Meet Sunil: From Bank of America to Teaching Trading

Sunil Mangwani · Asset Management · Beginner

In this welcome video, Oliver Meyer, co-founder of Reasoned, sits down with Sunil for a relaxed, podcast-style conversation about his background, his time at Bank of America, and what he'll be teaching on the platform. They talk about: Sunil's path into finance and trading What working inside a bank is really like [CONFIRM] How his institutional experience shapes the way he reads markets The mistakes he sees new traders make most often What to expect from his series on Reasoned: institutional insights, mindset and psychology, and a Fibonacci masterclass If you're new to Sunil's content, start here. It gives you the person behind the lessons and the context for everything that follows. Beginner-friendly, with no prior knowledge needed. Educational content only. Not financial advice. Trading involves risk and you can lose money.

Transcript

Hi guys and thank you for tuning in to another video at Reason Trading Education. Today we have an amazing speaker on called SIL. He has founded his own trading company called Fib Forex123 and also is the author of an amazing trading information book. We will link under the video. So make sure you check out all of his resources and let's kick things off.

So for the students meeting you for the first time, who are you and how did you get into trading?

Okay. Hello everybody. Thanks Oliver for having me here. It's good to talk to you. Well, uh my name is Sunil Mangani. I'm resident of India as of today. Just as the initial information, so in India today, forex trading is still considered to be illegal. So an Indian individual cannot trade in the international forex markets. We can trade with the pairs involving the Indian rupees but not the markets.

So it's been a very difficult journey. Now [snorts] in a country where forex trading is really not allowed. So how did I get into trading? Well, it was just a matter of chance.

I h had still have maybe on this side a construction company. So we used to be into construction and for some reasons I had to shift to some homebased work. We were doing some outsourcing on some AutoCAD designs. Somewhere I came across trading and surprisingly it was forex trading that I came across. not equities, not commodities, not stocks, forex and somehow I found it a little fascinating.

I just went a little deeper into it. Uh studied the charts and everything and I have a maths background. So I've graduated in maths and physics. So somewhere that uh hit me somewhere because in construction, you know, you don't really need to apply your brains anywhere. Your architect draws up the plans. You're executing something here. You're not being creative yourself.

But in this I think it was mainly the challenge of when you are fighting the market and you're fighting against yourself. So that's what really attracted me to trading and that's how I got into trading. So it's way yeah

and when you first started did you start kind of on your own or did you go into the institutional role? Like where did your first trading start?

No, it it was like every retail trader today it's been today now more than 23 24 years now it's been a long journey but today when I talk to retail traders I can understand because I started off as a retail trader as an individual trader not as an institute or not with any fund not with any you know company and not even as any investment so just straight away as a speculative ative I wouldn't call it a day trader

but as a retail trader that's where I started off from.

Yeah,

that makes I think and a lot of people watching this video will be in the very same position and we have a lot of students so I think that's a great thing and they can relate to you and I think yeah if they keep watching your videos they'll learn a lot.

Let's kind of move into kind of like we're going to reverse it and instead of going straight into the forex let's talk about mistakes first because I think it's key to understand the mistakes we make when we move into trading. What was the main thing you completely misunderstood about trading when you first started out?

I think like every retail trader who comes into the market, we think that it's very easy. It's not difficult and I could learn a little bit of technical analysis.

uh I could use a little bit of risk management also maybe if I'm astute enough at that time which I was not and then I I can just start making money and it it is the information which is available outside on the net people talk about how much money they make from the trading so that misconception always exists saying that you can really start making money from trading but that is a fallacy this is something which I

always talk to retail traders that Give yourself some time. Don't be swayed by somebody who's telling you, you know, that, oh, I made so much money in the markets this time. I It's not an easy process. It's like a business. If you treat this like a hobby, you're going to get paid like a hobby. You treat it like a business, you get paid like a business.

So the first misconception that I had and I would like to give it to everybody that give it some time treat it as a business like a business it's going to take time to develop to become good at it to you know become professional at it but if you do it's a business of a lifetime which you can't beat anything you're trading on your own time anyway you want whatever no office no nothing so the first thing is it's not

an easy thing It's, as I always say, it's not a sprint, it's a marathon.

Yeah. Yeah. We 100% agree. And I think when people kind of come on to reason, we're very keen on teaching that risk management first. And I think in your next video, we're going to be talking about the key features of risk management. So, that should [clears throat] help strengthen that argument, I think.

Right. Right. Right. Yeah. Perfect. And we've touched on this topic a little bit, but why Forex specifically? Why not indices? Why not crypto? Like what drew you to Forex? Was it because that is what was pushed to you? Like that's the most common type or was there something else?

No, it's a different market. Like I said in India, we we can't trade forex but in spite of everything what attracted me because there's a difference. Forex is a different beast altogether than any other markets. I mean if you compare to equities, commodities, cryptos today or whatever that there is a mix of technical analysis and fundamental analysis when you as a trader are approaching the market.

Forex is the only market I would say where the weightage towards technical analysis is much more than fundamental analysis and very specific to retail traders like us. So we we are not interested in holding on to the euro for 6 months at a time. We are here for speculation. We hold a position maybe intraday if at all swing trading couple of days a week and for that your fundamental analysis plays a secondary part.

Now don't get me wrong it's not that fundamental analysis is not important. You must always marry the thing. But in forex the biggest advantage that you have is what you see on the charts is what you can trade.

Plus the participation of the forex markets globally the way it runs which has a lot of advantages and at the same time lot of disadvantages also to it. So a lot of traders tend to lose in fact most traders tend to lose money. But if you know the ups and downs in the markets, this is an excellent market when somebody really starts off trading.

I think this is an excellent market to cut your teeth into trading and learn trading because like I said, what you see on the charts is what you get. So that's a major difference.

Yeah, I think that yeah, 100% agree with that point. And I think it's a market where there's so many when we talk about Forex, we've done this in a previous video. We talk about the majors, minors, and the exotics. It's a market where you can make it what you want it to be as well.

So when you first come into the market, you can trade those ones which are most common and learn with everyone else, but then you can make it hyper specific to you as well.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. I think then I think you've moved on to this question and talking about what we see on the charts and I think that links to your strategy potentially on what would you define your core strategy to be when you trade yourself?

Uh I'm more of a swing trader. I I don't trade intraday which we will talk about subsequently because the nature of the market the structure of the market the participants of the market which is something which I always say that anybody who comes into trading must understand the working of that specific asset class that you're looking at.

So I'm more of a swing trader and I'm more inclined towards price action uh momentum based liquidity based if you can look at that way but relying more on I say relying but technical tools would be on my Fibonacci ratios that that's what I specialize in. piece of advice to every trader out there is that indicators are good in certain specific ways, but all indicators are lagging.

And if you're going to be using indicators to define your trades, your entry, your stops, your exits, you're headed for trouble because you're all lagging. Go instead for leading factors, what you see on the charts, price action, Fibonacci, simple support, resistance, supply, and demand. So my trading is more price based. I don't use any indicators at all. Price, supply and demand coupled with Fibonacci.

That that's about it. Very clean and very straightforward.

Nice. I think yeah, that's a really key thing to we've we've not really touched on the leading and lagging indicators yet. And I think when we move into your future videos, we're going to touch on those in more detail to help people understand.

Um, talk about your time in the markets obviously over you've now got 20 plus years. When was that moment where things started to change around? Was it in your first year of trading? Was it in five years? When did you really start to become a profitable trader but also successful in your own way?

U so there are two steps to this. A profitable a successful trader and a profitable trader. These are two different steps to it. I I would say I would became a successful trader after maybe 3 years or four years of continuously trading and losing money literally. I mean like everybody else I opened demo accounts. I learned technical analysis since I had a mathematical background.

I tweaked every indicator to its possible extent wherever I could and yet I was not making money. So I knew that there something was going wrong somewhere.

Till the time I realized over a period of time that if you leave the indicators behind concentrate on price action and keep risk management as your focus first as traders we tend to look at the charts and you take a buy and a sell based on your technical analysis. You would look at risk management but you don't give it that importance which it's supposed to.

Yeah.

Till I realized that risk management comes first more than anything else. Then you also have your mind factors which we'll talk about a little that was the time it changed things around from that time I started becoming successful not necessarily profitable

profitable see today as retail traders when you talk about somebody who's profitable I would define that profitable trader as somebody who makes a living from the market

somebody who can you know make money from the markets have an income whatever the quantum of the income is not important but you make consistent money. So consistently making money that still took me maybe another year or so and [clears throat] that stage came if I may go into it a little more. So when I realized what it took me to become successful I started getting better trades.

Of course the accounts were small so started making small amounts of money and then scaling up accounts also is a psychological factor which a lot of traders place. It's not easy because the minute you put a large amount somewhere, you see a larger risk coming up as compared to a larger profit. It stops you somewhere. So your decision making changes over there. I started with other traders that I was in touch with.

I started advising them about what it is and this was where my initial training came up and in the process I started attending certain expose. Now I had to be out of India. somewhere.

So I first went to the FX Street uh conference in Barcelona and then I did a private workshop in London which was very successful and then London sort of became a repetitive I used to conduct a workshop practically every 3 to four months good amount of traders coming in and regularly so I kind of put up an office over there I had have a partner over there my defining moment honestly came to if I may go into it a

little in detail. I am also pretty much uh you know I take part in these expose as speakers at forex expose conferences. It is one of the money show conferences in London which I used to attend very regularly but I was doing a talk on risk management. It was an openhouse talk. I mean a lot of traders over there.

At the end of it, I had one elderly gentleman come up and say that I like your concept of risk management and would you mind doing a session for my traders. I was like sure I mean really what company do you represent? So he he said I am the head trader for Bank of America and I was like are you kidding me? I mean you guys trade billions of dollars literally and you want me to come there somewhere?

So he said no we have a systems fix. So it's your riskmanagement policies which I want a little bit of discipline in my traders. So I would like you to go over this. So I said I have one condition. I would like to spend one or two days on the floor with them to see you know what they're trading and then I could put across some concepts of risk management.

That all changed my entire outlook because the forex market if we look at the statistics we'll talk about it later in detail is controlled by the banks globally. You have out of today you have 6 trillion or 7 trillion a day turnover.

Today almost 70% of this trading is done by a group of banks. Banks are traditionally the forex changes worldwide. Even before retail traders came in it was banks who always doing that they I won't say manipulate the market they can drive the markets. So I was sitting on this side of the market that time watching how they could drive price and I understood the concept of supply and demand straight away over there.

It was like okay we'll drive price to this level because they have the money to do that and this is why forex is a different beast altogether. So we'll drive price over here where the retail traders will come in and this is where we'll kill the retail traders. I mean that's the language they would talk about. Now when I was on the other side I could understand that how they drive price and why and how.

Of course, they were pretty KY about their methods, but honestly, it was good. Like, you know, one night out in a pub with some of those people, I could glean out a little bit of information over there. But that completely changed. And that it was from that day onwards that I would say that I could become profitable and consistent because I understood the inner workings of how the forex market works.

So, that that was a defining point for me.

That makes sense. So it's not as much about the strategy but it's more about the mindset shift and then having that information of the understanding of the markets and then the strategy comes after

exactly you know it's a simple fact I mean any market you trade you trade equities commodities when you buy a financial instrument someone has to sell it to you it's just as simple as that and when you sell you need a buyer on the other side now this is the basic concept with most traders tend I won't say ignore but they forget this very concept about it.

So when in forex you have to remember one thing that when you are buying something the opposite side of your trade somebody who's selling it to you is most likely a bank who's got deep pockets the best of resources and you are just a small fry in sharkinfested waters.

Once you understand this concept and [clears throat] base your strategy on the fact that I always say that I want to hang on to the coattail of these big fish over there. That is a mind shift difference that we're talking about.

That sounds good. And I think yeah, we're looking forward to be be able to teach people that because I think as the time have moved on, when you first maybe moved into the markets, there's probably a lot more limited information out there. And with Reason Trading, what we're trying to do is create a platform of equal access. And that's why we brought people like yourself.

We've got hedge fund managers coming up, ex people that have worked at investment funds to make sure people understand the inner workings of the markets. So I think it's really exciting.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And

yeah, let's talk about maybe some advice to your younger self. Know you've had all of these years of experience. If you were to restart now, what piece of advice would you give to your younger self and why would that be?

One I would say like I mentioned at the beginning that don't don't think that everything is so easy that you can just start making money and I miss that. So, which is one of the reasons why I go out and talk to other traders is have a mentor. Uh, a mentor is uh somebody who's experienced in the market, who's been in the market, who knows the insights outside of the market.

And I'm not talking about learning technical strategies, but the experience that this mentor brings in as to how the markets work. Now if it took me about four to five years to become successful with a mentor it would probably taken me year or a couple of years to do that. So that's one thing which I would probably I would have done it differently if I knew better was you know look for a mentor.

Unfortunately today it's I come across a lot of people I conduct my training courses people don't realize the value of this because there's so much of information available now today with AI coming in it's even worse even in my days I mean like 5 years back you could do a Google search on trading systems you would come across hundreds of them and most would talk about indicators today you tell Chad GPD that I want a

trading system and chat GPD will give you five fantastic strategies. But is the human element is that experience which when you charge for something I I have seen this traders say that I can get all this information so much for free why would I need to pay and ultimately they end up paying by losing in the market so you lose much more.

So this is a paradox and this is what I would tell myself that look for somebody who's experienced who has been there done that and then you can use your own strategy but trading come to think of it what we'll talk about later is I believe and what I teach I tell my traders is a combination of what I call as the three M's which is money mind and method in that specific order.

So money is risk management takes priority your so let's say if I distribute these on a scale of 1 is to 10 somewhere money would take up five parts out of 10 your mind factor which I simply call as patience discipline your psychology of trading would take up three parts out of 10 and the method the third M takes up only two parts of 10.

So even when I talk about Fibonacci today or price action out of 10 it just takes up two parts most traders tend to ignore this and it's very natural because you open up a chart you take a buy and sell you look at technical analysis but unless you don't incorporate these other factors your chances of success are very very low so if I look back if I had a mentor and if I could have understood stood that trading is

not just buying selling but a combination of different factors in making a plan that would have made a lot of difference. I think that mentorship thing is so very key and what's really exciting is in our trading competitions at reasoned as part of the prize pool people can win mentorships.

This isn't even just for the top people. They will win mentorships of course, but also the people we see that would just with a little bit of help maybe become profitable and successful, they can also have a chance to win that mentorship.

And I think that's key.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah.

Um, now let's kind of close this out and talk about maybe the next few videos and what should students expect coming from you and what would you hope that they learn?

U I would say general workings of the market practical tips is what I would more talk about without getting into technicalities of everything. See there is a trading strategy something different for experienced traders. We could get into trading strategies but just understanding the working of the forex markets. Who are the participants?

What makes price move? Understanding supply and demand. Understanding the proper use of indicators, understanding the concepts of risk management, your mind factor, those by itself a is I I believe just information which most traders would really find helpful which is not available. Now I have written a book so I'm an author of a book which just describes these. It's called seven steps to professional trading.

It's no strategies in that. There is nothing but just practical methods on how you can overcome the hurdles of trading in the markets. And that is what we'll go over more cuz it I always feel you know been there done that and I see new traders coming in and they lose money not for their own fault but they've been led down a path which is not correct and they don't realize it.

So if we can guide people that this is the correct path and then it's up to you to take it up or not that is what my goal would be.

I think that's a very key and what we always say is people won't understand information that they don't know is out there. So if we can just guide them that way and we provide the first stepping stone then they can personalize that a lot more and fit it to them.

Absolutely. Absolutely. But then it's up to them. If I look back, you know, I've maintained a diary for the past 20 years or so. I still have some copies of that.

I remember I had bought bought a book on technical analysis. I still remember that this author was Cornelia Lucas. I think the basics of technical analysis all indicators. So I would study each and every indicator. And when I look back at the diary and I read it today 20 years back and I was like how could I have done that? But then I realized that at that time this was what I thought was the right path.

Yeah.

So that makes a difference. You know guide somebody that you're going down the wrong path and we guide you somewhere over here. Rest it's entirely up to you that way.

Thank you. and it's been amazing having you on this journey and I can't wait for all the students on board to learn from you and we can help forge their path into trading and even to a trading career with a new upcoming reason recruitment platform launching soon. So yeah, thank you for your time today and yeah, it'll be great to see the videos coming out soon.

Yeah, thanks Oliver. Looking forward to the rest of the things. It's always nice to talk to traders. Thank you for having me and yes, let's do that. Okay,

thank you. Make sure you check out his new videos launching next week and the week after. So stay tuned and make sure to make your reason trading account now. Just click sign up in the right hand corner to get all the latest videos and update sent straight to