How Etienne Crete Went From Loser to Pro Price Action Trader

Heya guys,

Today we have an interview and Q and A with professional price action trader Etienne Crete who has a super interesting story and runs a trading website and podcast at Desire to Trade.

At the end of this post, leave your questions for Etienne and anything you have for him as he will be keeping an eye out for them.

Johnathon: Heya Etienne,

Love your site and think it is cool you are doing something a bit different to help traders. What was your very first memory or ‘spark’ that ignited your passion for trading?

Etienne: For as long as I remember, I’ve had an interest in business. That brought me to watch movies such as “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps” and really enjoy seeing people make a fortune on the markets.

I’ve had discussions with my father on what investing and trading was like. He would tell me about how he made $30K+ near the year 2000 and then lost most of it later on.

That desire to “make it” in trading with my interest for finance made me want to try it out.

 At 18 years old, I opened my first trading account (expecting of course that I’d be successful). 

J: Was there something that made you want to trade in particular or continue on the trading path?

E: When I opened my first trading account, although I had no clue what I was supposed to do, I was 100% confident I would succeed. The idea of giving up almost never crossed my mind.

I was running a website & mobile app development company at the time. In Montreal, we had these “entrepreneur group working sessions” about every 2 weeks. That was a chance for me to meet other entrepreneurs and get some work done at the same time. 

Interestingly enough, not long before opening my first live trading account, I happened to sit next to a full-time Forex trader who was visiting Montreal (from Toronto) at a working session. I was of course, keen to discuss trading. After some discussion, I was even more excited to trade. 

That man was the only trader I had met at the time and I didn’t meet any other trader for the next 2.5 years. Nevertheless, I was expecting I’d figure out how to succeed in trading.

J: This is something I am guessing you would see a lot of as well; the “I will figure it out” mentality and Google and forums will work it out for me. What step or steps do you take from here? 

E: 2..5 years into my trading journey, I was still losing money.

I had a trading methodology (with price action) but I had never really tested it fully. I was applying it in the market from an online course and expected it to work.

What was different at the time is that I was about to end a university exchange semester abroad. For the last 6 months or so, I had been studying in Hong Kong. 

I had been encouraged by my uncle (living in Hong Kong) to go to some of the import export fairs in China. After attending the Canton fair in Guangzhou, I kept in touch with a few of the factory owners I was hoping to visit.

A few weeks later, I stood there at the entrance of a Chinese factory. The sky was grey, the buildings in ruin, but I was surrounded by the owners giving me a tour of their factory. 

One of them pointed to a building not too far. He said “this is the place where our employees live.”

I remember thinking to myself; “wait... that’s what people are doing with their lives! They work at the factory, walk a few steps getting to their dorms, eat, go to sleep, and re-start the cycle again...” .

Now, probably never in my life would I have to work in a Chinese factory, but working 9-5 in an office in Canada was no different! The same cycle applies. 

That meant I had to find a way to escape the 9-5 “rat race” if I wanted to be fulfilled going back to Canada.

But what options did I have?

Forex trading seemed to be the only thing at the time although my goal wasn’t exactly to trade full-time. I wanted to make enough so that I’d have a little more freedom than most people.

During my stay in Hong Kong, I had noticed that a new Meetup group was created in Montreal. It was called the “Montreal Traders Meetup”. The group was created by a stocks day trader who was looking to socialize and meet other traders in the city.

I was excited to go to their next meeting when I would get back to Montreal.

J:  I can relate to this! Something I ask my students and traders I help is what is your big ‘WHY”. Why are you doing all this and putting all the hard work in. My reason is my young son, and a bit similar to you it comes back to freedom and choices.

He is 8 years old now and I have never missed a soccer game or school concert or anything in his life and this is extremely lucky thanks to trading.

Who were some of the people you met at this meetup?

E: That single evening where I attended the Meetup, I learned 10x more than in 2.5 years of searching the web, watching videos, and reading books.

I met a bunch of traders (maybe 20) from all experience levels. There was institutional traders, retail traders, etc.

The organizer of the Meetup was Houston Truong (interviewed in episode 002 of my podcast). He placed such a big emphasis on routines & peak performance which were almost unknown for me at the time.

J: Was there anything really crucial that started to help your trading?

E: I don’t think successful trading is the result of “ONE key breakthrough”. 

I think making incremental improvements over time is what leads to success.

If I had to summarize my breakthroughs as one category, I’d say that what really helped me was understanding how highly successful traders think.

Ultimately, how you think determines how you act.

I got to understand the following things (although it’s not limited to that):

• How traders think about losses: they don’t care & move on.
• How traders think of a bad period: they take responsibility to re-adjust.
•  How traders think of other traders: they don’t ever ever compare themselves & their returns.
• How traders think of entering or not entering a trade: if they do the wrong thing, they think about how they felt and why.

Thinking about it, I started to understand that it didn’t matter if I was losing money at that moment. What mattered was whether or not I was doing something to improve.

J: What was something that helped with this turning point in your trading and made a major difference to your results?

E: There were a few things.

In general, it was surrounding myself with successful traders. But, that also meant investing in a trading coach. 

With my trading strategy, it was taking into account the context of the market & taking partial profits.

First, before every trade; I take a look at the big picture (daily or weekly chart) and identify the zones of interest (i.e. major support & resistance areas). If the market is trending, I’ll identify the trend.

Then, I’ll only take my trade setups according to the zones or trend I identified. A LONG trade setup doesn’t get entered during a downtrend on the big picture and vice versa.

Second, I noticed I was tempted to close my trades with a small profit to feel more comfortable & not experience a loss.

I fixed this by using the T1 - T2 Approach. That means, one take-profit at R = 1 and a second take-profit at R = 2.  That can very easily bring a losing trader to break-even.

That was a game-changer and improved my win rate from 40% to 60%.

J: Coming back to your podcast show which is one of the best shows for traders, you have had some really great people come on. How did the podcast and show start and come about? 

E: Following the Meetup I attended, I realized something: If I wanted to become a better trader, I would have to surround myself with more (experienced) traders.

I was a big fan of podcasts at the time (and I still am). Yet, the idea of starting a podcast terrified me.

One day, I was meeting up with Houston Truong telling him I was thinking of starting a podcast.

He told me “Oh, I also started interviewing traders and want to start a podcast.”

I thought “If Houston is doing it, I’m able to do it too!” so I began to reach out to traders I had learned from in the last 2 years offering to spread the word about what they were doing in exchange for an interview.

I also had (and still have) a desire to make a positive impact on this world. Sharing those interviews publicly was a must for me.

I’m very grateful to all the traders who took the time to sit down with me. I started by recording one, then another and have been publishing a minimum of one episode per week since then.

I have had the chance to interview all types of traders from all over the world, including Jack Schwager, Mike Bellafiore, Timothy Sykes, and more.

Surrounding myself with traders (in person and on the podcast) has been responsible for most of my success in trading. That’s exactly what got me profitable in trading.

At the end of 2016, I was offered around $67,000 from an investor (who I met at the Montreal Traders Meetup) to trade.

I’ve also been able to jump into an adventure of trading Forex while traveling the world, which I find fascinating!

J: Cool story and awesome podcast as well, I love it.  I have embedded a show right here from Mike Bellafiore just below into today's post for people to listen to.

​For people reading this right now; what two steps would you recommend traders from any level take to improve their trading?

E: #1: Create a strong trading strategy

To me, a strong trading strategy involves a few things. It’s summarized with the acronym STRONG:

Specific: clear rules on what to look for (i.e. not “I look for price action”, but “I look for an Engulfing candle or hammer defined as...”)

• Tested: you must be able to test it for at least 50-100 trades.
• Replicable: your trading strategy must be easy to execute on (i.e. not too many criteria)
• Organized: create a plan and/or checklist to follow
• Not Complicated: “the best trading strategies are the ones you can write on a napkin”
• Grounded: by that I mean that it relies on some market logic (i.e. not based on the phase of the moon!).

#2: Review everything you do

I improved incredibly in all areas of my life by journaling and analysing my performance.

Every week, you should review all areas of your life (including all your trades) and ask yourself 3 questions:

What did I do well?

• What didn’t work out?
• How can I improve?

That will allow you to spot your weaknesses and create a small goal for the next week. Success is all about incremental progress and that method will allow you to progress every week without exception!

J: If traders want to find out more about you and what you do, where should they go?

They can search for “Desire To Trade Podcast” in any podcast platform or head over to www.desiretotrade.com for all the content I produce on a daily basis.

I also have an awesome template I created called the “One-Page Trading Plan”. 

It came to be after I created a 30-page trading plan for my trading that I ended up not knowing how to use.

Many traders expect trading plans to be complex and long-form.

I needed something simpler and I created this one-page template. It also comes with a full training on how to fill it and use it!

#1 Page Desire to Trade Price Action Checklist

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Recap of Today's Q and A - Open For Questions

There you have it.

Do you find it interesting that the consistently profitable traders all focus and discuss the same things? Let me know below.

The strategies, methods or systems being used to enter, or manage trades may vary or be different as there are lots of ways to make money in the market.

However; focusing on high probability trade setups that you understand and can replicate time and again that have an overwhelming edge in your favor, creating clear-cut plans, then journaling and using the journal it to recap and improve are discussed time and again.

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If you have questions for Etienne or myself, put them in the comments below and he will come back and answer them for you.

Safe trading,

Johnathon