background and rapid progress in futures prop firms. We cover how she started with penny stocks and options, moved into futures to avoid options greeks, and learned the hard way about gambling, emotions, and blowing accounts before getting consistent. Ashley shares how simplifying charts, accepting uncertainty, using firm risk rules, and committing to stop-losses and manual lockouts helped her become profitable, including her first payout and scaling to 10–11 accounts. We also discuss scalping vs 2–3R targets, daily loss limits, micro-scalping time rules, and her experiences with Funded Next...

This week I welcome Sacha (“momma.trades”). Sacha shares her path from dabbling in trading through an MLM to taking markets seriously after working as a corporate flight attendant. Sacha has wide-ranging experience, from getting a real estate license, and experimenting with at-home income ideas, to spending time in the NFT and meme coin scene. She describes being a slow and steady learner who stayed loyal to one mentor strategy for two years before rebuilding from scratch, learning market structure, and earning her third prop-firm payout with a simpler price-action approach on gold. We discuss personality fit, strategy changes whil...

This week I've got Griffin and Mike, the home team, in the pod seats! They discuss the challenge of creating transparent trading content while still working toward consistency. If you're a trader on that  “in-between” journey between starting out and becoming consistently profitable, this episode is relatable, fun, and will add accountability. We discuss our core setups, from simple New York VWAP bounce and break entries, to more in-depth, higher-timeframe-driven VWAP approaches using order flow tools and Mike's custom ChartSmith indicators to speed decisions across multiple indices (ES, NQ, YM, RTY). We cover switching markets to avoid forcing mediocre trade...

In season two, episode one, I welcome Frida (Swede Trades), a Swedish expat living on Australia’s Sunshine Coast, who shares her path from studying fitness, nutrition, and massage therapy to quickly co-founding a group-fitness gym with her partner, and later closing the business during her pregnancy. After becoming a mom and shifting into content creation, she has committed to learning day trading, inspired by following The Peachy Investor community. We discuss juggling trading sessions around childcare and travel between Sweden and Australia, mom guilt, and how time zones affect session choice. Frida explains her beginner challenges with eval ac...

In the Season 1 finale, I’m joined by Jorden Pagel, a Southern California based health and fitness coach who transitioned into trading after a client introduced him to the markets. We discuss how his gradual, habit-based transformation from being overweight to building a fitness career parallels developing as a trader: consistency, routines, journaling, and avoiding the “more is better” trap in both training and trading. Jorden shares his progression from options to futures via prop firms for lower-cost reps, moving from basic support/resistance toward VWAP-based entries, and how recent market conditions have reduced trade frequency. We also cover balanc...

This week, I'm joined by Ben Price, an upcoming futures day trader from the UK. I met Ben at the Futures Bootcamp in Tampa and we quickly agreed to do an episode as Ben has so much value to share with other developing traders and a cool story on how he got started. 
This is a deep dive into Ben's trading style, his setups, risk management, prop gaming and more. If you want to be inspired by an awesome trader who you can actually relate to, you need to listen to this episode.

If you like t...

This week, I am joined by Clay Hodges, Co-founder and Chief Trading Officer at Top One Futures. 
As is customary, I explore my guest's back story to find out what brought them to the world of trading, and Clay's story stands out. He has managed to turn his life around in a way most people can't even dream about, and pulled himself up from the gutter, to become successful as a trader, as an entrepreneur and business owner, and as a person.
From there, I get to pick his brain about prop firms, accounts, rules, and the b...

I am joined by DrewTrades, who shares his path from paper-trading forex at the age of 17–18 to taking futures seriously from Oct 2024, starting with options, then prop trading NQ/ES and later natural gas before settling on ES for cleaner price action and easier risk management. Drew describes struggling during highly volatile market periods while learning ICT/smart money concepts, then finding consistency with a simple breakout approach and earning his first My Funding Futures payout in March followed by a second payout. Afterward he hit a slump, failed multiple evals, strategy-hopped, then refocused on trading VWAP and moved to...

I am joined by Judy, the creator of Freya Futures, who began trading about a year and a half ago as a way to apply concepts from a book she was writing on overcoming limiting beliefs and identity shifts. Judy describes trading as a tool for confronting fears like loss aversion, greed, and FOMO, noting her biggest challenge was handling red days and placing stop losses too tightly when trading her own capital. Based in Sydney, she trades the London session after work and limits herself to two to three setups per week. She outlines an ICT-influenced approach focused...

This time, I welcome Ryan to the TraderDane podcast, where we discuss Ryan’s path as a 21-year-old entrepreneur who left plumbing in favour of car detailing and couch flipping businesses. Ryan became drawn to trading to obtain financial freedom. Ryan describes starting with stock investing and then prop firms, initially failing multiple evals without a clear strategy, struggling with small winners and max-loss losers, and later finding clarity through his friend's introduction to a coaching community and a VWAP-based approach. A major turning point came from reading Tom Hougaard’s The Best Loser Wins, which improved his ability to l...

Jesper hosts the TraderDane podcast, this time with guest Dr. David Bonanno, a clinical psychologist and author of The Consistently Calm Trader (see link below), who has worked in the mental health field since 1993 and served over 17,000 clients. Dr. Bonanno explains how adrenaline activates fight-or-flight, taking the logical brain “offline,” leading to execution problems like FOMO, impulse entries, hesitation, and especially revenge trading. He describes a “robocat” model of two brain systems (logical vs. emotional/instinctive) and argues willpower and rule-making often fail when emotions take over. Drawing from PTSD work, he introduces eye-movement exercises (based on EMDR/REM-like processi...

In episode eight of the Trader Dane podcast, I explain how I went from knowing nothing about trading to earning my first prop firm payout in under six months after starting my first prop account and about eight months total trading experience. I shares costs and transparency around my journey, including about $320 spent on prop accounts vs a $635 payout, plus additional gear expenses, while noting I am not fully profitable overall. I describe starting with swing trading, then trading CFDs on indices with $1,500 before switching to TradingView paper trading in August 2025, and beginning a 50K challenge on October 1, passing...

In TraderDane Episode 7, I sit down with upcoming day trader Emiel Middel who hails from the Netherlands. We dive into his background, how he got into trading while managing a career as a marine surveying engineer and applying his experience with data and analytics to his trading. We also geek out on trading systems and how to apply discretion vs mechanics in trading, before ending up with dreams for the future, and what Emiel sees trading do for his life, as he progresses and gets more payouts and more success.

Top One Futures - Use my code...

Episode 6 - How I generate profits in my own trading - A deep dive

Introducing episode six as a deep dive into how I trade, recommending viewers watch on YouTube due to chart markups. I explain using black-on-white candlestick charts to reduce emotional reactions, then detail my core principles: an ASFX “Automatic VWAPs and Key Levels” tool with three VWAPs (yesterday’s NY session, 6:00 PM EST changeover/overnight, and the current NY session anchored at 9:30), plus a 15-minute NY opening range. I describe a VWAP hierarchy led by the current NY session VWAP, using alignment across VWAPs to bia...

In Episode 5 of the TraderDane podcast, I welcome my first guest, Griffin, and we discuss connecting through Austin Silver’s Black Shirt Club, carrying forward accountability habits via a shared Discord, and the value of community and mentorship in what is ultimately a personal trading journey. Griffin shares his path toward entrepreneurship, including running a small business flipping couches and funneling revenue into prop accounts while also day trading. We talk about keeping trading simple, avoiding constant strategy tweaks after losses, and needing many repetitions to assess performance. Griffin describes focusing on trending days and bounces around VWAP levels, an...

In episode four of the TraderDane podcast, I frame how current macro uncertainty affects trading, citing Middle East turmoil and disruption through the Strait of Hormuz, spiking oil (WTI near 120 and Brent above 100), a strengthening dollar as a perceived safe haven, and weaker precious metals. I note major indices have been slowly declining but remain supported, creating headline-driven volatility and whipsaws that have hurt my swing trading (including being stopped out of PBR) and left it roughly break-even for months, while I keep a long-term portfolio mostly in cash waiting for a deeper correction. I discuss rate-cut uncertainty given...

Episode three of the Trader Dane podcast (not financial advice) explains what technical indicators are and how they’re derived from candlestick price and time data, using moving averages as a core example, including concepts like golden/death crosses and tools such as Bollinger Bands. Dane argues indicators can simplify price action and help traders make decisions, then focuses on the subset he uses for day trading: the 15-minute opening range (high/low of the first 15 minutes), the session volume profile and its key levels (value area low/high and point of control, often using the prior day’s leve...

In episode two of the Trader Dane podcast, I explain my goal of creating a European- and Danish-focused counterbalance to mainstream investment media that emphasizes long-term buy-and-hold and “cheap vs. expensive” stock narratives. Drawing on classic trading literature and examples from renowned traders, I argue that markets often reward strength—breakouts and “expensive” stocks can become more expensive—while disciplined risk management matters more than valuation labels. I discuss practical challenges for European traders, including time zone constraints when trading U.S. markets after work, and cultural risk aversion that can make day trading seem taboo. I outline how stop losses...

On this first episode, I introduce myself and go through my journey all the way from studying at university, via conventional investing to venturing into day trading in 2025. 

TraderDane, hosted by TraderDane himself, Jesper Holst, is a podcast built specifically for European retail traders navigating today’s futures and prop firm trading landscape. With a distinctly European perspective, the show breaks down day trading, futures markets, and prop firm trading in a way that’s practical, relevant, and accessible for traders across Europe.
The mission is to help both new and experienced traders focus their journey towar...