Interview noteThis page restates a public interview in new words. Dollar results, win rates, and payouts are claims made by the speaker or the host. They are not this desk's record, and they are not a result to expect.
Patrick Niel, fades inside the box that prints after a large impulse, and he leaves the spike itself alone. The host calls him a repeat world-championship trader who placed among the best for five straight years. Risk, hit rate, and the oil story below are his, and they are not an audit.
Why it matters
The method is slow, discretionary, and built on one shape. His own portfolio, he says, never risks above 1 percent, so a surprise does not end the account. One method for a full year is his idea of hard work. The first year was many methods and no direction.
The idea in plain words
The framework is PBD, from the circle around Thomas, whom this talk also calls Tom, in an academy they share. P means a strong push up, then a range. B means a strong push down, then a range. He wants that pair at a location he already respects. The caption also hears PVD and PPD, and a D is never explained.
On the DAX he marks a push, a multi-day box, a break that fails back inside, and that box as the area to trade. A return to a level he likes can be bought. Inside the box he looks to sell. A later push he links to Trump still left a usable box, though he dislikes trading the headline. The interview chart was empty.
Weekly volume profile marks value-area highs and lows. He trades the 15-minute. If the push, the box, and a value-area high line up, experience still decides the click. Holds are swings: a typical middle length of about a day, and a band from roughly four hours out to three days. A friend near a hundred trades a day, he says, last lost three years earlier. Patrick can lose three or five in a row and call it normal.
How to use it
Targets on these pushes usually sit back under the impulse, because price often returns to where the push began. The stop is chosen first, above the zone, inside it, or beyond the last heavy candles. Otherwise size is a guess. A pretty entry can still be skipped. Swing results have been best when the original plan is left alone. Staying profitable matters more than a few extra percent on the year. Too much pressure and he shuts the markets, or leaves with his children.
Large news is a flat. A teammate handles the calendar. Technicals can be enough: a value-area high from two weeks prior stopped price through an Iran-peace headline and through Trump. He still prefers to be out when those decisions arrive. Competition risk and personal risk are different jobs. The Robbins World Cup, he says, needs something like 100 or 200 percent before anyone notices, so the risk is larger. Personal risk might be 0.2 percent. He cites winners 50 to 60 percent of the time and streaks of 10 to 20 losers, which he will not put on money he must keep. Competition rules allow two or three percent a trade. He will not run that size on the large personal book.
What usually goes wrong
The 1 percent ceiling is the rule that saved the personal book. He broke it two or three times on hard days and lost each time. COVID oil installed it. The market is his. In the conflict he mentions, price had been above 120, then 40, 30, and 20. Buys at 15 and 13 assumed a floor near seven or eight. Eight brought more buying. Five was a very large loss. The contract later hit minus 42. Zero had been the worst case they imagined, and a print near minus 40 on many contracts would have wiped the accounts. The host notes it was the first sub-zero oil trade.
A journal is the tool he wants when a skilled trader keeps giving gains back. New ideas are tested, sometimes with a small live stake, since paper never feels like the loss. He wants a method that still worked five years earlier. Holes above 10 percent are unwanted. Above 20 percent the method is rejected. The people around him call 20 percent the most anyone can live with, because escaping it takes a 25 percent gain, and escaping 50 percent takes 100 percent. He has been there in the championship and, long ago, privately. The exit was the same method. Changing methods inside the hole enlarges it.
Questions people ask
What do P and B name?
A push up and then a range, or a push down and then a range. The range is the trade. No D is defined. The working chart is 15 minutes, and holds run from about four hours to three days.
How large is personal risk?
Capped at 1 percent, with 0.2 percent as a figure he also uses. Competition trades can risk two or three percent because speed is the point. The win rate he states is 50 to 60 percent, including runs of 10 to 20 losses.
What did the negative oil print change?
The 1 percent rule. Buys at 15, 13, and 8 ended in a large loss at 5, and the price later reached minus 42. Zero had been the risk they thought they understood.