Today I have the pleasure to sit down with Stuart Pritchard, Founder and CEO of the UK firm Blockman Capital. We will be discussing business resilience, entrepreneurship in these crazy times as well as his extremely expert opinion on both the traditional and cryptocurrency markets. This is one conversation you must not miss!
Dennis Lewis 0:01
Hey, hello everybody, welcome Happy Friday to you we’ve made it through yet another week of these strange and crazy times. And like every Friday we get a we’re going to have an amazing guest. Today, we are going to be talking about not just you know about business and coming out of this crazy times on top, but we’re going to have a trader on a an authentic expert on what the hell is going on in the markets. If these are if the times are crazy, in my humble opinion. And you guys know by now I am not a trader by any stretch of the imagination. These times are even more crazy. So it’s a real pleasure to have Stuart Pritchard. He is the founder and CEO of Blackmon capital. He’s so UK based company. We’ll talk also with him about what their company offers as well on today’s live stream but Yeah, I’m going to take off the fancy intro slide there and bring on Stuart. And let’s just have a conversation. Hey, you’re
Stuart Pritchard 1:11
welcome. Welcome.
Dennis Lewis 1:13
Thanks for being on. And how are things going for you there in southern England?
Stuart Pritchard 1:19
Yes, pretty good. Actually, obviously everybody is suffering from the same thing the the lockdown. Hence the reason why we’re sort of live in my in my kitchen at the moment as we’re talking, which isn’t the usual way to conduct business, but it seems to have been the way of the last six weeks. From all reports. It doesn’t look as though it’s going to end in a hurry either over here, I know. You guys are relaxing down a little bit in Spain, but the talk here is for another sort of two or three weeks. So interesting.
Dennis Lewis 1:55
funny things this this whole experience is we’ve had some we’ve been Looking into people’s kitchens and their and their that Yeah, I don’t know, maybe not their bathrooms but you know, all sorts of weird places and, and sometimes just the backgrounds are interesting, right? They
Stuart Pritchard 2:15
They certainly can be I mean, I’ve been I’ve conducted a number of zoom calls with clients and with with guys that work for us over the past four or five weeks and as you say, there’s been some interesting backgrounds from time to time. I think my favorite is when the children sort of bounce into the room or something unexpectedly. That’s always amusing, but But yeah, I firmly might put my two daughters like the older 17 and 20 they are here with us. But yeah, just ask them to remain vacant for the next 45 minutes while we have a conversation.
Dennis Lewis 2:53
Okay, cool. So So let’s start off by just talking about what it what’s your experience been like? You know, running your business in these weird times? How do you, you know, when you talk to other entrepreneurs, what what do you tell them? You know what, what’s your take on how to keep your business safe and healthy and go in with all of this kind of apocalyptic feeling?
Stuart Pritchard 3:19
Yeah, I think it’s, it’s obviously everything is about enthusiasts. And it’s about positivity, you know, that that that’s ultimately the two buzzwords or catch words that we will be using. But I think also It all depends on on what particular sphere, your businesses in, you know, my, my wife owns a hair salon, for example, that’s been closed now for the past sort of four to five weeks and I know a number of people in the hospitality trade, who you know that that’s a slightly different picture for them because trying to keep them positive and motivated when they have zero revenue. In front of them, and potentially zero revenue for some time to come. It is challenging. You know, it’s hard work for people from our side from an investment perspective, and certainly trading the markets perspective. Okay, so the markets have been incredibly volatile recently. But you need prices to move in order to make money. And the key to it is not to get caught out the wrong side of a trade. But yeah, it’s just it’s keeping positive from our side. It’s weird because a lot of people now sat at home private investors, if you like retail supply answers there so far in the UK, and they actually want to try and do something for themselves that actually makes things a little bit positive. They don’t really want to just be sat at home, licking their wounds and watching their equity portfolio, so disappearing down the drain a little bit. They want to get a bit more active about it. So that’s been good for us. But I’m also very conscious, just with my wife for example, I’m very conscious that we’re in a slightly we’re in the slight better end of having to deal with this those poor people, but they’re at the other end. I you know, I sympathize completely with them It must be really difficult.
Dennis Lewis 5:19
Yeah, it is. And you know, a lot of it is, like you say there is a lot of it, that is his mentality, but there is a lot of it. There’s this there’s a lot of businesses suffering right now, there’s not, you know, I say there’s not there’s not really anybody who’s probably saying, Hey, this is great unless you make masks or, you know, something like that. But, you know, that’s it’s funny because, you know, what you said about the markets. It’s true, you know, from from your point of view, movement is, you know, the probably the worst thing possible is a stagnant kind of market that doesn’t do anything because if it’s moving, then it’s, you know, there’s energy in the market and if you’re, I guess if you’re really smart, and you know, how to handle it, then that plays to your advantage. I guess it also plays to disadvantage to a lot of people that aren’t as clever.
Stuart Pritchard 6:10
Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, you know, a sideways moving market is is don’t, there is nothing you could do. The the other side of that, though, is there’s very little risk on the table when the markets moving sideways. However, when the market starts getting lively, up or down, there are opportunities there. And it depends, again, on your trading stance. You know, there’s the ability to short the market to take a profit from the downside, notoriously a lot more difficult to do than trading the upside that you have to have a certain mental predisposition to short the market. It’s a bit of a tough ask. However, yeah, moving markets right now. certainly been good to us. And obviously, you know, with the caveat that Whatever you trade there’s risk whenever you place a trade, it can go the opposite way.
Dennis Lewis 7:09
Hmm.
Stuart Pritchard 7:10
But But yeah, overall a bit more interesting right now.
Dennis Lewis 7:15
Yeah, well, I mean, I always remember the the Warren Buffett quote you know that when people are greedy I get scared and when people are scared I get greedy right. Now if you’re, if you could hear me there
Stuart Pritchard 7:30
Yeah, absolutely. It’s a Yeah, great. keeps breaking up a little bit to be fair, but be I can I can still hear you. But yeah, it’s, it’s exactly as Warren Buffett said, quite often, it’s good to be contrary to the underlying feeling in the market. If people are scared, that tends to be the time that you should be getting involved. And certainly we’ve found that over the past six weeks, the market has been very good to us because The fear is there. So people have sold out and it gives you the opportunity to buy in.
Dennis Lewis 8:05
So so here’s just just from a general market kind of equity market sort of question for you that I mean, it. Everybody understood that when all this happened, the market crashed, that that I think even silly people like me can understand. But give me a reason why it’s come back because the world isn’t in a better place. Yes, you know, there is we haven’t solved any problem. So why is it coming back? It doesn’t make sense to normal people like me.
Stuart Pritchard 8:38
Yeah, sure. So so the the reason very, very clearly is governmental intervention. You have for example, in Italy, one of the worst places hit by this. They’ve already thrown 750 billion euros into their system. In the UK, we’ve already put aside 350 billion dollars The US literally just last week signed a false bill that now brings their stimulus up to $3 trillion. as amazing as a new billion,
Dennis Lewis 9:14
where the hell are they get? I mean, they’re just printing just like they’re just pulling it out there, right?
Stuart Pritchard 9:19
Absolutely, absolutely the same as the credit crunch the credit crisis back in 2008 2009. But the interesting part is if we just look at the footsie 100, which is the one that obviously I concentrate on being based in the UK, recovered back up to sort of 6000 level from a 5000 level, so significant drop to the downside and recover back up, but again, money coming in from from the government. But as you quite rightly said, we haven’t actually solved the problem here. And we haven’t faced the fact that we’ve switched the economy off for a sustainable period of time, not just the UK economy, you know, the global economy has been switched off for the last six weeks that has to play out. You know, we’re now getting into companies releasing their first quarter earnings reports. British Airways, Boeing, etc. EasyJet, Ryanair, any travel company. And you know, we saw Lloyds Bank, for example, post a 95% drop in revenue in the first quarter 95% drop in revenue. That’s not the second quarter This is up to the end of March. April, May and June are going to be a lot more frightening again, and I think I I’m curious to see whether this recovery is a dead cat bounce as in, is the market going to roll over again now, as companies start reporting the hard facts about how hard they’ve been it’s and I do Worry, what other leavers do the government’s have now they’ve slashed interest rates to basically zero. They’ve pumped billions if not trillions of pounds and dollars into the market. What what happens from here, you know, what other leaders have they got to pull to try and get things going again, they’ve kind of already pulled all the leaders at their disposal. It’s, it’s going to be an unusual time over the next three or four months, in my opinion, in equity markets.
Dennis Lewis 11:26
Yeah, because I mean, I think we’re going to inevitably, they’re going to be companies that aren’t going to make it and probably companies with big names, you know, in the travel industry and hotel industry, it’s just stands to reason there’s no revenue, the you know, they’re still paying mortgages on their properties. They’re still you know, they’re still expenses and there’s no money coming in. I don’t know how many people are going to be able to survive that and I think we fading out on me there, Stuart. Are you still there? Hello. Alright, hold on. Yeah, you have somebody didn’t like what you had to say there. You’re fuzzing out on me. I’m going to see here I’m going to remove you just a second. You can guys can look at me here for a minute and then I’m going to add him back in. Maybe that will help. Ah
Stuart Pritchard 12:21
dingy. I’ve lost you there.
Dennis Lewis 12:24
Yeah, I think you’re you’re you’re you’re fading out maybe would be a good deal to refresh your browser or something there, Stuart. There we go. Okay, so while we’re waiting for Stuart to come back on and, you know, talk about we’re going to talk about we’re going to continue to talk a little bit about the equities market and then we are going to talk about specifically the cryptocurrency market is as you know, that is something that I am I’m very interested in Hey, your backstory.
Stuart Pritchard 13:02
Welcome. Apologies just dropped out there. So, apologies.
Dennis Lewis 13:07
So my question before we move on to crypto markets and whatnot is, um, you know, inevitably there’s there’s big companies that with big names big brands that that are that are just hemorrhaging big right now they’re the costs aren’t going away. I mean, if you have no hotel, you’re paying the mortgage, regardless of whether you have anybody staying in a hotel and revenues like you said, I mean, you know, Lloyds Bank 95% drop in revenue, you know, and we haven’t got q2. Do you think we’re gonna see some big name companies just not make
Stuart Pritchard 13:41
it? Absolutely. I can’t see how that can’t be the situation. I think it’s going to start in the SME that the small to medium sized enterprise level, but I think some big names gonna fail. The likes of Boeing, the likes of British Airways or AIG. That, you know, mainland Spanish now but but but these companies are really going to struggle unless again, they have a bailout from the from the governments involved. But I think you know, what stays you go get to with that, you know, the banks were one thing where we have to have a banking system allowing companies like airlines to fail. sounds absolutely awful and terrible for the people that work there. But from a governmental viewpoint, somebody else will step in and pick those pieces up. So it’s not like the banking system where everything’s reliant on it. I just think there are going to be some big things that come crashing down here, unfortunately, which is, which is just awful for you know, although those poor people that are employed by it and the services that they provide to other people, and then the knock on effect, you know, the domino effect of if you look at airline companies, you know, they have catering companies that are tend to be independent that provide the food for the flights. Just a whole list of things in the domino chain that are going to get affected by this. So, yeah, it’s going to be very far reaching. And as you quite rightly said, we’re really not at the end of this, you know, we don’t know if there’s a second wave coming. We don’t know if there’s going to be a second lockdown in other places. Everybody’s kind of approaching it slightly differently. The UK has one stance, Germany has another Sweden has yet another Spain has yet another. So whilst everybody is desperately trying to sort this out, who knows which way works? You know, is it Sweden where you do nothing? You don’t lock down in at all? Or is it Spain where it’s a really severe lockdown? I think any time we’ll play that out, you know, we’ll see where we are.
Dennis Lewis 15:42
Yeah, I think it really is. It’s the uncertainty is what’s really the I think that that really worries me. You know, it makes everything hard because you really don’t know. I mean, you know, we can all look and see that there are leaders that have done better jobs than others. That we kind of all know, but uh, but answers nobody really knows it’s all you know, it’s it’s
Stuart Pritchard 16:08
who would who would want to be a prime minister or you know right now or president right now you know what a poison Chalice studies to pick up and you know I think every government is having a go you know that one thing that certainly comes across from just conversations with people in different countries it’s not like anybody’s kind of just ignoring this, you know to use choose a bit of a term the throwing the kitchen sink at this you know, imagine being the Prime Minister that says we’re going to switch the economy off for six weeks at least maybe 12 weeks that that takes that takes one hell of a decision to make that you know that that’s an incredible decision to make. And what what’s actually been really quite heartening here in the UK and I don’t know how it’s been so much in Spain Andrews My brother is As he lives in Spain, as explained a few bits, but over here, it’s kind of the government said, Look, we’re shutting the economy off. And we all went. Yeah, fair enough. That’s exactly what we need to do to try and get on top of this thing. Yes, no fighting back, there’s no resisting, there was no up in arms. There was no, everybody’s kind of gone. Yeah, that’s, that’s fair enough. You know, people are dying from this, that that’s a perfectly reasonable stance to take, that we all locked down, we stay at home and we have a go at saving lives, you know, and just and I that’s really heartening, the way the sort of community spirit has gone up, even where I live my neighbors, you know, we’re taking a lot more time now to speak to each other and ask how we’re all doing and making sure that everybody’s got what they need, etc. It’s, yeah, there’s a lot of positives here. I mean, obviously, it’s tragic, what’s happening within the virus outbreak itself, but the heartening stories about the community and the positive outlook that’s coming about from it. Yeah, it’s really that’s pretty cool.
Dennis Lewis 18:04
Yeah, I’ve said the same on here on on quite a few of these live streams that here in Spain, people have, you know, they’ve taken it in stride and you know, they’re, they’re, they’re following the rules, they’re, you know, there’s not a whole lot of, you know, when we look out the window, you know, I, I can take the dogs out every you know, when they need to go and but there’s nobody out there, you know, other than the other people taking the dogs out. I mean, it’s, yeah, they’re, they’re doing a good job. I mean, you know, whether or not it’s, you know, how many lives is it saved? We don’t really know. But I mean, we sure as heck know the number that we’ve lost and it’s scary. So I think that’s kind of what what, what’s keeping you know, keeping that community spirit going is that you know, I mean, this we’re all you know, you don’t really have a choice, you either do it right or you or you know that the consequences are are kind of you know, unimaginable.
Stuart Pritchard 19:03
Yeah, you’re absolutely right. And I think everybody is abiding by it and everybody is aware, you know, certainly over here, the amount of coverage that’s given to this whole situation. It’s literally constant 27. We have five terrestrial channels that we follow in at any given time or one of those terrestrial channels. There will be an hour long talk about Coronavirus, you know, what’s going on how it’s affecting people, etc. So, everybody is is ultra aware of how important this is. And as you say, who knows how many would say that but you very correct in saying, you know, we know very, very clearly how many people are are suffering from this. So, yeah, it’s one of those things. I think everybody has just gone yet. This is fine. We’ll deal with this. We’ll come out the far side whether the V shape recovery Going back to a little bit about sort of economic side of things. There is a lot of talk here about a V shaped recovery, when we switch the economy back on. Again, I just don’t quite see that I think people in i think i think their habits have changed. You know, I’m certainly go to restaurants go into bars go into cafes, I just think that there’s not going to be the reshaped recovery that Bruce hoping for, I think people will be a lot more concerned and perhaps making sure that they’ve got a bit of rainy day money in their pocket, rather than going out and spending it pretty much straightaway. So we’ll see. We’ll see. I might be wrong, but it feels like I tend
Dennis Lewis 20:41
to agree. I don’t I don’t think you know that this is going to be Yeah, snap your fingers. And we’re going to go back. I mean, I’ve been saying this all along here. From an entrepreneurial point of view, you know, business owners have to be thinking about there’s we’re not going back to two months ago. It’s not going to happen. So you have to start you know, reap reframing your position your what your messaging your, your marketing, everything that you do in your business, you really have to think it over again and say, okay, you know, where, you know what, what’s the new reality? You know, because like you say, people’s heads are in a different place. They’re they’re not thinking the same way. And if people aren’t thinking the same way, they’re not going to behave the same way.
Stuart Pritchard 21:27
Yeah, absolutely this this, you know, habits take whatever it is 21 days to form or whatever the number is, but the reality is we’re retraining you know, that go into the supermarket and just sort of mingling through the aisles or going to the bar and you know, you shoulder to shoulder at the bar ordering a drink or something. It’s just not going to happen so much. It’s certainly not going to recover straight back. You know, people are just going to be cautious and I’ve seen Andrew my brother, sent through to me the phased plan for Spain to You know, exit the lockdown. And it’s, you know, utilizing 30% of the capacity of a restaurant and this type of thing. And you think, wow, you know that this isn’t going to be quick and caveats of each phase, saying, however, we’ll judge each phase and it’s only when we’re really happy with that phase that will move to the next one. There’s sort of four or five gears that they’re going to work through. And at any point in that, if a second phase starts happening or a second wave or Coronavirus starts happening, it will be back to lockdown, you know, just until a vaccine comes out or decent antibody testing. And that allows you to know if you if you’ve had it or not, I think yes, it’s tough. It’s tough.
Dennis Lewis 22:46
Yeah, it is. Absolutely. Okay. So let’s move into cryptocurrencies and blockchain. And, you know, one of the I’m gonna start off with it with a tough one for you story. One of the The firt for a long time anybody in this in the industry anybody who’s followed cryptocurrency with kind of believe that you know, Bitcoin, a theory that the big cryptocurrencies are, should be safe havens, the kind of you know, how many people how many times when we talked about digital gold, that, you know, when stocks and equities go down, you know, the place to be is going to be a Bitcoin and it’s going to go up, and that didn’t happen. Okay. Everything crashed and Bitcoin crashed and aetherium crashed. And, and I don’t know that I I didn’t follow gold. I don’t know. But it didn’t pan out. So why didn’t it pan out? That’s the first question.
Stuart Pritchard 23:41
Yeah, sure. So I think you’re absolutely right. I mean, gold did actually recover. It did bounce up. So I think there are two answers to the question. The first one is who’s actually involved in the crypto market. So you’re seasoned older type investor that is has a big equity portfolio or a big managed to fund portfolio. They’re the type that will shift into gold. So thinking that they’re suddenly going to shift into crypto currencies is it’s not going to happen. Those guys aren’t in cryptocurrencies in the first place. So, that, that that being digital gold, it doesn’t hold water in that respect. So, leading on though, should cryptocurrencies have been largely unaffected, in all fairness, yes, they should have been largely ineffective because what difference does it make that, you know, nobody’s going to the petrol station or nobody’s going to a cafe or a pub or something like this? That’s irrelevant to cryptocurrency so it shouldn’t have been affected. And to begin with, the equity markets slumped much before the crypto market you know, the crypto market was the 12th of March and the actual equity markets all started in mid to late February. So, and there is also an argument about, you know, the size of the drop in Bitcoin in the first place about liquidation of leveraged assets. And I think there is a lot of credibility there, that there are exchanges that are offering up to 100 to one leverage on Bitcoin. And if that starts pulling over and they’ve got a fairly substantial holding, then the liquidation of all those long positions can drive the market down and could potentially drink a lot further to be honest with you. Having said that, now that we’ve that’s played out. Today the price is back to pre 12th of March levels. In fact, it’s well above 12 March levels back to early March levels now. So normality in my opinion has sort of kicked back in the market has become less volatile. started running back up. I think the 12th of March was there were a number of factors there, money started coming off the table. And I think a lot of very heavily weighted, leveraged positions got liquidated. And that’s then put fear in the markets. And that’s why again, there hasn’t been this immediate knee jerk reaction back up. I know through speaking to crypto investors a lot over the past six weeks, they’re now tentatively getting more and more involved, as confidence is returning. And the belief that crypto shouldn’t be affected by global goings on seems to be coming back to the market that a sense of reality, a sense of normality, has kind of come back to the crypto space. And I think that’s why we’ve seen the recovery back up to levels we’ve got now. And, you know, if you look at for example, you know, Google Trends, Google search words and trends, Bitcoin having absolutely through the roof Much in excess of 2016 levels when that term was was last searched. So, again, perhaps some of these older, seasoned investors that are typically in equities are now exploring cryptocurrencies. Certainly, April for us, we’ve had a lot of interest in getting involved in kryptos. Most of these guys are aware of it, scared of it, and don’t really understand how to get involved or how to get into a portfolio, this type of thing, but they are talking to us about it. So there’s obviously an appetite there. And it seems to be driven a lot by the famed Bitcoin having that that’s theoretically happening this month. Hmm.
Dennis Lewis 27:48
Well, here’s another thing, okay. We talked a bit about, you know, every government all over the world, they’re just pouring, you know, money into the market. They’re pouring money that doesn’t exist. There. They’re literally pouring, you know, just they’ve opened the faucets in dollars and Sterling and euros, it doesn’t matter. They’re all just rushing out like a fire hose. And anybody who’s a little bit sophisticated knows that that has a price. I mean, it doesn’t come. It doesn’t even though that doesn’t cost, you know, even though they can print new money all they want, it does affect the value of the money that we all had beforehand, right? I mean, the value just the math is unescapable. And the truth is, is that cryptocurrency that’s not happening. I mean, you know, there’s there with the housing building could be less Bitcoin available on the market. And and it’s not being, you know, created out of thin air. Is that going to be a trend for the next six 810 months maybe?
Stuart Pritchard 28:52
Well, I certainly think it is. I mean, look, you know, that that’s the biggest or one of the biggest positives or Around cryptocurrencies, the finite resource, the finite level of the, you know, the 21 million Bitcoin, for example, it’s a finite resource, you can’t just switch the printing machines on in the background and kick the kick the problem down the road, which is, you know, going back to what we were talking about, about the credit crunch. We’ve very quickly forgotten here in the UK that on the back of that, and the printing of money Previously, we went into a severe austerity program that involves capping teachers wages, capping NHS wages, almost driving the NHS, our health service, you know, down. And now we’re lamenting over it now. We’re good. Oh, my goodness, we now need the NHS. Oh, yeah. But for the last six years, we’ve actually been putting the stops on it and putting the brakes on it. And now all of a sudden we need it, but, but what I’m getting at is, we went through that period of awesome clarity and it was really tough. You know, for a lot of people, it was really tough. A lot of people lost their jobs. A lot of people had their wages frozen, certainly didn’t see pay rises that were in line with inflation. And it’s and this is much bigger, you know that this is much bigger than the amount that we’re printing now. And the amount that we could potentially finally print in the US in particular, could be enormous. You know, we’re gonna feel this for an awful long time. I think the stat last week 25.4 million US nationals filed for unemployment, you know, getting up to sort of 15% this type of thing. Crazy, crazy numbers, you know, absolutely crazy numbers. And going back to cryptocurrency, it is a finite resource. It is a finite level if there is a supply and demand buying and selling formula. If your resource becomes limited in terms of supply, but demand remains the same. Theoretically, the prices is only going to go north. So certainly we believe even with just the hype, there’s going to be a lot of North northward movement. But I don’t think it’s going to be just sailing upwards and upwards without any sort of sharp corrections as well. The crypto space notoriously can can give you a little bit of a side shot, shall we say? Just when you’re least expecting it? What do you think when you think, you know, everybody’s buying in it? Sort of 18,000 bucks on Bitcoin back in 2017? thinking, Oh, my goodness, look at this. It’s exponential. It’s going to go through the roof. And then a few months later, it’s three and a half thousand bucks. And that pretty much says it all about kryptos. Great, great fun, but you’ve got to know what you’re doing to get involved in my opinion.
Dennis Lewis 31:51
So that takes me directly to the to the question now tell us Stuart about blockchain capital. Tell us what you guys do. How you know, what’s your year. Your role in all of this? And yeah, share with us a bit about your mission and how you work.
Stuart Pritchard 32:05
Yes, sure. So mine and my team’s backgrounds is all traditional stocks and shares equity. So So I historically was a stock share traded stock broker, call it what you will, as were my other traders, we’re a team of traders, I’ve got a couple of analysts, and all of our background is is in traditional stocks and shares. So about three years ago, so maybe about three and a half years ago now actually, time runs away, by the way, when you did not keep an eye on dates and things like this anymore, but about three, three and a half years ago. And I was approached by a by some of these sort of seasoned investors sort of asking about Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. And if I’m honest with you at the time, my answer was, it’s unregulated, Wild Wild West, don’t touch it with a 20 foot bargepole. That’s been gospel and listening But that was my that was my approach my my hat at that time was regulated you know covered by all sorts of different authorized governing bodies making sure that everything is is correct perfect protecting the client etc so so my initial response was Don’t touch it Don’t touch with a 20 foot bargepole but more and more of these guides and that the you know fairly big hitting clients I would say and were asking me so I thought about but just start looking into this in a bit more detail. So we formed a bit of a fund ourselves, put a bit of skin in the game, so to speak, and started trading it on the likes of by Nance. bitfenix bit tracks this type of thing. And applying the old fashioned, tried and tested techniques from from the stocks and shares world could be swing trading. It could be RSI divergence strategies, all sorts of different bits and pieces that the analyst Push forward by the way, the traders, the analysts stick to the discipline, the traders tend to take a slightly more shoo say passionate view rather than rather than a disciplined view. But we apply these strategies with a degree of success. You know, obviously, we were bored by the fact that market was was fairly normal band anyway. So it wasn’t, it wasn’t too tough to sort of make money in 2017. It’s pretty easy. And everybody made money in 2017. The difference is that when the party stopped, we didn’t really get caught out too much. Because we were trading with risk management, we were making sure that we were locking in profits with automatic sell orders. If the market starts going against you. We sort of protected ourselves all the way up and didn’t take the the sort of massive hit when when the party stopped and 2018 the slight more difficult year as everybody knows, you know, obviously market bouncing around all over the place and more negative than positive But there was opportunity there. And we did okay, throughout the course of 2018. And that’s when we opened the doors to taking on clients. And that’s when I actually took my old hat off and put my new hat on permanently and close the doors on the the sort of regulated world and the other side of things. And now purely look after cryptocurrencies because there’s so much appetite for it now. That, you know, you can you can create a business within it, as long as you’re offering a credible offering. And what we bring to the table, every single person either comes in completely green never dealt with kryptos before. That’s actually an easier proposition than seasoned crypto investors. Because seasoned crypto investors tend to be they’ve seen this. They’ve seen the big ups, but almost without fail. They didn’t take the profit when they had the chance. They wrote, they wrote
Up to 19,000 bucks thought it was gonna keep going stellar. And obviously then sat there looking at what ended up being a losing position in terms of monetarily, sometimes down on what they originally invested. Only if they close out obviously, if you just start holding bitcoins, then it makes no difference what the price does, but still looking at it and thinking, What if, if only if I’d hit the sell button at that point, I’d had some sort of risk management in place at that point, I’d be I’d be, I’d be in a slightly different position financially right now. So those guys are say slightly more difficult proposition because they they have a sort of view already, which is very much holding and thinking that it’s all going to come good. And, you know, I genuinely believe that the price of bitcoin is going to go north over the next 12 months. But I think there’s a lot of interesting opportunities to not only trade that’s one of the big issues with with cryptocurrency Isn’t the space it’s really easy to get suckered into multiple trades and in our in our trying to do this type of thing for us we swing trade. What that means is you’re waiting for momentum to come to the market to really sort of give you validation that that’s when you buy in and then you buy in and you trade up and you simply put a put an automatic sell order in behind the trade as it goes and eventually when crypto does what crypto always does, and catches you out and drops sharply it kicks you out in the bank, the profit and our philosophy is obviously trying to gain value in the in the sort of account if you like a client’s account, but also trying to amass further crypto. So, you know, if you buy bitcoin at 5000 bucks and you sell it at 10,000 bucks, and then it drops back 5000 bucks, you buy in to Bitcoin. So it’s a very, very simple mathematical formula. They’re that doesn’t quite go to plan like that. But if it did, and but that’s the philosophy, the philosophy is that, you know, if you’re able to amass Bitcoin, and also a mass value in a fund, then then that that, that’s pretty cool that that’s our job done. And accepting the fact that you don’t get every single trade, right. And there are times when he goes the opposite way. And you actually take losses, which, again, is part and parcel of any trading, but that that’s just life. So, so botlane capital, we are, as I say, background is traditional stocks and shares, which is boring, but what it does mean is we’re bringing
Dennis Lewis 38:39
I think we start you’re cutting off again, hold on, I’m not sure if you can hear me. Bit of a connection problem here. I’m going to bring you out. Hopefully we can get Stuart back on here just for a few more minutes. See if you’re
give him another chance here. Um, what I can say is that the last couple of questions I have in my on my list are just, you know, to tell us a little bit about the background of the company and, you know, reassure our you know, people listening in, you know, why, why Block, block men capitalistic good choices for running your portfolio. So let me see hey, back now,
Stuart Pritchard 39:36
again, apologies, sir. Having to
having two older children in the house does mean that they’re downloading things on multiple devices all at the same time, which essentially knocks the Wi Fi router over far too frequently. Why they have to download on multiple devices. I have no idea but There we are.
Having older children, unfortunately. That’s right.
Dennis Lewis 40:05
So you were saying, you know, you were just about to tell us just a little bit about black, black men and about you know, I was I was saying I’d like you to tell us just a little bit about, you know, why? Why do you think people should feel comfortable, you know, reaching out to you and saying, Hey, I’m interested in blockchain and cryptocurrencies. Don’t know exactly. You know, I’m not, you know, either I am a seasoned trader, or I’m not, but, you know, how do we, you know, why would they Why should they feel comfortable?
Stuart Pritchard 40:33
Yeah, yeah, for sure. So, the reason being is that we use a disciplined approach. And that that’s, that’s first and foremost, what we’re about. So it’s a 24 seven market. Unfortunately, it’s also a 365 day of the year market, too. And what that means is, you know, quite often we’ll get big movements when the Asia market is live, which is the early hours of the morning for us. So we We all have a set of eyes on the markets at any given time. I also draw the short story in that respect. And I sometimes have those nights where I’m in front of the screen from midnight through till 8am. So that we we bring a disciplined approach. We apply tried and tested strategies and techniques. And what we’re trying to do is not bet the house on red and try and hit it out of the park. We’re trying to give nice considered steady returns way in excess of normal markets, equity markets, managed funds, etc, because we’re trading a lively market so we’d expect to seriously outperform any other sort of investment, but with the important bit from a seasoned investor is mitigating the downside risk. It’s those guys that hold Bitcoin and hope that it’s just going to go north in value. When we know from experience, it often doesn’t do that. And it’s making sure that you close that out at the right time by get back to a stable coin, USD T, whatever, whatever you need to get back to in order to amass further bitcoins, which, you know, as a price drops back. So, yeah disciplined approach and 24 seven eyes on the market, I think are really sort of worth their weight in gold.
Dennis Lewis 42:23
I totally agree. Well, Stuart, thank you very much. I think we’re good now. Thanks for being on. I thought it was a great conversation. I’ve enjoyed it. Yeah. If anybody has any questions, you know, leave them in the comments on the LinkedIn video, give us a like and I’ll do my best answer. I’ll get Stuart to answer if it’s a something to do with trading. It’ll definitely be him because I am not the person to talk to. And yeah, really nice to have you on today and I appreciate it.
Stuart Pritchard 42:55
Thank you very much Dennis. Really appreciate you asking me to be on a really appreciate it.
Dennis Lewis 42:59
Okay, Thanks a lot. Have a great weekend.
Stuart Pritchard 43:02
Have a great weekend. Cheerio my friend.
Dennis Lewis 43:04
Goodbye.