Jônata Cavalcante

I discovered financial markets in 2016 when I started working at Sicredi credit cooperative. I worked there as a Relationship Manager for more than five years, and during that time, while offering investment products to cooperative members, I began expanding my knowledge into derivatives, equities, and crypto assets. After leaving the cooperative I worked as a union manager and continued speculating in the markets. After building a strong track record in both roles, the opportunity came to run for city councillor. I was elected with the second-highest vote count in my municipality. Today I serve as a councillor and, because of the schedule flexibility that brings, I trade in parallel.

Today I dedicate myself primarily to my councillor mandate, but I balance my schedule and execute trades during B3 market hours and at other times in forex and crypto. Right now I am focused on study and operating in a simulator, building enough capital to stay in the market longer. I follow the markets every day: derivatives, equities, commodities, especially Boi Gordo, Coffee, and Corn, the main agricultural products in my region. The daily practice of risk analysis as a trader makes me better at reading the political and economic landscape of my municipality. I can capture market sentiment more easily when the subject is politics, and I plan my actions in a way that connects me more quickly and efficiently to what the population actually needs.

Being a trader in a small interior city is isolating. There are almost no other people here who work in financial markets. Because so few people understand what a trader does, many confuse it with gambling, and those who have tried and lost money prefer not to talk about it at all. Living in the interior makes it harder to access information and to be close to people who actually live from the markets. Everything I have learned until now I found by persisting and searching on my own: YouTube, social media, the internet. I never bought a course or paid for mentoring. I chose the path of mistakes and corrections and decided to become a professional on my own terms. Trading from the interior has the advantage of operating from a calm place, living a lighter life without the rush of a big city, and that can positively influence your decision-making. The disadvantage is not having access to other traders or environments that breathe the same trading mindset.

When I decided to enter Copa BTG Trader, I felt I needed to put to the test the time I had invested studying the markets, and also to test my own operational system, which I developed over recent years. It was a great opportunity to compete in a major tournament for traders from around the world. I needed to know whether my approach was financially viable. And the prize of one million reais was also one of the main factors.

Because my children are still very young, Nicollas is six and Nadine is four, they cannot yet understand my role as a trader. They only know me as their father the city councillor. But I intend to introduce them to this world soon. In the beginning, trading distanced me from them. I became so focused on studying that on losing days, even in the simulator, it would change my mood and how I was with my family. Today, after studying trading psychology and behavioural patterns, I am able to control my instincts, anxiety, and nerves much better. Every day I can see that I am evolving, towards making this a profession that will truly help me and my family. I will continue in politics, helping the population within my role, but I also have plans for the financial markets.