Roney Albert "Frajola"

Roney Albert was already on the floor of the BM&F (now B3) when Brazilian futures trading still happened by shouting. Forty-four years later he's the rare current-day public trader-educator whose teaching credibility comes from a career that pre-dates electronic execution. Two long-running projects sit on top of that history: Economy Class, and Oficina do Trader — pedagogy-first brands oriented toward currencies, derivatives, and the broader fixed-income / variable-income mix that Brazilian retail traders actually have to navigate.

The public surface today is YouTube and podcast-heavy: the YouTube channel under his own name plus the Os Donos do Dólar podcast give him a long-form medium for the kind of order-flow, scalping, and pit-floor mechanics that don't carry well in short clips. The own-voice line that titles one of the Trader Talks Cortes — "O mercado me ensinou o que eu sei", "the market taught me what I know" — is also the line that best captures the brand: practitioner, not theorist.

For Copa BTG Trader 2025 he was not on the leaderboard. He was inside the BTG editorial cycle as a Trader Talks guest — episode #2 in the long-form podcast and episode #105 during the October 2025 final cycle — and his role on the broadcast cycle was the commentator / mentor side, not the competitor pool. The page on this site reflects that explicitly: he's a Copa orbit figure, not a Copa finalist.

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Conducted by Vitalii Kaminskyi · May 2026 · Portuguese, translated to English. Frajola's voice preserved: signature phrasings like "Mr. Vegas", "museum piece", and "the market is sovereign" left intact.

You were on the BM&F floor when the open-outcry era began to wind down. What was the exact moment you realized electronic trading was inevitable — and what made you migrate ahead of the others?

The exact moment was when I noticed the price started moving faster on the screen than in the shouting, and banks and brokerages began cutting headcount on the floor — many people moved to internal desks and others were let go.

On the open-outcry floor, the good operator had presence, ear, body-language reading, flow-reading street smarts, cold blood — and they knew what they were doing and had excellent memory. You'd look at the pit and see who was actually buying, who was actually selling or short, who was bluffing, and who was in despair, especially the ones holding positions against the market.

But when the electronic side started gaining speed, it became clear that world wasn't going to ask permission before ending — same as in many other countries.

Whoever thought electronic trading was a fad died professionally hugging nostalgia. They didn't professionalize, didn't retrain, didn't study, stayed frozen in time.

I migrated early — but I was forced to, and also because I was never in love with the format. I was in love with the market. And the market has no pity for nostalgia. So I migrated to electronic. Electronic markets change the platform, the screen, the code, the way orders execute, but they keep asking the same question: do you know how to read price, risk, and flow — or do you just know how to repeat old habits?

A lot of people confused experience with immunity. Experience helps, but attachment kills.

I understood early that the operator who didn't learn the screen, the technology, the speed, and electronic execution would become a museum piece. In my case, even being in the B3 Museum carries a symbolic weight: I lived that history, but I didn't stay locked inside it.

You said in Trader Talks: "The market taught me what I know." The market is famous for being an expensive teacher. What's the lesson you wish you'd learned cheaper?

The most expensive lesson was understanding that being right isn't enough. That the market is math, geopolitics, macroeconomics, and microeconomics.

That's the punch every operator takes a long time to accept. You can be right on the thesis, right on the fundamentals, right on the macro read, right on the final direction — and still lose money if you're wrong on the size, the timing, or the leverage.

The market doesn't pay ego. The market pays execution.

I wish I'd learned cheaper that risk comes before opinion. The new operator thinks they need to predict the market. Nonsense. First they need to survive the market — because the market is sovereign and doesn't forgive anyone who doesn't know what they're doing.

A good thesis with too much size turns into tragedy. Conviction without a stop turns into stubbornness. And stubbornness in the market is just stupidity dressed up as courage.

The market taught me the hard way that the professional isn't the one who hits more headlines. The professional is the one who knows how much they can lose before pressing the button.

That distinction separates the operator from the gambler. As I say — the gambler is Mr. Vegas!!

I learned the financial markets from the Old School folks — the foxes of the financial market — and then I went to learn derivatives in New York and Chicago in the 1980s.

At Copa BTG 2025 you were inside the editorial cycle as a Trader Talks guest. What did you see in there that the public coverage didn't transmit?

Public coverage shows the spectacle: ranking, performance, competition, the cuts, the strong phrases, the result.

What I saw from the inside was process.

There it becomes clear who operates with method and who operates with adrenaline. From outside, the public sees only the scoreboard. From inside, you notice the brutal difference between the operator with a plan, risk-reading, repertoire, and discipline — and the guy who's just trying to land one big shot in desperation, when the market doesn't tolerate mistakes.

And there's something the public coverage can't fully transmit: the emotional weighs as much as the technique. Sometimes more.

When you put an operator under exposure, competition, comparison, and pressure, the truth shows up. The guy who looks like a genius staring at a still chart often falls apart when money, ranking, and an audience are all watching.

Live market strips everyone's makeup off.

What stood out most to me was this: the new generation has tools we didn't have, but they still trip on the same old mistakes — overconfidence, leverage, no plan, no knowledge of the asset, no economic calendar, and the childish need to prove they're right.

The platform changed. The aesthetic changed. The speed changed.

But vanity is still a trader-grinding machine.

The worst part is that this new crowd doesn't like to study. They want a miracle setup, ready-made, to get rich quick.

Forty-four years in markets. What changed more — the market, or the Brazilian trader?

Both changed. But the market changed structurally; the Brazilian trader changed unevenly. And with too much raw lack of knowledge.

The market got faster, more electronic, more global, more algorithmic, and much less tolerant of amateurism. Before, information was scarce. Today, information is plentiful. The problem stopped being access and became filtering.

In the old days the operator fought to get data. Today he drowns in bad data, empty opinion, influencers selling miracles, and social-media traders confusing luck with competence.

The Brazilian trader improved on tools but not necessarily on maturity.

More platform, more chart, more indicator, more course, more bot, more screen. But many people still lack the basics: risk management, context reading, sizing, discipline, and humility before the market.

The difference is cruel: on the old floor, the market took your money in front of everyone. Today it takes it in silence, through the screen, and the guy still posts a motivational quote afterward.

So the market changed more in technology. But the Brazilian trader still needs to change more in mindset — to study, to know the assets deeply, to know what moves them, and what influence the economic calendar exerts.

Because after 44 years, the essence is the same: the market doesn't forgive vanity, doesn't respect résumés, and doesn't care about your opinion.

It only respects price, risk, and survival.

There's a phrase I picked up on Wall Street: "the market wants the ones who don't know how to operate, because the ones who do already belong to it."