“I didn’t want to mess up my first trade, so I programmed a robot right away,” says Fintokei Star Vasek

From Excel sheets to a sophisticated automated trading system

Hi Vašek, welcome among Fintokei Stars, the best traders of Fintokei!

Hi, thanks a lot for the invitation!

Do you remember the initial impulse that got you into trading?

Yeah, we’ve got the same blood in our veins – it was my brother. 😀 He started with trading before me, experimenting with various strategies. Eventually, he came up with an idea that could work and was testing it using complex Excel sheets to find the best settings.

Okay, I’ll admit we haven’t heard that one before. Are you saying you saw a complicated Excel sheet and thought: “Yeah, I’ll be a trader”?

No, not exactly. 😀 The thing is, I can program and I enjoy working with data. So I saw this as a nice challenge. I offered to help him not just with analysis but also to use my own program to generate millions of combinations and then pick the best ones together.

So right from the start you were basically playing with automated trading systems?

Exactly. Together with my brother, we started developing a whole set of tools for analyzing historical data and forecasting strategies. We still use them today. They help us find strategies that fit our risk appetite – I usually risk more than him. 😀

And how did it go?

It was probably a very different experience compared to most traders who go through standard trading education. We didn’t have to dive deep into fundamentals. Instead, we focused on simulating trades as realistically as possible – understanding spreads, slippage, too-quick trends, etc.

We mostly trade intraday and are interested in trend prediction.

Somehow, we managed. Within a few days, we executed our first trade using the initial version of our calculations, which from today’s perspective was pretty naive. But we kept improving the system and its predictions.

Do you remember what trade it was?

I do, very well! It was actually quite funny. After all the time I spent analyzing data, I realized I didn’t know how to use MT4 properly. 😀

And since I was afraid of messing up things like stop loss, take profit, and position size, I took a different approach. Within a few hours, I learned MQL4 – the language MT4 uses – and wrote my own Expert Advisor to handle it.

FREE E-book: How to start with prop trading

Discover the secret to the discipline that turns everyday people into well-paid pro traders. Learn how prop trading works – and how you can start your own journey.

That’s insane! 😀 Facing a problem and coding a solution. When did this strategy start working for you?

A key moment was realizing that our strategy, initially built for a max of two trades a day, could easily be scaled up. Thanks to computing power, we could run many more trades throughout the day that balanced each other’s losses. That turned the big ups and downs into a steadier upward line.

The second breakthrough was definitely Fintokei. It gave me the chance to test more strategies without being limited by my own capital and trade count.

So do you even need traditional trading knowledge for this? Like studying fundamentals or following other traders?

Not really. Our strategy doesn’t require fundamental analysis or news monitoring. I’ll admit though, Trump did shake up our numbers a bit. 😀

I sometimes browse Reddit for other traders’ success stories and watch some Fintokei videos.

Of course, I have an economics background, so I already knew market principles and terminology. I wasn’t starting from scratch.

A notebook full of MetaTraders and a DAX-optimized strategy

So what draws you to trading personally?

For me, trading is more of a hobby alongside my business. I’m the founder of Localazy, a startup backed by investors, so I’m used to risk, investments, and ambition. 😀 Trading is a way for me to relax – another risky and adrenaline-filled activity.

How would you describe your trading style? Can you expand a bit on the technical side?

Basically, I run automated intraday trades lasting from a few minutes to a few hours. We built a whole range of tools for this:

• An analytical app that scans historical charts years back, generates millions of parameter combinations, and lets us pick the best ones.
• An online service that manages those combinations, clusters them into strategies, optimizes position sizes, and distributes settings to connected MetaTraders.
• And finally, Expert Advisors in MetaTrader that talk to the online service, open and close trades.

I’ve got a small PC running several MetaTraders side by side. Each is paired with its online counterpart that feeds it the right parameters.

Unleash your trading potential on Fintokei accounts too!

Real Challenge Free Trial

Thanks for breaking it down for us. At Fintokei we support traders using robots, and it’s great to see it actually works! 😊 Now let’s talk about risk management.

Since we know all our trades for the day in advance – with their TPs, SLs, and exact probabilities – we can manage lot sizes very precisely. That fits nicely with Fintokei’s daily and overall limits. We can size positions to stay safely within them, even in worst-case scenarios.

And which instruments does this work best for?

Currently, I trade exclusively DAX – that’s where our strategy is best optimized. We tried CAC, FTSE, and ASX, but ran into the limits of our calculations back then. Looking ahead, I’d like to add more instruments – maybe gold.

Trading as a less stressful hobby

You said your brother got you into trading. Was he also the one who told you about Fintokei?

Yes, exactly. He heard about Fintokei from his colleague, who’s been trading successfully with you for a while. I still trade my own capital, but Fintokei opened up far greater opportunities to test new trade types.

And how did you do with us?

At first, I burned through two accounts while ironing out technical issues. But then came my first payout – that was both a victory and a confirmation that I’d come a long way and things were finally working.

What about stress – as both a trader and CEO of a tech startup? 😀

Sometimes it’s tough, sometimes it’s frustrating. But honestly, I try not to watch my automated trades during the day. I focus on longer-term overviews, which are more stable. Plus, my actual job brings far more stress, so trading stress fades in comparison. 😀

So losses don’t really affect you?

I wouldn’t say that. But compared to my work, I’m less sensitive to them. I trust the statistics and probabilities we’ve calculated. Sure, losses always sting, but I don’t dwell on them too much.

It’s much easier now, especially with a bigger cushion in my own capital. In the early weeks, I faced technical bugs in my system and lost about 25% of my personal money – that wasn’t fun.

How much time do you spend trading daily?

Not much. In the morning, I just check that all systems are running, grab a coffee, and head to work. During the day, I avoid watching trades. In the evening, I check the results.

Weekends are more important. That’s when I sometimes spend a few hours reviewing strategies or tools. Not every weekend, but it’s a hobby I really enjoy.

Unleash your trading potential on Fintokei accounts too!

Real Challenge Free Trial