Transcription
So many traders think their problem comes from a lack of information, a lack of a good strategy, a good method to follow, a good set-up, or good training. And indeed, that's often the case. But for a large majority, the truth is much more subtle. That is to say, two traders can have exactly the same data, the same information, and yet have completely different results. But the question is, why? And to answer this question, there's none other than Mel, whom you probably discovered a few months ago in a video interview where I decided to invite Melama. Melève/trader, a member of the Marc Trader Accelerator who has achieved very good results, who now lives fully from his trading, and who, at the time, helped all members of the Macro Trader Accelerator completely for free. That was precisely why I wanted to meet him. Again, I invite you to check out the video that's showing right here. But so today, Mel has decided to return to Panama for his personal pleasure, but especially to share with you why 80% of traders fail even when they have good information.
So, in my opinion, the first point that causes 80% of traders to lose despite having access to good information is the execution of the plan. Because you can have an excellent plan, have all your confirmations, but if you're not able to execute it correctly and be structured about it, it will naturally be difficult for you to achieve tangible results in the long term. It's Mike Tyson who always said, "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face." Everyone has a plan until the day you get hit. And the thing is, in trading, the punch is inevitable. At some point, you're going to take it. So indeed, there's the execution of the plan. Exactly.
And so, when I talk about the execution of the plan, among other things that falter are emotional entries and exits. So you can have all your confirmations, you can have everything in order. If you enter a trade emotionally and you are emotional, and you also exit emotionally, well, you'll tend to take more risk. You'll tend to exit at the wrong time, giving profits back to the market, and precisely, that's one of the points that causes you to be a loser in the markets despite having a good plan. Well, because in fact, the whole planning aspect is one thing, but it's true that the execution part is really 2% of the work, but it's the 2% that can cause complete ruin. It's like with a gun, you have all the preparation of the weapon and so on. The moment you pull the trigger in a job like a soldier's, it represents 1% of the thing. Except that this 1% is the most important damn percent. Yes, it's fatal. It's fatal if you do anything, it's fatal.
So that's why, and generally speaking, if you are a very impulsive person, you will tend to have a lot of confirmations for your trade. You'll tend to have quite a few things in your favor, and so you'll say, "Okay, it's good, you can enter a position because there are many things in your favor," but you won't see the small situation or the little thing that will cause your trade to be not good or that can invalidate your trade. So you'll tend to be completely blinded by all the research you've done and tell yourself, "No, I don't want to have worked for nothing. I didn't do all this research for nothing." So you enter a position and you ignore it voluntarily.
So, so you mean that people are blinded by the number of confirmations they have and therefore ignore, I want to say voluntarily or involuntarily, what goes against this potential scenario because they absolutely want to take the trade? Exactly. So they are a bit biased by all the confirmations they have and they don't want to admit that, well, there's something a bit fishy about their trade. And so you have to be able to recognize these situations and not take the position when, well, there's something that's not in your favor.
If we take the example of a woman where everyone could relate, it would be a bit like having a very pretty girlfriend with whom there have been certain issues because she went into your safe and stole your cash. That's crazy. That should really be disqualifying, but you'll say, "Yes, but she comes from a good family. Yes, but she's extremely attractive. Yes, but I feel good with her. Yes, but yes, but yes, but," and the big elephant in the room, the elephant in the room, is that the girl, she stole from your safe. That's when you're like this, right? Exactly. Well, it's exactly the same situation. Many might be able to relate to this. And so, in short, what I mean by all this is that the problem for some traders is not necessarily discipline, but the ability to respect their plan and to respect all their confirmations before entering a position.
Now, I think another reason why traders, despite having good information, don't achieve the results they want, is what could be called the psychological blind spot. That is to say, if psychologically, or in your personal life, or in your trading, etc., you have, in short, patterns, we often talk about patterns in trading, but a pattern is just a visualization of crazy movements because people tend to think in the same way. But what I mean is that these patterns will also be recognizable in people, and so you'll have people, for example, who will have a certain pattern in their life which is self-sabotage, they sabotage themselves completely, but they don't realize it themselves. And from an external point of view, it's always very easy to say, "But why is this guy doing that?" But because you, in fact, you are not, you don't have the emotional baggage that this guy has. So from an external point of view, it's very easy to say, but when you're in it, it's much more complicated. And so you have traders who will have precisely this psychological blind spot where they will have a certain bias that will ruin them, except that they don't have, let's say, the ability to take a step back, to gain perspective, and to realize this situation. And for this kind of person, you see, you really need a third party to come and look at it to make them realize it. Yes, exactly.
And we often say that it's always easier to advise others, but it's much harder to apply the advice to oneself because, as you said, there's all this emotional baggage that we associate with our decisions, which makes it much harder for us to self-analyze and draw coherent conclusions. That's right. And even when it might seem obvious, we say, "No, but the guy will realize it." No, because humans are always wired to rationalize behavior. So they will always rationalize what they have just done. And so, for them, it doesn't seem so crazy, not so obvious as it does to someone who is completely external. And this, precisely, can translate into the fact of overtrading. The guy overtrades, let's say, one might think it's black and white, it's obvious that the guy overtrades because if we look at his plan, but he will always rationalize it. He'll tell you, "No, but it's because there was this, there was that." And sometimes they just need this external thing, this third party, to look and say precisely what's wrong. And so it's true that I think that for some, not having an external perspective keeps them trapped in their own bubble, in their own mental perception. And this, even if they have the right information, and again, it's not the case for everyone, but there's a small portion of people who have more difficulty than others in having this truly external, truly detached self-analysis, and this will depend on each person's personality, each person's past experiences. Everyone is different. Yes.
So, I completely agree with what Elliot just said. And another point that, in my opinion, will also play a role is the fact of being alone. So you just said it, people have a lot of trouble self-analyzing, truly understanding their patterns. And precisely, being alone will make it much harder for them, once again, to self-analyze because they are all alone. There's no third party, as you say, who will come from above to look at what they're doing, to try to get them out of all this. And so, precisely, if you are alone and you are learning in your trading, you will naturally make mistakes, you will naturally deviate a bit from your plan, which is something normal, so to speak, when you're starting out. But precisely, you will feel like you are progressing, which is not necessarily true if you are making the wrong mistakes. Because how will you be able, as a trader, and being alone, and especially being a beginner, how will you be able to recognize the good mistakes from the bad mistakes? Because you can make a lot of mistakes, but if they are bad, well, you won't really progress, or you might even regress.
And you see, I know from the number of people I've accompanied, I have many traders who had, I don't know, like 4 years of experience. So you think, well, the guy has a certain level, but in fact, sometimes these are people who are even more complicated, so to speak, to accompany and help because they have accumulated a baggage, an experience that is enormous, but which is not necessarily good. So in fact, apart from having accumulated bad habits, that's pretty much all they've done. Whereas you might say, "The guy has 4 years of trading experience, so he's better." And sometimes someone who starts from scratch is easier to accompany because, well, they won't have accumulated precisely these bad habits that now need to be eliminated. Exactly. Exactly. That's it. It's really about deconstructing all the bad habits. Precisely, in the case where someone has several years of experience, it will really be necessary to deconstruct all the bad habits they have accumulated over the years to establish new ones. So it's sure that it's much more complicated, and precisely as you said, that's exactly my point. You've built on it. If you've been in the markets for 4 years but have no results, and you were alone, and you were making mistakes, and you felt like you were progressing, what I said just before is precisely the fact of having a third party who will succeed in guiding you on the right path and putting you a bit on the right track. Yes.
No, and I also think, but be careful precisely with this third party because from experience too, often some trading groups where, in short, you'll have beginners who will go and help other beginners. And while it's very kind, it often doesn't come from a bad place, but in fact, it's people who have no results helping other people who have no results. And unfortunately, in fact, they feel like they are developing, acquiring experience, acquiring information, and getting closer to the goal, and so on, when in reality, you're just going in circles, developing bad habits, and wasting your time, clearly. You have to be able to filter the advice you receive and not listen to just anyone's advice. Because, as you just said, if someone is a beginner, they don't necessarily have the best advice to offer you, even if it comes from a very honest and very clean place.
And precisely, while we're discussing, another point comes to mind, which is about the mistakes you can make if you don't know if it's a good mistake or not. We can think, for example, of stop losses, where in trading, losses are something totally normal, it's something that's part of the game. But precisely, you have to know how to differentiate good losses from bad losses. And again, if you take bad trades and you incur bad losses, but you have no one to guide you on how good this trade was, how good this loss was, well, you will continue to keep these bad habits, take these bad losses, and you will never progress. This is, in fact, in trading, one of the rare professions where taking a hit, taking a loss, is not necessarily bad. I mean, it's part of the game. But you have certain losses that are bad, on the other hand, because you shouldn't have taken them. Exactly. And it's true that being able to tell the difference requires a certain skill or a certain experience that you don't necessarily have at the beginning. Exactly.
And even the reverse, you can take a gain, so make money, and take a bad trade, but if you take this trade 100 times, you're not profitable. That's it. So in fact, that's what's hard in trading, is that the result is not necessarily an indicator of good practices. The short-term result, exactly, is not necessarily an indicator that you're doing the right things or not. So that's what's hard in trading too. Here, here, here, I could very well take a loss on a news event because my stop was poorly placed or whatever, and then immediately re-enter the position with another stop. It's not at all thought out. It's clearly an emotional decision. This is called revenge trading. You trade to get revenge, and so I take this trade completely emotionally, completely for revenge, and this one works out, and I make 3R, and I say, "Ah, well, that's good, I'm good." No, the reality is that if I truly analyze the situation, it's a shitty trade that I just took, that I just executed, and I was extremely lucky that it turned into a profit. But again, that's in the short term. In the short term, luck is there. But now, if I were to take emotional revenge trades every time, every time I take a loss, oh dear, that becomes extremely dangerous. But so, as you said, a bad trade can be winning, and a good trade can be... Exactly.
And so, what I mean by all this is that having structured feedback will just be an accelerator because instead of it taking you years, it might take you a year, a few months to a year. And if we take the example of a sports coach, when you go to the gym and there's a coach waiting for you, well, naturally, you'll do all your workouts, you'll go because you won't want to let your coach down and look like an idiot. So not only will it allow you to accelerate your process, but it will make you much more disciplined because precisely, you'll have someone there to give you feedback and to somewhat monitor what you're doing. So you won't want to look like an idiot in front of him. Yes.
No, it's true that the sports coach example is good, because indeed, the sports coach won't make you get abs in a week instead of a year. That will always be due to your own work. However, the fact that you have a sports coach will make you go to the gym, it will make it so that when you're at the gym, the probability of you getting injured is much lower because the moment you start making a wrong move or your posture isn't good, you immediately have the coach saying, "Listen, that's not good." Yes, yes. Unlike if you were alone and you were lifting crazy weights and you started pulling. So, yes, indeed, no.
And what's funny about this sports coach analogy is that in recent months, we've tested something internally with several traders who were precisely interested in being coached, but really with this one-on-one coaching aspect, because they felt that they were missing something, let's say, to reach the next level. And as I often say, it's generally not the information that's the problem, it's very simple to give, so to speak, but it's more the application of all this information in a real market and having someone behind you to, well, be a bit of a professor, give you a whack when things aren't going well, ensure that your posture is good so that the guy doesn't break his back, and, well, ensure that the guy, if he does his job, simply achieves the results, achieves a certain profitability. And so, precisely, to do this, we've put in place a structured individual coaching program focused on execution, on the psychological aspect, and on performance management. And the least we can say is that the results of these past few months are quite telling, and Mel is one of the first coaches I've been able to select to precisely coach these traders in person, work with them directly on, as I said, their execution, their psychology, the monitoring of their positions, and ensure that they are truly going in the right direction and achieving their goals to finally be able to live from this activity, as is the case for you.
And what's funny is that precisely among the traders I've been able to coach in recent months, I realize that it's often a small thing to change, really a small tweak to make. I'm thinking of Mathis, I think his problem was that he was taking too many trades. So in fact, the problem wasn't so much improving his execution, improving his understanding of the market, it was really taking fewer trades. And that's what caused his results to be... So what is it? That he was overtrading, he was trading, in fact, he was taking trades that were easily avoidable, he could easily not take them. And so, precisely, we worked on that, and so now he's taking many fewer trades. In fact, I had imposed a forced trade limit per month. He had to take a certain number of trades, it was 4, and so, well, even then, he understood that, well, he wasn't fully respecting the four trades I gave him because, well, again, there was someone watching, so you don't want to look like an idiot, and so he was able to get some rather interesting results.
No, so, in fact, by setting this limit, but it's not Warren Buffett, well, whatever, but who, a great investor, who set himself a limit on investments he could make, for example, in the coming decade, I allow myself to make only three major investments. Well, there you go, if it's limited like that, damn, you're going to really think about your investment. You're going to think about it, you're going to research it greatly because you know that if you make an investment, you say, "Damn, I really want to buy this," and you buy it. Well, you've just used up a cartridge, and you only have two left for an entire decade. That's exactly it. And that's what I was talking about with Math, is that precisely I told him that if I force you to take four trades, well, you'll be super selective because you don't want to take a shitty trade when you're only allowed four. And since I'm behind you to monitor, again, he doesn't want to look like an idiot, so, well, he only takes four trades.
Now, I think one of the things that is still important to specify, to note, is that what we're talking about here is rather addressed to, let's say, advanced traders who already have the information and who are not at the stage of discovering trading or looking for a trading strategy. It's more for those who already have the information because, as we said, generally, just with information, it should be enough, but for certain profiles, it's not. These are the profiles who already have the basics, who want to scale, who want to structure, and who really want to professionalize their approach to finally achieve their trading goals.
And so, if you recognize yourself in this situation and you are serious, and you wish for an external perspective on your situation, on your trading, or if you want to accelerate your process and your results without adding a ton of information to your trading. So below this video, in the description, I've put the link where you'll find all the information about the personal one-on-one coaching with Mel, all the information, and you can also apply, that is to say, submit an application to perhaps also be among the few traders. Obviously, places are extremely limited to be coached directly by Mel, by my team, and by myself.
Otherwise, take everything you've just learned in this video. I also invite you to check out all the other videos here on my YouTube channel completely for free. You'll find a lot of value on more or less all topics related to trading, finance, and investment.
Mel, perhaps to finish, do you have a closing word? I'd like to thank you, Elliot, for the opportunity, because you and your team too, because it's true that I've been trading a bit alone in my corner for a while now, and it's true that being able to coach people and help others scale is, well, it's super rewarding for me as a trader to see that my skills help other people, and it's also just the natural continuation of what I enjoy doing daily, so it's all good.
No, well, once again, it's completely deserved because, once again, I'll remind you, Mel was a trader member of the Macro Trader Accelerator who achieved results, who made his money with prop firm payouts, and who voluntarily helped a lot of people in the group. And that was the reason why I wanted to meet you a few months ago. So, once again, thank you.
On that note, I'll remind you the link is in the description. On that note, it was Elliot, it was Mel. I wish you a good evening or day. Ciao. Ciao.