BONUS1 Extraordinary Returns in Extraordinary Times

How I traded through a black
swan event to achieve

Extraordinary Returns
in Extraordinary Times
by
Jon Silver
How I traded through a black swan event to achieve
Extraordinary Returns in Extraordinary Times
Copyright © 2021 by Solemage
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used

or reproduced in any manner without the written
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About Jon Silver

Jon Silver was born on November 10, 1986 as
Jonathan B. Silva, and he grew up in a Sunny city called
Lagos in the South of Portugal. Jon Silver uses this
shorter, anglicised version of his name as a professional
alias and as his pen name or nom de plume by which he
signs this book.
Jon is considered by many an undisputed expert on
financial markets and economic topics. He is a hedge
fund manager at VdB Capital Management, where he
manages the BSH Fund (Black Swan Hunter investment
fund). His fund achieved one of its best returns on
record during the 2020 pandemic, of over 3000% for the
year. Jon figured several times on the leader board of the
World Cup Trading Championship as one of the top 5
best traders in the world. Even though he never won the
championship, Jon disputed the top 5 ranking during the
championship for several consecutive years.
In the early days of his career as a financial
professional, Jon held numerous roles in Banking and
Finance, he worked for several years in major Financial
centers such as Frankfurt, London and Lisbon, working
with Central Banks and Large Multinational
Corporations in different industries before launching his
own private investment company: Van der Bruyn
Holdings Limited.
After a successful career in the financial markets, Jon
decided to create an investors club where he shares his
hard learned lessons, because he believes that everyone
1
should learn and benefit from how the financial markets
work. Jon believes that knowing how to invest is a key
skill to achieve financial independence. Join the club now
and achieve your financial freedom today!
Learn more at www.tradingpros.club !
2
This eBook consists of chapter 10 of the book “Tales
of the Pirate Investor”, titled:
Chapter 10: From Rock Bottom to Sky High
“You must learn to be still in the midst of activity

and to be vibrantly alive in repose.”
After that successful trade, I felt I was ready for a

fresh start. I was ready to tackle the markets once again.
Now, I would just wait for the right opportunity. It had
to be a truly unexpected event, one that would catch the
market off guard and cause the established big players to
lose their edge, resulting in massive volatility moves.
It was the beginning of 2020 and then, a true black
swan event emerged: the global coronavirus pandemic
started to unravel. I didn’t pray for a pandemic, I am not
a minister of death, but when this situation arose, I knew
it would be ripe with opportunity for those who were
ready to take advantage of it. I had to step up to the
plate, like the French say: “à la guerre comme à la
guerre”. It means that you must be able to act according
what each situation demands of you. But life was going
to give me one more test, and deal a few more blows
before I could strike though. It seemed as if life wanted
to assess what I was made of and how badly I really
wanted it.
The company I worked for lost a lot of revenue when
the pandemic hit and they had to cut costs. They started
off by putting on hold any non-essential projects. The
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expansion project into Brazil was not a priority anymore
and I was suddenly fired. With all the threats of
impending lockdowns, and since I was out of a job, I had
no reason to stay in London, so I left and went to
Portugal. I didn’t want to spend such uncertain times
alone in a city far away from those I cared for.
When I arrived in Portugal, I started feeling sick, I
was coming down with a fever. My whole body was
aching and I started developing a cough, it came from the
depths of my lungs, I had never had a cough like this one
before. I feared I could have coronavirus, so I went to
get tested. Whilst I was waiting for the results, I started
getting news from several of my tenants, who were
mostly students, saying that they would be returning to
their home cities to study remotely from there, due to
the pandemic, therefore cancelling their rent contracts,
eliminating, in effect, my passive income source from
my properties. Then I got the test results back: I had
Covid-19! It was almost absurd how quickly my life had
taken a turn for the worse. I felt my life was at a new
low, no rents coming in, no salary and on top of that I
was sick with a scary new and deadly disease. I was lying
in bed with a high temperature and started wondering if
this would be how my life would end. Will I die as a
failure who has nothing to show for the many battles he
had been through life?
When the doctor called me to give my test results she
gave me some recommendations. I was supposed to be in
isolation and in a peaceful, stress-free rest, drinking lots
of water and eating healthy. However this was
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impossible as I couldn’t stop looking at the markets. The
market was ripe with opportunity, a black swan had
appeared and I had to pounce on it. These were
extraordinary times, perhaps even a once in a lifetime
opportunity that I couldn’t miss, so I brought my laptop
into bed with me. I was drained, but I kept looking at the
news and the market developments. Then I saw the big
selloff happening right before my eyes. Off went the
equities, metals, oil, everything was dropping, the big
players had been caught off guard. They were long, in a
market that was running on borrowed time since the
2008 crisis. Everyone was overleveraged and on the
wrong side of the market. The economy was dependent
on access to cheap money and was being fuelled by
increasing debt levels to keep going. If economic activity
would suddenly grind to a halt, then there would be no
revenues coming in to service that debt and there would
be massive bankruptcies, leading to unemployment, and
loss of purchasing power which would lead to a
deflationary environment. This was scary for large, over
leveraged, participants. They feared deflation and they
obviously preferred an inflationary environment, so that
the value of their investments would continue to
increase, and their debts continue do reduce in value. I
was almost certain that the odds of this being a system
collapse were low and central banks would probably do
anything in their power to support the economy.
With this in mind I looked at the markets, everyone
seemed to be liquidating their holdings to raise some,
much needed, liquidity and then I looked at platinum. It
was being battered significantly more than other
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markets. Platinum was shunned by investors ever since it
fell from its all-time high of around $2,000 back in 2008,
shortly after that fall, gold became more expensive than
platinum, and platinum never received much love from
market participants ever since. Too many people got
burned on that platinum buying frenzy back then and it
was still stinging in the collective market memory, and
when the diesel scandal broke out, in 2014, platinum fell
even further from its grace.
It seemed as if nobody wanted to have platinum on
their portfolios, the big participants were cutting their
platinum positions possibly all the way to zero it seemed.
Platinum dropped straight through $750 per ounce,
which was a major support that managed to hold
throughout the years since 2008, and now seemed to
have lost its ability to attract buying power. It just kept
plummeting, all the way to $560, it then spiked up and
down, chopping between $600 and $700 per ounce. I
stayed out, until I could draw some clear train track
channels, and saw a good low risk entry above $600 per
ounce, with a stop loss at $590, which represented a
$500 loss per contract, that was acceptable for me. This
was a trending market and a pyramiding opportunity
with profit potential of gigantic proportions. I knew I
was facing a steep uphill battle again, but my experience
showed me that it was a winnable and achievable one. I
had not given up yet. My dream, my challenge hadn’t
moved, it just seemed bigger now. I was facing worse
odds. I didn’t just have to battle the markets, but I had to
do it while sick and with no other source of income to
fall back on. Life was kicking me while I was down, and
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that kick was just what I needed. It made me angry, just
as angry as I used to be when my abusive dad or the
fourth year cadets pushed me down. It made me want to
fight back. It made me want to change my situation, to
actually escape from the new reality my life had become
so quickly. My way out of my current predicament was
staring me right in the face. I sat there, immobile in the
darkness for a while. I’d wished for an opportunity just
like this. When it gets dark enough you can see the stars.
I channelled all that anger and focused on how I could
make the most of my current circumstances. The thing
is, when a person has nothing to lose, he has nothing to
fear.
Driven by that energy and lack of fear I pulled myself
up from bed, went back into my office and set the laptop
back up in there. I eased into my chair, looked at the
clock and put the news on. I was definitely far from an
ideal condition to trade. What did it matter if I lost my
job and lost my rental incomes? I wasn’t going without a
fight. I wasn’t giving up lying down. Instead of letting
my circumstances get me down, I chose to see them as
part of a grand master plan that the universe had for me.
My perspective changed and I considered that these
circumstances were was just what I needed. My
mountain wasn’t going to move and now I had to start
climbing it. I practiced enough, now it was go time. I
would lock myself away from the outside world and
trade through this pandemic with no distractions.
I pulled the trigger and bought a 2 lot platinum
position. It quickly developed inside my upward train
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track channels. I exited one lot at the top of the channel,
to cash in some profits which would act as a cushion for
potential losses, and I started pyramiding. I bought 4
more lots when it touched the bottom line again, then
sold 2 of these at the top again, the price went back
down and stayed inside my channel, so I pyramided some
more. Now I bought 8 lots, and sold 4 lots at the next
top of the channel, and at the next touch of the bottom
channel line I bought 16 lots. Now I had a total of 4 legs
in my millipede, consisting of 1, 2, 4 and 16 lots,
totalling 23 lots, and I had taken some profits off the
table, which netted me around $28K already, as a result
from the lots that I kept buying and selling since the
beginning of my channel at $610, all the way to its
current top at $720. I had to keep pushing. I was doing
everything right, I was exhausted but I kept pushing. The
navy had equipped me mentally to endure this type of
pressure. I recalled when I was a cadet, and how I had
endured a hike of over 30 km, carrying a heavy rucksack
and a rifle, while sick. If I had survived through that, I
could do it again. Invigorated by this belief in my
abilities, I kept going and I put a stop loss below the
market’s last major area of doubt, which was the $700
support level, and I let the 23 lots, which remained, ride
towards one of two possible outcomes, they would
either lose $10K, which would come out of my $28K
realized profits, or they would make a killing. They were
already showing me an additional unrealized profit of
above $70K. My average entry price was around $650
and I’ve put a price alert at the $800, the $900 and the
$1,000 marks, the price kept going up and I left it alone.
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My confidence rose, I became more convinced that my
battle plan was working. I was long 23 platinum
contracts but not nearly large enough in these market
conditions. I felt like a kid in a candy store, I was
standing in Aladdin’s cave. There were treasures as far as
my eyes could see. I saw opportunities everywhere. I
wanted to get in on all of them, my only concern, was if
I would have enough bullets. If my capital was enough to
fully take advantage of these unique market conditions. I
had to press the offensive. I was starting to sweat, the
market had sold off and was beginning to come back.
The Federal Reserve had just announced the first
emergency rate cut since the 2008 financial crisis, it
meant a blanket support for the whole economy. The
low was in! Now I had relatively safe price points to set
my stop losses, and could start drawing my channels in
many different markets. Silver had climbed out of below
$12 per ounce and was going up, after it made a new
high, it then made a retracement coming down to $13.9.
I went long at $14 per ounce, bought 4 lots, set my
stops, done.
I moved onto copper, copper had crossed below the
$2 per pound support line, which was a major multiyear
support holding unbroken since 2016, copper jumped
right back up above $2, there was buying power and
demand there, so I bought 8 copper lots at $2.
Silver kept climbing inside my channel, and the price
jumped to $16, I sold half my position: 2 lots, cashing in
another $20K cushion. It dropped to my lower channel
line, and I went even longer. I added 8 lots at $14.5.
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Copper was acting in a similar fashion, I exited 4 lots
at $2.20, for another $20K profit, and added 8 more
when it retraced to $2.15.
Silver jumped to over $18 the following days, I exited
4 lots for a cool $70,000 profit, I was on top of my
game, back to swinging a big line again. Silver price went
sideways, making a shelf at around $17.5, then it made a
spring, spiking down to $17, it rejected the move down
and went straight back up. This meant that many buyers
had jumped on this drop and there was serious demand,
so I added another 16 lots below 17.5.
I looked at copper, it rose to $2.36, I exited 8 lots
with a $42K profit, then it dropped through my channel,
but didn’t trigger my stop loss below $2.15, so I was still
in. I drew a new line parallel to my channel from this
new low and added 32 more copper lots at $2.20. I was
long up to my eyeballs and I was going longer. I had been
trading for several days straight and was long 23
platinums at an average entry price of $650, 14 silvers at
$16.6 on average and 44 cobres at $2.17 on average.
Silver had crossed above the upper line of my channel
and was acting parabolic going above $20 per ounce. I
didn’t add more to that position as it was beginning to
show signs of exuberance, but I’d got in at a good
average price, so I was in a good position to ride out this
buying spree all the way to its climax.
Copper on the other hand, was rising consistently
inside my channel with no signs of overreactions to
either side, so I kept pyramiding it. I exited 16 lots at
$2.40 for another $80K profit. Then the equity markets
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dropped again, and the Federal Reserve countered by
cutting rates further down to 0% and the markets came
back up. Nasdaq was racing through the 7,000, 8,000,
and 9,000 marks in a matter of days. Fed was getting its
V shaped recovery imprinted on the chart as they
intended, the Plunge Protection Team was hard at work,
they were keeping the system afloat, they wouldn’t let
the music stop. I shook my head, smiled, as if I knew
exactly what they were doing, and then I added 64
copper lots at $2.30. I was successfully building my
equity millipede. I was applying all my rules without
emotion and everything I had learned about the markets
in my past was being condensed into my actions, and I
had a handsome profit to show for my hard work and
discipline. I started to get comfortable, I had cashed in
some profits and my open positions had all planned stop
losses so I started to think about taking a rest. I struggled
out of my chair and went into my bedroom to lie down.
I felt weak from the lack of sleep and from not having
any proper meals. I laid there sweating, thinking about
my positions, my head was very hot.
What the hell was I doing lying in bed? There
couldn’t be any rest until the battle was won. This
market was too good to miss. I didn’t know when I
would have such a market to trade in again, if ever. This
was my shot, it may be the only opportunity I got to
rebuild my life. In spite of my condition and how I felt, I
went back into my office and turned my setup back on:
laptop, news, headphones. Oil was dropping like an
unwanted baby from the hands of a teenage mother, who
11
just got dumped by her luckboy. There was just no love
for it. It kept dropping and dropping.
All I wanted to do was sleep because of the pain and
exhaustion that I was feeling, but not today. I could sleep
anytime. Great opportunities only come along a few
times a decade and I wasn’t going to miss this one. It was
still night outside and I had been trading all night, so I
took a shower, got some breakfast and was back at my
command post. I scanned the news for any updates.
Basically, oil producers were struggling to find storage
space for all their oil. The storage facilities at Cushing,
Oklahoma were at capacity. Economies were shutting
down, airplanes were grounded, demand for oil almost
vanished overnight. Large speculators, oil refineries and
other players, who were long, rushed to the exits. For
oil producers, it was cheaper to pay someone to take
their oil off their hands, than to shut down and restart
production, or even cheaper than paying storage costs.
So oil prices went negative. It was unbelievable, you
could buy crude oil at a negative price, which meant that
you were actually being paid to receive it, in case you
held it to delivery. This situation definitely wasn’t
sustainable for long, or oil producers could collapse. As
soon as oil went positive I didn’t hesitate and bought 8
lots at around $10 per barrel with a stop loss under zero,
to give it enough room to ride out any volatility. I was
risking $80K, but I thought that the odds of oil ever
going below zero again were almost non-existent. In the
eventuality of the market going berserk again, my stop
loss would be there to represent me, and safely take me
out of the way of any impending bearish stampede.
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I also bought 1 contract of RBOB Gasoline at around
$0.50 per gallon and another one of heating oil at around
$0.60 per gallon. I ringed the bottom on gasoline and
heating oil after crude oil turned positive, and figured: if
oil will not turn negative again then these two products
should only go up from here as well. People and
businesses still needed fuel to operate and I was able to
buy them at the same prices that they had been trading
back in the early 2000’s. What a great buying
opportunity. Looking back now, I should have bought
more, but in hindsight it’s easy to know what one should
have done. In that moment there was too much
fundamental uncertainty and I wasn’t comfortable
carrying a larger position in those two products.
While I was trading, secluded in my office, I heard a
knock on my door. I hadn’t had any contact with the
outside world for days. Some friends of mine, who I had
told that I contracted the coronavirus, came by to check
if I was doing alright. They brought some vegetables,
fruits, and healthy groceries with them. I must have
looked pretty sick, because in the days following they
continued showing up, sometimes with some warm
soup, sometimes just to check on me. It was so touching
to have these people care about me in this way that I felt
an immense gratitude for having them in my life. They
had no idea that this sick person was in that office
battling the markets and winning, nor did I tell them, it
was something I had to do on my own. Nobody could do
it for me. Those visits and the soup they brought lifted
my spirits and kept me going. I wanted to succeed not
only for myself, but also to have the means to repay all
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my blessings back to all those who cared for me, and to
also be able to help those who might have been through
similar lows as the ones I had been through. I had to keep
going, this was part of my mission now, my friends lifted
my spirits when I needed it most, and now I felt
impelled to do the same for them and to others.
A few days later I started to feel better, it had been
past the quarantine time and I had to get tested again
before I could go out in the world. So, I went to get
tested again, one day later I got the results: they came
back negative. I had overcome Covid-19, I had beaten
the coronavirus. I climbed out stronger from the rut I
was in. I was back on my path, I was making steady
progress towards my goals.
Every time I take on a tough challenge I recall that,
life altering, moment back from my early adult life. I
close my eyes and I get transported back to that day in
the rooftop at the Naval Academy, when I was being
soaked by the Sun and I can even feel that same warmth
again. I get filled with a rush of joy and a rising sense of
possibility. I’m reminded of the fleeting impermanence
of life that makes it so beautiful yet so pressing at the
same time. This makes me smile every time and helps
me put things into a more transcendent perspective:
death is inevitable, I accept that fact and nothing can
scare me, so I step into the moment and face whatever
challenge is before me.
The worst regret I could have was to live an unlived
life. To conquer fate, I had to advance and meet it. Not
only did I overcome the illness, I thrived through
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adversity and managed to grow my account. If I achieved
that while sick and not having my full strength or
abilities, what would I be able to I achieve now that I
could perform at the peak of my capacity? There was no
stopping me now.
Like Ed Seykota says “trade as big as a line as you can
handle”, and I could handle more. Success was my only
option. Life had beaten me to a pulp, and I had fallen
down more than once, this time it had knocked me even
further down, to a new rock bottom, but this wasn’t
going to keep me down. I thrived best when I was an
underdog trying to triumph against all odds. When
everything and everybody seemed against me and there
was only a sliver of hope left, that’s when I dug deep and
tapped into that strength that only I knew I had. This was
my moment, I couldn’t let it go. I would use this rock
bottom as a strong foundation to rebuild my life on. I
didn’t even look at my total profit & loss or even my
account balance again. I knew it must have been big but I
kept going and focused simply on trading well. I knew if
I kept doing all the right things and focused on trading
well, the money would follow.
Copper kept steady inside my train tracks channel,
and I exited 32 lots at $2.45 for another $120K profit.
The price retraced to $2.35, I hesitated for a second, and
then I pondered adding 128 lots. It’s hard for me to
describe how difficult it is to increase your position size
together with your equity growth. It’s a mental hurdle
that requires balls of steel. The natural human inclination
is to seek security and play it safe, to quit while ahead, to
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cash out and make sure those profits don’t turn to dust.
But I had done that in the past, for example when I
shorted bitcoin in 2018 and I left a lot of money on the
table, by not being brave enough to take full advantage of
that golden opportunity. I was in a bad spot emotionally
at that time and I wasn’t going to make the same mistake
again. Money had no emotional power over me this
time, it was just numbers, all I had to do was to continue
to manage my risk and follow my rules. So I quickly
shook off any doubts and decided if something was
profitable and made sense with 1 lot, then it made even
more sense with 100 lots, as long as I had the account
size to maintain the same level of relative risk. I
remembered Druckenmiller’s quote “When you have
tremendous conviction on a trade, you have to go for the
jugular”, so I pulled the trigger, and bought those 128
lots. There was huge liquidity. The market just gobbled
up my order. Maybe my order even attracted more
buyers and scared away some sellers because when the
price of copper approached the top of my channel again,
I put in a trailing stop as usual to exit half of my last
entry, but the price just stormed through the upper limit
of my channel up, and it went all the way to around
$2.70.
I was in the zone, I felt in tune with the markets once
again, I looked at the charts and ideas just poured out of
me, I traded by instinct, it was beautiful. Every trade I
made seemed to be perfect, everything I touched seemed
to turn into gold. Copper started coming down and my
trailing stop got touched. I had exited 64 lots with a
profit of more than $500K! That trade was so big that I
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had to take a peek at my balance, and there it was, my
realized and unrealized, profits were way over
$1,000,000! I was sweating, my hands shaking. I
couldn’t believe it, but it was indeed happening. I had
made it. I had become a millionaire for the second time
in my life. The markets had battered me so much in the
past that I wasn’t used to hitting home runs anymore. I
was in a similar situation as the one I once was in, and I
was facing the same emotions and internal challenges,
but I couldn’t let the situation,, this time, develop the
same way it did the first time. I couldn’t make the same
mistakes as in the past. Now I was better equipped
mentally to face it, I had to stay focused and disciplined.
I looked at my positions, the charts and the market
fundamentals, the tide was turning and I started getting
out of all my positions except copper, it was better to be
strong in one place than weak in many. I exited my 14
silver lots at prices between $20 and $25 per ounce, for
a staggering $400K profit, I exited my platinum lots at
around $950 per ounce, for a $345K profit and I had to
exit my 8 crude oil lots, as I had bought the June
contracts, so I couldn’t keep them any longer unless I
rolled them into the next maturity. I decided not to roll
my contracts and exited at around $33 per barrel,
netting me another $180K profit. I was killing it. I
couldn’t think of this as money but only as numbers, or
else I would risk emotions taking over my trading again.
Copper still had legs to go, the news were ripe with
social and political unrest in South America, namely in
Chile and Peru, with strike threats from mining unions
looming over the large copper mines. Adding to this,
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China was announcing that they were recovering from
the Covid-19 pandemic and reopening the country for
business. The fundamentals were bullish for copper, so
there was no reason to get out of my long position. The
upward trend was still on, I wanted to keep a large
position on and see how far I could ride this wave, but
my position was a bit too big for me to handle so I cut it
down to a “sleeping point”. I sold 24 lots at the $3 per
pound mark, for a cool $400K profit, and kept 100 lots.
Now I only had one position open, my good old friend:
copper. I had all my eggs in one basket and I was going
to watch it like a hawk. It’s much easier to watch a few
than many. Like Rocky Balboa says in his movies: “One
step at a time. One punch at a time. One round at a
time.”
You know, I never believed much in the whole over
diversified portfolio narrative, most of the time it’s just a
hedge against ignorance. It seems like a logical but false
argument for people who don’t know what they are
doing to convince themselves and others that they are
investing intelligently. This concept was actually what
gave birth to the whole parasitic passive investment asset
management industry, perpetuated by investment funds
that rely on people who keep putting their hard earned
cash into the same products religiously. The reality is
that diversification, through a passive investment
strategy, will, at best, replicate the market’s returns,
including negative returns on red years, and this type of
strategy will never beat the market, by definition. If you
know what you are doing, you don’t need to over
diversify. A simple hedge against calamity should suffice,
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such as a combination of geographic diversification,
retention of capital in a mobile form and keeping in
touch with developments of business and current affairs.
Old Rothschild’s simple diversification rules of holding
one third of one’s wealth in securities, another third in
real estate and a final third in jewels, still prove effective
today as it was back then. A simple portfolio sometimes
provides the best returns, if you know what you are
doing.
In my case, I knew that as long as equities didn’t
crash, copper would rise. So I was keeping a close eye on
equities and the fundamental drivers behind them. US
equities were being supported by the FED who didn’t
want a repeat of 2008, where they let Lehman Brothers
fail and almost grinded the entire system to a halt. So this
time, they would do everything in their power to steer
off a crash, the Plunge Prevention Team worked
diligently to this effect. They wouldn’t allow any large
bankruptcies. Even Hertz got bailed out, it was allowed
to issue more shares even after announcing it planned
filing for bankruptcy, which made it technically
worthless. The Fed started buying bonds in the market,
which included Hertz junk bonds. This caused shares to
soar in this bankrupt company, and in the process it
ballooned the portfolio’s value of whoever had holdings
in them, which were normally big institutional investors.
It was insane to even think of intervention of this sort
only a few years back. The free market appeared dead,
we were witnessing socialism for the rich and capitalism
for the poor in plain daylight. Prices didn’t make
19
fundamental sense anymore, but they didn’t need to, my
technical analysis was telling me the real story.
I had allowed my copper position to ride my train
tracks for a few months. Copper was not usually a hot
topic discussed in main stream media, it just wasn’t as
sexy as talking about investing in gold or in a hot tech
stock listed on the Nasdaq and therefore it wasn’t even a
blip on the radar for most investors. It was an underrated
product which made it less prone to market shenanigans
by participants, and I liked it that way. Copper usually
behaved in a more reliable fashion, so it kept moving,
steadily, upwards inside my train tracks. It was a
methodical trade, I would look for the last low, and
place my stop under it, and then would let the price
fluctuate and I would continue this procedure step by
step. My equity millipede was crawling up, I was trailing
it with my stops from a distance and if it turned around,
I would jump off its back. Nicolas Darvas, a self-made
millionaire trader, who developed his own system,
unhinged from Wall Street’s agenda, back in the 1950’s,
puts it beautifully with the following lines:
“I was like a scientist who, after years of work and
research, has successfully launched a rocket to the moon,
and now as he tracks it climbing higher and higher he has
a tremendous sense of achievement and also a strange
let-down feeling of inactivity. Like him, I was now on
the side-lines just keeping vigil while my positions
continued to climb steadily like well-made missiles. I
was also faced with the same dilemma I had known
before: Should I sell? Should I get out altogether? The
20
answer this time was easy. It was the old tried and
trusted answer: I did not have any reason to sell a rising
position. I would just continue to jog along with the
trend, trailing my stop-loss behind me. As the trend
increased, I would buy more. If the trend reversed? I
would, as ever, flee like a disturbed burglar.”
So when copper started breaking pattern in
September, I started exiting and I was out entirely when
the price broke below $2.89, it had been such a beautiful
trade. It had been my daily companion for week after
week which I nurtured it into near perfection in every
way. I pyramided it in a safe way, took profits off the
table at the right time to cushion my next position
increase, all the way to exhaustion of the move. I finally
looked at my profit & loss. My account balance stood at
$2,978,000! That copper trade made me a
multimillionaire, it had been, what traders call, an
Acapulco trade. My good old friend copper didn’t let me
down. A market so unloved by most traders, and yet it
had been so good to me. I felt that now I truly deserved
the title of Copper King. I was an undisputed expert on
the copper market and my profits showed it. I looked at
my account again and I couldn’t believe it, it really stood
at $2,978,000, I had made it. I was a self-made
multimillionaire! I double and triple checked it, I
verified if I had no open positions or orders. I took a
step away from my laptop, I fell to my knees and I
started crying. Everything I had fought for in my life was
crystalized in this very moment. Rays of Sun started
shining through my office window, I went out of my
office, and went on a walk with my dog, Zephyr, I was
21
crying all the way and feeling like I was floating. I was
still wondering if this was real.
I had not hesitated at the moment of truth, and had
remained strong and steady for as long as it was required
of me. My instincts had been sharp and on point. I went
to a place near some cliffs by the sea in Lagos called
Ponta da Piedade, and there I contemplated the ocean,
the sky and the Sun. Memories and thoughts about what
I had been through my whole life rushed through my
mind. I had been through so many trials and tribulations.
Three years ago I caught a glimpse of my dream, when I
had reached 1 million for the first time but I failed to
hold onto it. I didn’t give up though. I kept going. This
time I would hold on to it with both hands. When I
returned from my walk, I ran to my computer, to
double check if my balance was still there, if it hadn’t all
been in my imagination. And indeed it was really there,
my account still showed a balance of $2,987,000! This
was real. Sometimes the harder you fall the higher you
bounce. But I didn’t tell anyone about it yet. Unlike the
first time when I made 1 million and then lost it, this
time my motivation was not to impress others. I didn’t
have to prove anything to anyone other than myself. I
battled the markets through the pandemic and took my
pound of flesh out of them by becoming a
multimillionaire, but the black swan was a wild beast and
it sure had taken its toll on me. As a result of my battle, I
now had a large stack. I could afford to stay out of the
markets and enjoy my gains. I could wait for the right
opportunity to deploy my capital again and put it at work
for me. The pressure was off. I set aside 2 million for
22
myself and left the remaining 900K in my trading
account sitting, waiting until I saw another black swan or
to-good-to-miss trading opportunity to deploy them.
Strangely, I didn’t have to wait long. Soon enough I
saw bitcoin acting in an interesting way. I knew that
fundamentally bitcoin had many flaws. There was no
widespread adoption of the technology as a payment
solution, the technology wasn’t efficient, and not even
fully anonymous. For example, there would be a record
of when and how a person cashed out their funds, unless
they used a mule account, but then again there would be
a weak link: the mule itself. In spite of all these
shortcomings it was a great tool to inspire the speculative
imagination of crowds. The fact that central banks’
money printers were pumping out cash in huge
quantities, or as the slang of the moment went: “money
printers are going brrrrrrrr”, created a real collective
opinion that bitcoin was analogous to digital gold. The
main argument for this was that fiat currencies were
going to become worthless because of the huge
quantities of newly minted money being pumped into
the system. Bitcoin was considered, by many, a hedge
against impending hyperinflation and against an
unavoidable collapse of the financial system. Of course,
this reasoning was more than flawed, because if the
system collapsed entirely, there would be social unrest
and chaos on such a scale, that it would be too naive to
believe that a currency system, which relied on a
sophisticated electronic infrastructure, could endure
such a chaos or be of any practical use under those
circumstances.
23
I asked myself the following question: if the world
was going to hell, would I prefer to have all my life
savings and buying power condensed in a physical,
portable, compact and easily fungible asset which I had
access to at all times, or would I prefer to have it all
tucked away, out of my reach and converted into
nothing but information in a computer system? We
didn’t even know if bitcoin would retain its buying
power, or if the infrastructure it was built on would
continue to be accessible under a financial doomsday,
post-apocalyptic, scenario. Anyway, if bitcoin ever got
traction in such a way that it threatened the current
system of banking, payments or currencies, then it could
easily be shut down by using the many tools that central
banks and governments had at their disposal, for
example by making it illegal and enforcing that law
through their monopoly on violence.
Nonetheless, the market was showing signs of
euphoria again, and this time it was stronger than it had
been back in 2018. Back then the bitcoin rise had been
fuelled mostly by retail driven mania into a bubble. Now
there was some degree of institutional adoption, who
started to see it as a possible and reliable hedge against
fiat currency devaluation. So this time it was an entirely
different type of move, as it was based on different
underlying drivers. Bitcoin had dropped to $4,000 in
March, went to $12,000 in August and now was
consolidating below the $10,000 mark. There was
buying power behind it, the hodler cult was holding
blindly and the institutional adoption was creating
24
demand for a limited available supply. The positive
feedback loop was in effect, and creating a bullish mood.
The markets are not supposed to have moods and yet
they do, and you can make a lot of money once you can
gauge these moods with some degree of accuracy. I saw
an opportunity to go long this time, so I bought first just
1 bitcoin futures contract. This exploratory position gave
me, for lack of a better word, a “feel” for the price
movements and forced me to pay more attention to the
development of the market. Quickly enough, I added 4
more bitcoin contracts. Each future contract has a size of
5 bitcoins, so I bought 25 bitcoins at an average entry
price of $10,000 and I set my stop loss at $8,900. I was
going to let this position ride out either towards another
speculative buying spree or dwindle and touch my stop
loss.
Then I sat back, there was nothing else for me to do. I
didn’t see any other good opportunities in the markets
beside that one, so I took some time off the markets,
kept quiet about my winnings, and went on with my life
as if nothing had happened. It had been a long journey
and I felt I had acquired, hard earned, market wisdom,
which was another word for a combination of
knowledge, intuition and experience.
People often underestimate the time it takes to
succeed as a trader. They think they will make it
overnight with a get-rich-quick system, but the truth is
things don’t happen overnight. Gaining proficiency is the
same in trading as in any other profession: it requires
experience, and experience takes time. Only then will
25
you acquire the wisdom to know how to plunder the
markets at will. But beware what you wish for, I hope
my story shows the Damocles Sword hanging above the
pursuit of this endeavour. It will take its toll on you and
you must be prepared to make the personal investment
required to make your dreams a reality, either in this
venture or any other you set your heart to.
Whichever path you take, it might be useful to
understand some of the basic premises and caveats which
serve as a foundation upon which modern economic
dynamics are based. If you don’t know the rules of the
game, how can you play it well? I realized that these
topics are often not addressed in detail over mainstream
sources of information, which try to limit to a very strict
spectrum the acceptable topics of discussion and
opinions, but then they allow a very lively debate within
that acceptable spectrum. This creates a false sense of
freedom of speech and is a clever way to manufacture
consent and keep people passive, obedient, apathetic and
diverted towards entertainment, consumerism and only
focused on acceptable but irrelevant matters, conflicts or
issues. The key is to look beyond and try to understand
the underlying dynamics of our social and economic
system. Only then will you be able to grasp the
fundamental drivers, that define market behaviours, and
be able to better read what the markets are telling you.
You will better understand those basic economic
premises by looking at history, because even though,
history does not repeat itself, it rhymes. You should also
be aware that history can change, it does get edited.
26
Even though the past can´t be changed, it can, in fact, be
interpreted under a different light, and therefore the
same circumstances, the same event, might lead to a
different interpretation which may cause history to be
rewritten, and therefore changed.
**
I hope you enjoyed this snippet of my story.

Head to tradingpros.club to see what else I have
available for you
27
Disclaimer
The information contained in this book is provided to

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is believed to be drawn from reliable sources but cannot
be guaranteed. The author makes no representation as to
the completeness, reliability, accuracy, suitability,
validity or timeliness of any information. The author
assumes no responsibility or liability for any errors or
omissions in the content of this book, or for any actions
taken in reliance thereon. All information contained in
this book is provided on an "as is" basis, with no
warranties, and confers no rights. All views expressed in
this book are solely the author’s opinions, and do not
reflect the opinion or views of any other person or
entity. These views may be subject to change or revision
at any time.
The content of this book should not construe any such
information or other material as legal, tax, investment,
financial, or other advice. Nothing contained in this book
constitutes a solicitation, recommendation,
endorsement, or offer of any kind, including to buy or
sell any securities or other financial instruments in any
jurisdiction in which such solicitation or offer would be
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All content in this book is information of a general
nature and does not address the circumstances of any
particular individual or entity. Nothing in the book
constitutes professional or financial advice, nor does any
28
information in the book constitute a comprehensive or
complete statement of the matters discussed or the law
relating thereto. You alone assume the sole responsibility
of evaluating the merits and risks associated with the use
of any information or other content in the book before
making any decisions based on such information or other
content.
Trading entails significant risks of loss which must be
understood prior to trading and may not be appropriate
for all investors. Any ideas, strategies and investment
decisions made by readers through the use of such
content is solely based on the readers independent
analysis taking into consideration their own personal and
financial circumstances, investment objectives, and risk
tolerance. If you decide to invest real money, all trading
decisions are your own and a financial professional
should be consulted.
You should not trade with money you can't afford to
lose. No representation is being made that any account
will or is likely to achieve profits or losses similar to
those discussed. Past performance is not necessarily
indicative of future results. Individual performance
depends upon each person’s unique skills, time
commitment, and effort. Testimonials may not have
been independently verified by the author. Results may
not be typical and individual results may vary. There are
no guarantees of profit and losses may exceed profits and
even your account balance. You should not invest in the
financial markets or businesses unless you are prepared
to sustain a total loss equal or greater than the money
29
you have invested. This book does not provide any
investment solutions but the author may work in
affiliation with other providers who may do so on a
referral basis. The author is not responsible for any
solutions presented by third parties, and due diligence
must be done when accessing any external resources and
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Under no circumstance shall the author, its affiliates,
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or information in this book as a basis for making any
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action you take upon the information contained in this
book is strictly at your own risk.
This book is based, in part, upon actual events and is
inspired in the life of the author. However, numerous of
the characters, incidents, locations, timelines and legal
entities portrayed and the names used herein are
fictitious or have been changed for dramatic purposes.
With respect to such characters, incidents, locations,
timelines and legal entities, any similarity or
resemblances to the name, attributes, history or actual
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any actual event or location, or to any existing legal
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Be warned that some of the information contained in
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30
prejudiced, stereotyped or even criminal by some people
in some contexts. Efforts were made to limit potentially
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inclination, national origin and cultural or social
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How I traded through a black

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Want to start winning in the markets?

About Jon Silver

“You must learn to be still in the midst of activity

After that successful trade, I felt I was ready for a

I hope you enjoyed this snippet of my story.

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