HOW To FIX Your Trading Psychology [Must Watch]

We are joined by a very special guest, Jared Tendler, who authored "The Mental Game of Trading." He spent two years getting a master's degree in counseling psychology; two years getting licensed as a therapist. That foundation gave me the ability to deep problem-solving skill. Would you say that they're in all your experience and working with different Traders? Traders are always looking for that Holy Grail technical strategy that's going to help them to master the market, or one day going of just click their fingers and they can read the market like a book. How often has that actually been the case? Probably 20 to 30%, if I were to. Yes, are you sure that the reason you're not profitable is cuz you don't suck, or is it because you actually do have a viable strategy that your emotions are blocking you from being able to execute consistently and properly? But again, we're still kind of trusting at that point that they're correct. It's easy to blame your emotional reactions. Also, there's also an ethic and an ethos in in trading that is it's all psychology, and that is absolute garbage and I think harmful. Without fail, this has been the single easiest way to make progress immediately. You can begin to actually [Music] the number one podcast in the trading space, the fastest growing, and that's thanks to every single one of [Music] you.

Welcome everyone back to the Words of Wisdom podcast. We're back once again; we're still here in Miami, and we're still the number one trading podcast in the world and the fastest growing, thanks to all of you and our incredible guests. Talking of which, we we are joined by a very special guest, Jared Tendler, who authored "The Mental Game of Trading." Jared, thank you for being here today.

Chris: Thanks for having me. My absolute pleasure. I know obviously traveled here just for this, which is always an honor. Um, I hope the travel was smooth. I mean, for airline travel these days, as smooth as it could be.

Jared: That's true. It's very true. Let's go straight into it. Um, the mental game of trading, like what was the inspiration behind writing that?

Jared: So 2011, I wrote "The Mental Game of Poker," and a couple of years after that, I started hearing from traders who said, "Look, if you change the word poker to trading, you basically have like a whole another book or a whole another audience." And that's not exactly my style, like I want to really kind of dive deep into an area of of Competency that I'm not necessarily an expert in, right? I'm not a Trader. My expertise was in golf, right? I wanted to be a professional golfer; that's what kind of drove me into this field. But then I randomly met a poker player, and you know, actually I'm the golf course and that what what brought me into poker, and I spent several years like really diving deep into the world of professional poker before I wrote that book. So, you know, Traders start picking up the book, I start picking up new clients, start working with institutional firms, going on-site working with 40 Traders over two, three days, just you know, kind of fly in, fly out, um, and yeah, I really started to learn the nuances of trading where obviously the differences that there are between trading and poker and you know, kind of cultivated I think a robust understanding of the problems that Traders face, understanding how they view those problems, because and I say that in a very particular way because how they view them is not always accurate, right? And and I'm sure we'll get to that today, but the the ways in which Traders think about their problems is actually one of the biggest problems out there. And so I want to kind of understand that fully and spent about four years actually writing a book before it came out, 2021.

Chris: Wow. And the impact it's had, it's been incredible. I was literally just saying to you that the amount of traders who mentioned your book and you know, shared how it's helped them, uh, on the podcast alone, alone, obviously all the people out there has been absolutely incredible. And how does it feel, just you know, before we get into everything, how does it feel to have that impact and to see that that vocalized?

Jared: Yeah, obviously it's it's incredibly gratifying. I mean, you spend that much time doing anything, you want to have have an impact, and you know, I think for me, I I I I kind of wanted me when I was trying to be a professional golfer, um, so to be able to have that kind of impact on a wide variety of of Traders, most of whom I've never met, uh, is incredible. And yeah, I mean, certainly it motivates me to want to keep working hard and you know, coming up with new content, which I'm doing regularly, and um, yeah, it's h it's it's all you could ask for as an author, really.

Chris: Definitely. No, I can only imagine. And what what do before we go into it as well, like there's an interesting thing with the trading space I found is that you have obviously you have a lot of content creators, etc., but you you find a lot of content creators who say their their mindset coaches, the psychology coaches, but they've never actually you know, actually studied psychology, for example. Um, what are your thoughts on that as someone who has?

Jared: I think like anything, uh, you kind of get what not what you pay for, right? But you you get kind of what you put into it, and it's very easy, and there's lots of I've seen it in poker, I've seen it in golf, every industry kind of has people, especially nowadays, trading included, who kind of purport themselves to be mindset coaches, and they have probably worked through a bunch of issues themselves, they've had some education, um, but to me, we're talking about solving fundamental problems, and I think to do that well, you have to have education, you have to have training. I'm obviously biased because I spent the time doing that, right? I I in college recognized that my path to professional golf was kind of being derailed by my own mental hangups, and you know, diving into golf psychology and sports psychology kind of worked to a point, but never actually solve my problems, right? I was trying to qualify for the US Open, I'm actually going to be doing that again soon, um, and yeah, this is not college golf, right? I was a three-time All-American in college, won nine tournaments, I could perform under pressure, but you know, being on the verge of trying to get through there's two stages of qualifying for the US Open, on the verge of being able to do that, I missed a bunch of putts from this length, right? Playing phenomenally and missed the playoff by a shot. So when I found myself under the hot seat, that is when all of your weaknesses get exposed. And so a lot of the content that exists out there might be helpful in terms of advice, and I would kind of describe it as like a, you know, stock picking in a sense, you know, this isn't a robust system, these aren't deep strategies, which every Trader needs to have, whether you're swing Trader, you know, long-term investor, like you have to have strategies and systems with how you operate, otherwise there's no really way to test and validate that what you're seeing is actually real. In the mindset space, in mental game space, the placebo effect is very powerful, right? I can get you to improve in ways that have no legitimacy long term, right? Just by getting you to be distracted or by focusing on something else. And uh, one of my golf instructors years ago gave a great um, you know, kind of correlative to this, he and another highly skilled instructor took a random group of of golfers, and over a 12-week period, they said, "Okay, let's see whose system works better." The instructor that I worked with only had his golfers focus on the word blue in their backswing for 12 straight weeks. The other instructor went through all their uh, you know, kind of usual grow, and of course, the the group that focused on the word blue made more improvements. Why? Because it was a bit of a placebo. We got you to, you know, get out of your head and focus on something that you know was not a bunch of other random things, which you know, a lot of Traders end up doing, they fill their minds full of lots of content. So the point is to to really solve the FOMO, the greed, the revenge trading, the overconfidence, you have to have a deep understanding of what's causing it, otherwise your solutions are going to be random, and they may not hold up under the the bright lights of the intense pressure that is the live market. Right? Traders going from the Sim to the live market, why is that so hard? Because all of the weaknesses get exposed there, right? It now it matters, there's consequence. So I I know kind of a bit of a long-winded answer, but for me, you know, having spent two years getting a master's degree in counseling psychology, two years getting licensed as a therapist, doing work I did not want to do, I was working in the the Boston area, so Social Service System, working with kids and families who were you know, having major issues, there's nothing I see in trading that even comes close to it. It was certainly trial by fire in a sense, uh, and and but like that foundation gave me the ability to have a deep problem-solving skill, and you know, for the last you know, now 18, 19 years of coaching, right? That that is my greatest asset to kind of what I bring to the table here.

Chris: 100%. The reason I asked you that is literally just to give people real insight into the level of work you've actually done, you know, and the level of time it takes to really get to that level as well versus some people out there who say they're psychology coach or whatever it may be, but really haven't put in that effort. Um, so I want to just to show that difference, you know, thank you.

Jared: It has to be done. It has to be done. And like you said, like that amount of, and it's and it's a lot like Traders, right? I mean, you've got I mean, I see right, you see plenty of YouTube channels of guys that have you know, for one or two, three years have been trading and made a bunch of money, and now all of a sudden they're becoming coaches, like it is so hard to educate other people at well, to be able to to to take your content, to take what you're doing and have it apply to lots of other people is very difficult, and in the mindset space, it's very dangerous because if if you're trying to see others through the lens with which you experienced it, is like bringing bias into the market, and we know how problematic that is. So when I see a client, it's the exact opposite. I'm like a Trader who is trying to as best as possible absorb what is coming to me and understand things that they can't see, right? Find that the edge in my mind is the opportunities that they're not aware of, right? The the kind of blind spots because I'm seeing them for who they are, what they're struggling with, not creating bias that's coming from me because I experienced you know, fear. It's like well, I I can solve a wide range of problems, not just because my experience, but because my experience in trading training has forced me to see people for who they are, not for how I want them to be.

Chris: I love that. And what's interesting is your transition from playing golf to obviously the poker side of things, then into trading, because from my understanding, and there was a golfer I met actually, um, who was getting into trading, and they were saying that there was a lot of similarities due to the fact that you know, in terms of emotions, like if you get emotional when trying to play golf, I'm not I I don't know too much about, but um, if you get emotional, it can really affect your game, and you being able to be calm in that chaos and under that pressure as you mentioned earlier is so important. So is it has it been quite a natural progression for you to go into that trading field?

Jared: It was remarkable. I mean, the the poker player that I first worked with, you know, he because he had a experience in in golf was able to kind of translate the the worlds across, and then you understand poker deeply as I did, and I've worked with some of the best poker players in the world, guys that have won bracelets and millions of dollars in big tournaments, um, it was a natural transition then into trading as well, um, but there's always still a community aspect, there's a language, there's you know, unique problems. Trading is very different than poker, um, you know, as much as we can say that the the variance that's involved is as high in these two Fields as as in any you know, I think sports betting or you know, uh, punting, you know, horse racing would be you know, some of the others, but golf is probably the the sport that has you know, some of the more higher variance with regards to some of the the more established Sports. So yeah, I mean, everybody a golfer is getting bad breaks, and it is it is you know, kind of how you deal with that, and you know, some of the best golfers in the world are the ones that have kind of been able to master that. The best poker players in the world are the ones that are able to create a more independent mind in being able to kind of deal with the short term, same with Traders as well, that that's what I think the the greatest demand mentally is because most Traders are coming from other professions, other walks of life where they were successful or they're you know, you know, in a kind of a standard corporate job, but it's like you don't really understand what it's like to be the casino and how hard it is to develop a table game like Blackjack, like that's what you're effectively doing. Trying to tilt the odds even just 2% in your favor is enough to make millions of dollars, but that's incredibly difficult to do when it means that you're going to have a lot of losing of as you know very well, um, but you know, golfers I think in general don't fully understand how impactful variances and there's I won't go too deep into it now, but there's a lot of interesting kind of data that's come out in the last 8 to 10 years within golf that's kind of actually made it a little bit more like probabilistically understandable in in like an EV kind of way, which has been kind of fun to to sort of see, but golfers in general still, they don't they don't they don't get the the the way in which your their Edge is going to play out over you know, series of tournaments because the life cycle there can be incredibly difficult, um, you know, the some of the early online poker players that I was working with, they were playing 13 to 16 tables at one time, effectively a thousand hands per hour, and in my mind, that was a that was kind of like playing a 70, 72-hole golf tournament like in one day, five days a week. I mean, the the life cycles, the cycles that you go through are incredibly condensed in poker, and for a lot of Traders are that way as well. Golf you know kind of gets extended out quite a bit, and it it you know, the feedback loops get harder to to reconcile, requires a lot more preparation and development you know in your off time, but Traders, they need to be incredibly well prepared so that they're making improvements while they are trading because if you don't do that, then the Cycles are going to kind of work against you very rapidly.

Chris: Definitely. And before we really get into it, the last question I have for you, as you probably know, one of the famous offers in in the trading game is "Trading in the Zone," and that's like put up there on on quite a pedestal in terms of trading psychology, but and yes, it has some helpful gems in there, but a big takeaway really from that book is just think in terms of probabilities, but it doesn't really break it down into like actionable steps or address a lot of other issues, uh, which I find interesting. So you know, what are your thoughts about "Trading in the Zone," or thinking in probabilities? Is it something that yes is helpful, but there's a lot more detail and depth to go into beyond that?

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Jared: I I've I've always said that "Trading in the Zone" and my book are kind of like a nice, you know, a nice pair. "Trading in the Zone," I think if you're a new Trader, you know, have no experience or understanding even in poker or betting or what, it's good to kind of as a as a a nice primer to begin to understand like what is this world because it is different from anything else, um, but that book was kind of like the uh, "Golf is not a game of perfect," you know, Bob Rotella was you know, kind of the Pinnacle of golf psychology, there are poker books you know kind of prior to mine that came out, same same category, they they're full of great advice, good perspective, philosophy, there's depth and understanding there, but what it lacks is well, a lot of people still have a hard time accepting probabilities. Okay, so you can know them, and if you have a harder time accepting those probabilities, that's a different problem-solving task, and that's where kind of my book picks up. It's like like if you understand all of this and yet you're still FOMOing into trades, you know, you shouldn't, you're still violating your rules, all the other you know, many uh problems that Traders experience, that that's kind of where my book picks up, um, and yeah, that's you know, kind of the basis of me developing that system to help Traders do that.

Chris: Definitely, definitely. I think we can go straight into it now in terms of if I if let's look at and discuss different topics or different psychological issues that Traders face, and one of the big ones I know that I faced personally was greed, even today to be fair, like greed tries to seep in as you can imagine, uh, but it was a big one for a long time of constantly trying to make it big every single trade, every single month, uh, when there was no signs of consistency, right? I was just focused a lot on making big money. So what what sort of insights can you give to traders who are experiencing that greed or continue to experience that?

Jared: The first question I would ask them and ask you would be why, why, right? Why do you think that pressure was was so intense? Why do you think that? And we can talk about it, you know, now if you want or just generally speaking, it it's the why questions that are really critical because if you don't understand the causality, you can't create a strategy that's reliable because greed, when you really break it down, is not a problem, right? It's there's an excessiveness that has been created, you are driven to achieve your goals in trading, money is the metric by which those goals are achieved. No one would ever say that a Tiger Woods or Jack Nicholas or you know, Scotty Scheffler were greedy because of how much they wanted to win, that it's like that's an insane comment. And so we look at every arena in sports, we look at every arena in in business for the most part, and we say where is the line between ambition and now greed, which I would just firmly Define is like now your efforts to achieve your ambitions are now working against you. Mhm. So you take the baseball player or the football player who you know just kind of gets a little greedy and tries to do too much you know within the game, like the same line exists, but it's for you, you know, or for you the individual Trader to Define for yourselves. I can't do that. And and so the question is like where are those violations of your rules, your strategy happening? And then if you say, okay, well, it's happening because I want to achieve my goals today, right? And there's just this insane urgency to do that. And so when I see an opportunity to maybe take my Target off and see if I can squeeze out you know, another 10, 15, maybe even one, you know, another 100% return, like I'm going to do that without fail. And so what is the flaw, right? That that's where we have to start really peeling back the layers because the greed is a symptom. It doesn't matter what emotional issue we're talking about, the greed that that becomes excessive is a symptom of an underlying flaw, bias, wish, illusion, hope, you know, faulty perspectives, right? These are the real problem at the root of what is producing that emotional reaction that causes you to do something that you know better than, right? You know, at the start of every day that you should not do this, and yet you are compelled to in that moment. So when we we peel back those layers and kind of understand the wise, well, sometimes it is you know, in this maybe in your case or before, this illusion that it was possible for you to have your goals achieved instantaneously, and when we say it out loud, it's like obviously that's absurd, and yet deep down we believe it. And so um, you know, maybe kind of spoiler alert for any kids that are around, right? This is like the adult equivalent of believing in Santa Claus. So these things kind of hang around in the back of our mind sometimes, and again, that's one example, but sometimes another example might be uh, desire for perfection. I mean, I I can't tell you how many perfectionists and people with high expectations come into trading, and it's it's a volatile combination, right? Perfectionism, high expectations, phenomenal for motivation, but it comes at a cost, and greed, right? Might be might come might be coming out because here you are trying to kind of maximize, get the absolute Max return for this trade because if you don't, you are going to be pissed off at yourself in kind of that hindsight way, knowing ah, I could have squeezed out more, and now all of a sudden you're going to know revenge trade and make additional mistakes. So the greed is actually almost protecting you from that chaos. So you know, again, kind of peeling back the layers from some of the the underlying causalities.

Chris: No, definitely. Like, so if you take a personal example, then mine was like twofold: one was I'd lost so much already, so the greed would there be be like I need to sort of unwrite that, like write that off, I need to get rid of that loss. So you know, if I was starting to have some green days or green weeks even or maybe a month, then my mindset would be like, oh, you know, if I keep this up, I'm gonna get rid of those losses I've made over the last say year, two years, there's finally time. And the other one would be a case of rushing to to you know, get the dreams if you will, but less so in terms of okay, I need to do it now, like literally on this trade, but more so like again, those thoughts would be quite dominant, and then it would lead to going off plan, over-risking, over-trading, whatever it may be, and then that that cycle would go over and over again.

Jared: Yeah, that's an incredibly common uh, what I would call like kind of reaching, and and golfers have it, poker players have it.

It's it's just a the reason that it's flawed is because you're not thinking beyond, and so you have there's like a little bit of a lottery winner's mindset in here, where you sort of think that this windfall is going to somehow transform you in ways that it will functionally not.

Um, if I were to tell you, you know, kind of a bit of a question here, um, who is happier one year later, the person that wins the lottery or the person that loses the use of their legs in a tragic accident? And the answer is, it's a trick question. Uh, it's the person who was happier before that event occurred. So the point is that generally speaking, you know, there's going to be a deviation, right? Somebody's going to be elated, somebody's going to be, you know, really in despair, but then you're going to kind of regress back to your own mean, which is back to your normal beforehand. So you're sort of finally making it is not going to transform you in the way you are; you're going to go back to sort of your default mode very, very rapidly. At best, at worst, you're going to become complacent because now you feel like you kind of finished the race, right? Race is over, I made it, and then complacency sets in. You sort of subtly believe that there's going to be, you know, that you are now like a money-printing machine, and all of your problems are solved, and and that illusion, right, is is very, very costly for a lot of people.

Definitely, no definitely. And would you say that there's an issue with traders—is maybe generally in, you know, a lot of people just generally walking in life, but especially with traders—that they assume there's going to be a moment where then happiness is absolute, just constant, and like there's always going to be just a dopamine hit after dopamine hit? Versus, yes, you get a good feeling when you've achieved something, but then, as you said, you go back to the mean; that you go back to just kind of normal life.

Yeah, it's it's really hard to create structural changes, uh, I mean, and it takes way longer than most people think. It's not the 30 days to build a new habit, right? It's 30 days to establish something in your mind, you know, to really create some mastery where you've permanently upgraded the way that you operate; it can take years depending on how much you have to kind of work through, how many, you know, little error codes, flaws, right, things that are kind of in the background, you know, seducing you. Right, for me in the last year, I've I've really worked incredibly hard on my fitness and my diet, and I've never, you know, been awful, but but it was like enough where I'm now trying to play high-level golf again, and you know, my diet was just like undercutting the work that I was doing, you know, in the gym, and you know, I'd have a couple good weeks, and then all of a sudden, well, of course, I can have, you know, a little bit of a snack here, and then you know, go off the rails. It very much is like traders who have, you know, two great weeks and then fall completely off the rails; it's kind of those boom and bust cycles. So to truly kind of move your base of operating upwards, for me it took almost 18 months. Now I was working through a bunch of different things; it wasn't like my job, right? So as a trader, we assume it could happen faster, but it's not going to happen in a month; at best, usually we're talking six to nine months, which is way longer than most people think. We talk about like New Year's resolutions, same same general idea, right? There's a a surge of inspiration, and that inspiration carries you as far as it does, and when it starts to fade, you will be tested, and that's when all your weaknesses and flaws will come out and have an opportunity to seduce you, just like you know a nice juicy trade was going to seduce you to try to move that target. And will you be ready to make a correction? And that's why I say it's it's so vital for traders to be well prepared with their mental game strategy before they get into the market, right? It's easy to kind of create that game plan for what you're going to do, uh, you know, with positions or in the market that day, but the mental game strategy is really, really critical to being able to execute that, and and when those moments come, if you are not ready and you make the same mistake, you have just become better at making that mistake, right? There is no there's no neutrality in learning; you're either getting better at the things you want to get better at or you're getting better at the things that you don't. So people with, you know, risk aversion, procrastination, FOMO, right, every time you succumb to that problem, it is becoming stronger. Now we hope, right, that by experiencing it more you can learn more about it; your your knowledge about the problem, the situations where it's occurring, the thoughts that come to your mind, the emotions that you experience becomes richer so that you can then create a better game plan. But most traders are kind of waking up like, today is a new day, you know, I'm not going to do what I did yesterday; I know better than that. But you become like the doctor who smokes cigarettes. Well, knowledge is not your problem; now you actually have to create a game plan and and really do the work to put it in and do it for a sustained period of time.

What would you say in terms of traders who, let's say, are alone? They don't have a psychology coach or anything like that. What sort of steps could they take by themselves, or what sort of quality questions can they ask themselves to be able to make some progress and try and, you know, undo some of this work or this negative work that they've been doing?

The easiest thing to do is what I what I've created as a worksheet called a data collection worksheet. Um, it's freely available on my website, but it's not a very complicated thing, right? But the idea is that every single time during the live market or even at times where you may be doing research and backtesting or working on your strategy and having some emotional reactions, you can start writing down the situation, the thoughts that come to mind, the emotions that you experience, are there certain actions that you take, whether they be avoidant or um, you know, maybe a little kind of hand-tapping if you're get if it's anger, maybe you're pounding your fist on the desk, or you you know, are there physical signs like, you know, kind of heat in your head or tension in your hand or breathe, you know, maybe your breathing gets constricted. Um, and then we also want to look at some of the changes in your decision-making process, changes in your perception of the market, then this of course obviously the specific mistakes that you might make at that time, right? We want to really capture the data that comes before the mistakes; it's, you know, hindsight is easy; we want to create foresight. So to create foresight, just start to become aware of the patterning that exists within your own mental, emotional, physical state while you're trading, and when it's deviating from what is optimal, that's it's worth writing down. And without fail, this has been the single most single easiest way to make progress immediately. I didn't say solution, right? Very progress; you can begin to actually separate yourself from those emotional reactions by writing it down. So often we're experiencing a lot of this kind of inner mind, and there begins to be a bit of a battle there, and that battle I think is harder when it stays there, but as soon as you get it out of your head and write it down on paper, or if you want to put it on your your computer, that's fine too; you change the the nature of that interaction, right? Now you're kind of not lost in your own mind; you're actually having a bit of a dialogue with yourself. You know, when you write something down, you're getting feedback; there's some kind of unreal quality about the way our minds work. I mean, I I know it because I'll have a joke in my mind that I think will be funny, and then as soon as I say it, it's obviously was was awful; you know, my daughter can attest to that. Um, so there's just a there's just like a reality testing that happens when you have to say something out loud or write something down, and you know, speaking is obviously a good way of also I have plenty of clients who they've got OBS or they've got some recording software, and whenever they've got something kind of on their mind, they'll click record and start talking, or they'll just have it going the entire trading session as a way of just having a narrative; they might talk out literally every aspect of of their decision or what's going on in the moment, and it gives them a chance to kind of go back like an athlete and kind of rewind the tape and see what happened, build that recognition and that causality that we're eventually looking for.

Definitely. So would you say by writing it out you're simply then, rather than having the battle internally, it's more you're observing the battle, and then you, from observing it, then it's much easier to address that or at least look deeper into it?

I I think so. The way I've described it to a lot of clients is like sometimes it feels like you're out in the middle of the ocean, and your your head is underwater, right? You just can't breathe; what you're experiencing is almost suffocating, and by getting it out it's almost like you just kind of get your head above water, and you can breathe, and you can kind of see, oh, okay, well there's there's dry land over that way, it's, and you just have a chance to kind of kind of reorient yourself. Um, when you're stuck, and I say that purposely because that's how it feels a lot of times; you feel stuck, unable to translate what you know you should be doing into the actions that will follow that. You know, I've had clients who literally, you know, had one hand on the other hand trying to prevent them from entering a trade, like literally fighting with themselves, and and when you're when there's that level of intensity, it is it's very, very difficult to kind of pull yourself out. So again, we catch kind of the early rise of that the tide of of emotion, and and then you have still, you know, enough kind of mental bandwidth to be able to address it.

Definitely. I want to—it kind of gave me an idea that in terms of like an example or case study, are you able to give like maybe one or two case studies from clients you've worked with, the issue they had, and then the work you did with them to the result, if that makes sense?

Sure. Um, are there any particular topics that you're most interested in because I I've got I imagine any that stands out to you or anything that you've stands out to you that is a recurring theme within traders, like a very common theme, because obviously we want to be able to give as much impact to the traders out there, so it's probably best it's something that's very common. So I'd say this is very common for newer traders.

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Um, especially those that are, you know, maybe in a prop firm challenge, trying to, you know, pass a combine and get funded, um, or really anybody that's, you know, kind of working with small accounts, even if they're not, um, you know, being funded by somebody else, uh, the fits. Okay, so here is the kind of classic scenario where a couple losses lead to a drawdown, lead to the point where it's like, ah, f it, I'm just going to, you know, aim for a home run here, and if I have to reset the account, buy a new one, then I'll do it, and it's it's a I think the reason it's so common is because traders, by and large, are looking for the result much more than they're looking to develop the skill. So when you say f it, you're saying I want P&L; I don't care how I get it, and that's a dangerous combination because if you do get it, are you going to be able to keep it? And we know what happens to lottery winners, and it's the same thing that happens to traders, right? If you don't have the skill to continue to make well-reasoned, sound decisions based on your strategy going forward, you're going to be in in great difficulty. So yeah, I think this solution is actually easy to understand in theory, but the the work behind it can be incredibly difficult, which is you have to grind it out; you you have to delete that option to say f it and and like recover that account, and and there's been a number of clients that I worked with, yeah, actually really in the last year or so who have been able to not just get funded, but then, you know, actually be be able to get payouts and continue to be successful thereafter. Because sometimes that there are some technical weaknesses that exist too, but from a mental and emotional standpoint, kind of looking for that like that that instant gratification of passing is almost a way of like the like building confidence the wrong way, right? You want your confidence to be based on your competency and your skill in trading, and to kind of get the validation through P&L is is is a bit backwards. So you know how did they do it, like in kind of very granular terms? Uh, it's painful where it's like there was greater awareness on what they should do, and they still, you know, blew up a few more times, and then but every time they blew up, we and they would spend more time analyzing what happened, what led to it. A lot of times it was, you know, a bit of more added pressure, right, to kind of want to make money quicker, to feeling like they were getting a bit close. Uh, other times it was they they have just been kind of brainwashed in a sense into thinking that like that that was the way. So begin to kind of uh bring in a new strategy and tactic in those moments, so it wasn't applied at the moment where they would say f it; it was applied, you know, kind of several trades before that or sometimes even several days before that. Constant drumbeat of reminding, okay, if these trades go sideways, and of course that that probability is there, here is how I'm going to react, right? I'm going to grind this out; I want to earn this the right way; I want to finish this race on my own terms, not kind of cheating my way there, and and you know, it was just this constant kind of reframing, right? Some people might call these uh mantras; I I don't care what they what you call it; the idea is that you have these underlying flaws, these this flawed view, and you need to correct it, right? And and the correction is not a singular moment; I think that's one of the the big misconceptions, like, oh, okay, now I get it. Well, okay, if I woke you up at 3:30 in the morning, like, are you going to get it? Like, could you repeat it? Could you do it in the heat of the moment? And the the answer is no. Well, then you don't really understand it deeply enough uh to have it make an impact. So it's the constant repetition, and then it took, you know, another two, three, four months before they were able to really reliably be able to do it, right? Sometimes there would be the, you know, make a few trades that were correct, but then, you know, those would lose, and I was like, okay, then I still would say f um. So that that the other kind of general uh big problem that I see out there is is FOMO, and and I'll give one example from the book um because I think it's a very important one, uh, and then another kind of generally speaking. So sometimes FOMO is more of a technical problem, you know, the ability to uh feel like you're not missing out on opportunity can come when you're actually kind of sensing that there's not as much precision in your execution as you'd want. And a client of mine, you know, first couple sessions we were kind of treating this as like a a general kind of mental game problem, but by session number three, it he started to actually realize, having paid attention to these the the types of setups that were producing a lot of FOMO, that there actually was something quite glaring technically. So when you don't have technical precision, uh, or there's a gap or weakness in your strategy system, your emotions are going to be heightened for that fact; it doesn't mean that they're going to go away entirely when you have that that structure, but they they certainly can become a lot worse. Um, and so his FOMO was basically cured instantly once he actually fixed the technical weakness in his game. For others, you know, the sort of fear of missing out really wasn't about fear per se; it was this expectation of perfection. Uh, at other times it was really more about the hatred of losing, and when I miss out on opportunities and other traders are capitalizing it, right, I get pissed off. So you know how do we work on that, same right? It's it's kind of gathering up those details and applying it very early and aggressively, kind of getting that drumbeat of a mantra, or as I call it, injecting logic into that moment as regularly as possible, uh, so that uh you have a chance to kind of change your reactions.

Definitely. I love that, and one thing you mentioned there which I thought might be interesting to touch on is the whole prop firm thing, because would you say as someone who's got the best experience that you have, once a prop firm stepped in, did that bring a different layer of psychological issues for traders?

It does because the it's not really it's almost like a it kind of changes the game, right? Like it's now you have to kind of follow these rules, and the rules are I mean they're sometimes incredibly um intolerant of any kind of missteps. Um, so yeah, I think sometimes the the the game for that reason changed, and then also like kind of the target, right? Now it became about getting funded versus actually becoming a skilled trader. Um, so yeah, I think that I'm not like I think the prop firm um ecosystem has been great for the industry in general and given a lot of people a lot of opportunity, but there's a reason why they're making a ton of money, right? And I think it's uh yeah, I have very strong opinions on how kind of the mentality of of those should take shape, and you know, it cannot be about just getting funded; it has to be about becoming a skilled trader versus a person who trades and makes money; those are two vastly different things.

How important is that for a trader in terms of, you know, putting the wrong things on a pedestal, such as you say, just getting funded, just getting passing a challenge, um, you know, versus actually focusing on the true goal or what should be the true goal of a trader?

I mean, I think it's it's everything in a sense, I mean, because that defines everything that you do, um, you know, the the like discipline, work ethic, motivation is all all geared towards uh, you know, the outcomes that you're looking to produce, and if you're if if the target that you're aiming at is going to be incredibly gamified, right? Because I'm not saying that you cannot be successful with that approach or that mentality; what I am saying is that the odds of you being successful that way are very low relative to adopting what I think we both believe is the right perspective and be truly becoming skilled. You risk so much of that effort; I mean, I've clients who've been trying to be successful like 7, 10, 15 years, spinning their wheels, and it's and in some measure it's because they kept thinking they were, you know, skilled enough, and and they really weren't; they were just after getting either out of their hole or making enough to kind of prove that they could uh be successful, and that's it was not and and a lot of time they more recently, which is why they come to me at this point, is like they kind kind of have realized for like 80% of that time they were focused on the wrong things; only recently they've developed a strategy; they still feel like they're digging out of this deep hole which they kind of can't get out of quickly, right? So like that that the all those losses, not just the losses, but also the lost time feels insurmountable, and so now they're kind of in a good spot, but they're kind of dealing with a lot of regret and a lot of old pain. But the the point is that um it's just so common for traders to kind of be doing the wrong things for a long time, and you know, yes, it would be nice if you could, you know, be successful quickly; it would be nice if I could help you make your mental game, you know, be emotionally balanced, you know, instantaneously, but in large measure like those things are would would be way more costly if I actually, you know, kind of had those powers.

Definitely. And one thing I want to ask you is that as you mentioned there, there might be traders who've been 8 years, 10 years, 15 years, etc. Let's take just an average figure; let's say if someone's been trading for 7, 8 years and they haven't been doing it uh profitably, right, and they've got a lot of mental hang-ups, have you got any examples of someone you've worked with around that sort of time frame where you've actually helped them to then become profitable?

Um, the reason I ask is simply because through the podcast and through my time in the markets, I've spoken to traders, you know, so probably similar to yourself, and um, yeah, they tell me about I've been trading for this long, and I haven't made it, or sometimes it has been 10 years plus, and I'd love to hear of, you know, what sort of work you've done with someone to help them change that, because I think for people to realize it is possible, because I think around those sort of time frames is when people really start to doubt themselves and doubt like if all the work they've been putting in has been worth it, and I think it'd be really good for them to hear of someone or an example of someone who has been in that position but has made the change.

I I'll I'll give you an example of somebody who, you know, kind of right now is like kind of in the at the crux of being able to to kind of make it, and it's, you know, had a a strategy that was not provided to him but was basically kind of taught by a mentor, and and just for seven years struggled to implement it. Maybe he got 80% of what this mentor was able to do because I think a lot of good traders have difficulty being able to properly articulate what it is that they're doing and making all of their decisions. So you know, yes, I think he he was struggling for a while to both both understand that strategy, and there was probably some missing pieces that he didn't even know to ask. But the bottom line is he was, you know, down, you know, like half a million over a seven-year period. And I think one of the one of the big pieces

There's that that needs to be understood for anybody that's in this position: how many bad habits you have developed. Right, as I said earlier, you become really skilled at trading poorly. So first and foremost, a lot of what we're doing is making sure that there's absolute precision with what you're attempting to do. But you need really, really good feedback to know: am I am I trading properly? Yes or no, binary, just to begin kind of chipping away at those old habits. And then we get to see more acutely what are the emotions that are just screaming out that cause you to violate those rules. Or ideally, you're still able to make the the right trades, but able also able to capture the anger that is just forcing you to walk away and and quit the day prematurely.

Uh, yeah, just because it's it's it's just kind of far too volatile, which is fine, right? Because as long as you're making proper trades, even if there's only, you know, 30% of what we're the trades out there that day, we're fine with that. Right? We there's a lot of management. Um, I I would say a lot of this could be kind of well framed as like physical rehab. Right? Here you are, you've you've had a knee replacement. Right? How long is it going to take you to rehab that injury? So that's the kind of training that really needs to end with this client in particular; it was it's been about 14 months. Okay, and it's only been the last 6 months where I feel like I wouldn't say we've turned the corner, but like we're turning the corner. So it it it takes a while. And so absolutely it is possible, and I will say clearly just to the story is positive. Right? Last four or five months have been consistently profitable—small, right? All base hits, nothing overextended—um, and more more powerfully, a lot of the emotion has begun to subside. Right? And so, you know, six seven months ago there was still volatility that was causing some failures and some setbacks. Generally, was able to contain it and control it well, but those one or two were enough to just like destroy all gains that were kind of made P&L wise. And so it was just kind of like these fits and starts, fits and starts, but not losing. Right? So it was like, you know, a phase of us kind of really figuring out what was going on while still losing, stabilized, not losing anymore, but not gaining, getting a lot more retraining, begin to kind of turning this cruise ship in the right direction, and now suddenly being able to have some steady wins, but like very, very cautiously as we we progress here because overconfidence was one of the problems. And yeah, I mean, close a big day, and and that's dangerous. So we have regular check-ins and making sure that they're on a very, very narrow path. And so I'm optimistic, but at this point there's still no guarantees. But yes, it's absolutely possible, but I I would strongly, strongly urge, you know, that um that very well-defined non-discretionary style for a little while definitely.

Would you say and I'm sure it's hard to answer maybe because you know everyone is is an individual, so each case will be very different, but from your experience and for doing it for so long, is there an average sort of time frame that you've seen? No matter how big or small, is there an average sort of time frame you've seen in in terms of when you work with people and and just generally trade, is making the changes necessary there? So I'd say the factors are maybe not necessarily personal, but more about like how long they've been trading and how old they are. So I would say generally speaking, um, you know, there's a sweet spot where you get somebody who is um younger but has some, you know, kind of good experience, you know, kind of elsewhere in life—um, and you know, relatively self-aware—uh, you know, within um sometimes two to three sessions like we can see some some transformation. Um, you get somebody older who is um, you know, very knowledgeable about the eles through, you know, other businesses that they've had and other other arenas, same deal, but sometimes that age can be a bit detrimental because there's so many bad habits have been established, and sometimes they're also kind of related to their philosophy of mental and emotional stuff, which is, you know, we don't talk about it, just put it away and like I'm not dealing with that stuff. And so beginning to kind of change their perspective is is often times kind of the first thing. But you get somebody that's older, like their wisdom and experience sometimes can lead to a rapid transformation, where somebody that's younger, they don't have as much experience they can lean on, especially when we're dealing with confidence issues. Um, you know, confidence very often can kind of bleed from your personal life. If you don't have confidence there, I'm not saying that it's going to guarantee that your confidence in trading is going to wane, but when you've had a lot of successes elsewhere in life or even just experience, uh, that can really certainly help to make that transition. Um, rough time frame if somebody is going to come work with me, um, you know, it's going to be anywhere between uh, you know, two to three sessions to 8 to 10—um, on average—that will'll see some significant progress. Now how far and how how how much has been solved at that point is still kind of TBD. I've had clients that have, you know, like the one I just mentioned, we needed a lot more work, and I've had some who like within, you know, 15 minutes we kind of got to the root of their issue; they were very self-aware, um, had already done work in other arenas, was like I they just needed to kind of understand an aspect of what their reactions were that they didn't see before, and and they were off off the races definitely.

And how bad do you think it is for traders where they constantly take breaks? That's something I used to do as well, where I would trade, go through that period, basically the greed and then the boom and bust and then end up being bust—um—then take a long, long break from trading, you know, two three months, then come back and do the same thing again, and then just repeat that good good bunch of times, not even handful, bunch of times. How dangerous do you think that is to a trader in terms of like their progress and being able to actually address the issue versus kind of running away from it and then just coming back and repeating it? You said it well: you're not addressing the issue, right? You're what you're doing is you're reducing all the emotion that accumulates during that period. Because if there was a leak in this space and we had a bucket, you know, kind of capturing that, we would never say that the solution was emptying the bucket, and that's effective what you do when you took that break. It's like, no, no, we have to figure out the source of the problem. So it's perfectly fine and and in in large measure advantageous to uh have periods where you're taking breaks, especially if there's that much emotional volatility, but the question is what are you doing then? And and you should be really peering back into understanding what the heck just happened, how did I get to this point, what was the buildup, what was the causality, what's the patterning? You said it's like the good thing about us is that we're not as unique as we think. Right? These patterns happen again and again and again, and there's a momentum to them, and the more that you can chart them, map them, see them, you become like uh skilled in the same way that you are as a trader, being able to see the patterning in the market, seeing the patterning in yourself is functionally the exact same thing; it's just different stuff. And generally speaking, traders are not as educated in how to do that, which is really the purpose of the book. So breaks are needed. I I'd say in general, traders don't take enough breaks. Right? They feel like they have to be there. I'm a trader; I must trade. No, you're a performer, you're an athlete; think of yourself that way. You don't get paid a salary. And so if you're ba if you're paid based on your execution, well then what is required for you to be at your best more often? And breaks are an essential part of that. But if you're using breaks as a way of managing emotions, well then that's not really a solution; that's just just you know now something you've got a you know another hoop that you have to jump through.

Would you say in terms of people working with you, this is something I wanted to ask because I think at the end of the day, people, you know, might might not have heard of you before potentially. I know that's hard to hard to happen in the industry. I'm sure there's a lot yeah, but let's say they are interested in working with you or even a a psychologist, and hopefully a good psychologist at that, a trade one, yeah, trade one exactly—um—what would you say in terms of advice for someone to make the most of the service? Because you like courses, for example, people join all sorts of courses, but they just join them and then they they look around a little bit and then they don't really take any action. What would your advice be for people who do take up a psychologist or yourself—um—to actually make the most of it and to see the changes they want to see, like what to make essentially to help you do your job better? Like what would what would be your advice to them to actually make the most of it? I'd say two things: one, do your homework. Don't come to the session thinking that I'm going to fix you. Right? That's not how it works. I'm not a magician. Right? So I'm only going to be able to work with what you bring to the table, and if you don't have much, well then that's going to be your homework. So first session is not going to be that complicated; it's like all right, well here are your mistakes, well then here's all this information that we now need, go have at it, come back when you've got it; otherwise, what are we doing? You can pay for my time, but I may not allow it, cuz I I I I don't like to be bored. Right? And so um, yeah, I'm not going to just sit there and do that. So yeah, do your homework, come prepared. Now when when traders, poker players, whoever come to work with me for the first time, I have them fill out a very detailed questionnaire, and so it does help to kind of tease out more information. And a lot of times this one of the coolest things, one of the reasons I did it this way, a lot of times there's clarity that is developed just from writing the questionnaire, because just like doing the data collection and getting things out of your head, all of a sudden you get to start to see things. And to me it's kind of like, you know, how hard would it be to complete a puzzle if let's say it was a thousand-piece puzzle, you didn't get to see the picture on the box, and you could only grab five pieces at once, right? Seven pieces at once, and then you had to put them back or put some back. That that's what our mind is like; our minds have a limited bandwidth. So when you're trying to kind of connect the dots and figure out what's going on and it's all up here, it's incredibly hard to do that. The second you start writing things out, it's like being able to take pieces out of the box, put them on the table, and then eventually you get to see what's going on. So when when a client for the first time writes out their answer to that questionnaire, they're connecting dots and seeing things they didn't realize, or they're just start to realize how bad this was and how dumb they were for not addressing it earlier. The other thing is just general openness. It doesn't happen all the time, but there's been a few sessions where clients would basically steamroll the first 30 minutes, and they're there kind of trying to, and I like the vibe that I get is they're there trying to tell me what they know, tell me what's happening. Dude, you're here cuz you don't know. And and it sometimes takes a little crowbarring. I'm not punitive; I kind of try to go in the side door; I don't try to bang down the front door, try to go on the side door to help them to understand that what they are missing, right? To understand some pieces that they can't see and to begin to become open-minded in a way. But sometimes in this space it's harder to be open-minded because we're often times fearful of what we'd find. And yes, you know, you might have some skeletons in the closet; there's lots of people for whom that's the case, and you know, you either can deal with it cuz it's there, right? It's not going away; nothing that comes out in a session is like made up. Right? These are things that are in the background of your mind, affecting you in some cases every single day in ways you don't realize. You know, it's kind of like a, you know, a computer that just has a lot of programs open in the background, and you know, resources are kind of waning; it's like harder to in in this case like think your emotions are far more reactive. You know, like sometimes that stuff has to get addressed, but that's not always the case; sometimes it's just a performance-based problem, a trading-based problem, and you know, you want to achieve your goals; it's it's going to it's going to require you to to be open to things that you don't know, and and it's okay to not know. Right? There's stuff I don't know; I'm continually learning myself. It it can be exciting, and that's not scary, but it might be nerve-wracking, like kind of like a trade that you you know are nervous to get into because of what it could do; like sometimes you just got to jump off the cliff and get in there, same thing here definitely.

And would you say that they're in all your experience and working with different traders, how often has it actually been that they need more technical ability? You know, because a lot of traders are always looking for that Holy Grail technical strategy that's going to help them to master the market, or one day it's going to just click their fingers and they can read the market like a book. How often has that actually been the case? That's a good question. I don't know if I have great stats for my client base, but it's probably 20 to 30% if I were to guess—um—you know, I think for the most part I kind of try to vet a new inquiry and say if it sounds a little squirrely, right? You're not profitable yet; like are are you sure that the reason you're not profitable is because you don't suck, right? Or is it because you actually do have a viable strategy that your emotions are blocking you from being able to execute consistently and properly? And that's but again we're still kind of trusting at that point like that that they're correct in assessing that this thing could be viable, cuz sometimes it seems that way. Right? It's easy to blame your emotional reactions also, and I and and I think there's also an ethic and an ethos or philosophy maybe in in trading that is like it's all it's all psychology, right? And that is absolute garbage and I think harmful. So yes, there's a psychological aspect to learning; there's a psychological aspect to understanding yourself and the type of strategies and systems, markets that you you are probably best accustomed to. Right? You're there's yeah, there's a lot of variety; it's one of the coolest things about poker and trading, lots of different ways to kind of play the game, lots of different places you can play the game. So there's definitely a like a self-knowledge that is is really helpful in being able to kind of define your fingerprint and find your way within trading, but at the end of the day, right, I've not spent, you know, decades learning how to become a skilled trader. I certainly will trade crypto uh and and a few other things at times, but I'm not I understand my where my skills are, so I would never think that I could do what my highest, you know, my very successful traders could do; there's the the gap between us is as massive as the gap between my competency and theirs and the mental game. So you have to have a strategy, system uh that is proven, and and if you're not sure, you know, there's lots of good communities out there, just do your due diligence; don't just kind of jump uh, you know, kind of firmly into the next one because a lot of times that's coming from a weakness and confidence, right? As you said, you're kind of looking like for this for the one thing, and it's really one thing; you don't want to be a copy trader either, right? You want to really have a fingerprint is uniquely yours, and that's what to me differentiates a skilled trader from somebody who trades is that they're not just, you know, copying a strategy, a system; they've maybe copied it for a little while to form the foundation of their skill, but then the way in which it evolves is very much a uh a byproduct of of their understanding of of the markets and what they're interested in and and how their mind works.

Earlier, near the beginning, you did mention working with like professional traders and firms—um—can you give us any sort of insights in the sort of work you would do at that level? Yeah, it's a it's a different different crowd, right? Because because what's different about the institutional space versus the retail space is uh there are gatekeepers, right? You have to get hired. And so when you kind of pass that that litmus test, you are are I want to say minted in a sense, but the the degree of emotional volatility that's experienced there is is way less; the quality of character, the quality of of work ethic—uh—at least in the places that I worked and which should make sense because somebody's going to hire me, a firm going to hire me kind of understands implicitly the value of of those of traits and a trader—um—so for the most part uh anybody with a thousand bucks, I mean not even, right? Can call themselves a trader, right? So there's no like you and I would never say, Okay, I want to, you know, uh start playing football in the, you know, premier league, right? Not that we could, but like to think that we could is is like absurd, and yet as a trader to say, oh, I've got, you know, a grand here and we go compete in the most competitive marketplace in the world and be successful, like that is is like is crazy. So you know, there's no there's no gatekeepers; you have to be your own boss, your own manager, your own risk analy risk uh manager—um—whereas institutionally, like they have so much support around them, they've got managers, they're sometimes they're working in teams, there's so much around them—uh—that it is very much like a team environment. And so my work with them is like kind of parsing through the details of trades that they weren't happy with. Occasionally, you'll see some of the bigger issues, you know, some bigger fears of failure, some new some of the newer traders I've worked with, some of the junior traders that have been, you know, kind of going through educational—um—you know, internal trainings and trying to scale up that way—um—and so you sometimes see some of the bigger stuff there, but uh yeah, for the most part it is all the same stuff, just really, really small, yeah, just more like specific, like really focused on a particular trade or particular performance exactly. And I and I do do with some independent traders who are, you know, been trading for 10, 15, 20 years or million-dollar traders where we'll spend an hour talking about one or two trades, really trying to parse through and understand why it was that they, you know, made what seemed like a mistake, and sometimes it's a bit mental, a bit technical—um—but it's very, very nuanced.

Yeah, you mentioned environment there, which I think is very fascinating because it's something that I've tried to think about before in terms of the professional environment; they have those teams, right? They have the the different roles that kind of does take a bit of pressure off the individual trader, for example, because then they have like one focus. How important do you think environment is to a trader and and their psychology? It's hard to put a percentage on it, but it's it's it's not, you know, of no importance. Um, I I think in general the more you can, you know, if you're working from if you're trading from home—um—the more you can kind of have a consistent workspace, I think it's super dangerous when you're trading on your phone, you know, and certainly like if it's between meetings, if you you know are trading at work—uh—you know, in like an office environment—um—you really want to try to create these like little bubbles where you've got some measure of preparation that kind of cues you into what you're looking for on a technical basis, and then also again aware and prepared to deal with the mental, emotional stuff—um—so yeah, if you have a consistent workspace, you know, creating an environment that is, you know, very conducive to uh the reminders and the preparation that you need is is I think really, really vital, and especially if you have a door that you can close at the end of the day, cuz again the rest is vital; being able to kind of decompress is important—uh—certainly within the trading day as well, but also kind of how you feel when you walk in, right? To to feel I think like an athlete that understands that this is go time, right? That this is that this matters, that every second that I'm here I need to be focused, uh diligent, prepared, and if something goes a little bit off, kind of ready to deal with it without having any kind of delusion or any kind of illusion that you know it's just going to kind of go away. So yeah, environment certainly can help to promote, you know, emotional stability and balance—um—make things easier; doesn't I don't think like sometimes I'll see traders who will overfocus on that to the exclusion of the bigger piece of the puzzle, like all right, you're massively tilting, right? Like how you how you structure your environment is not going to make a material difference there, right? So yes, it's definitely an element uh that can be fine-tuned much like diet and exercise and, you know, overall routine, but I would it's in general say that those are secondary factors—uh—not the primary ones, like mental game and and tactics. No, so like really what we've highlighted so far is that technicals, some people maybe at a certain extent like not have all the technical knowledge, but it's that's not really too difficult to learn, especially with the amount of resources that are readily available for free as well. Now—um—but then obviously there are loads of communities, cool—um—and just don't fall into the trap of jumping around, but then equally environment, yes, it makes a difference again, but it's not massive, and it's not a hard thing really to deal with either—uh—maybe if you have a job, creating an environment or creating that structure—uh—can be a little bit difficult, but again if you can be aware of it, you can start to focus on that, but really the issues are the psychological, the why you're going on, the greed, the FOMO, and um you a lot of people I think don't address it. I don't know what your experience has been; obviously you work with clients, but on a mass when you look at the the sort of community or the industry, do you find that a lot of traders really just aren't addressing their issues at all? They're continuously doing what I did, to be fair, which was just go around in circles and spirals, take the gaps, go back again, do it again—um—and just seriously not addressing the issues? Because do you feel like, let's say, for example, someone was in my position like that and then they started to make some money from trading, but they've never really addressed it though, do you feel like they even if it's a few months that they've made some money, the reason, the fact that they haven't addressed it really means that eventually it's probably going to go straight back there anyway? Very likely. So yeah, yeah, I think it's it's endemic—um—it's

One of those things that you want to just like, kind of check a box and say, ah yes, I’ve read my, even my book. I mean, I hear a lot on Twitter, swathes of people saying, “Hell, you know, loved your book, you know, read it three times.” They rarely say, “Read it and then did the work.” Right? So I don’t want you listening to my book or reading my book on repeat because there you’re just kind of managing things; you’re banding things; you’re trying to kind of get away with not having to do the work. And again, if we think about this in like physical terms, I can’t give—and no book on physical fitness could ever give somebody muscles. I can’t give you corrections; I can’t give you mental strength; I can’t give you patience. You have to earn it, and and it’s not just a question of having the knowledge; it’s a question of doing the work.

So yes, I think that piece is where the, where the gap is huge. Trading The Zone sells incredibly well; my book has been doing great, you know. There are other great trading psychology books out there that are selling regularly, but like, is it translating into actual time spent doing the exercises? And and that’s a hard one, right, for a lot of people. They want things to come easily. So we’re dealing with both a societal and also community-based issue, which is wanting things to come easily, and the reality is that if it doesn’t come easily, then it’s going to be challenging for some people. It does come easily; that’s cool, but like the numbers of for whom that is the case is, is so low that you’re basically gambling. I mean, this is like the equivalent of like buying one square for a Super Bowl pool, right? It’s like, you know, you maybe you have a 3% chance that you’re going to hit it. It’s like, it’s absurd; such a small chance that by not doing the work that you’re going to get there. So I’d say risk the situation and and put the work in. And again, that’s why, why my book is designed the way it is, to make it easier, right? It’s kind of providing a bit of a workout in a sense, but you know, there’s going to be ups and downs with that. And yeah, maybe, maybe actually, if you recall the The Inchworm concept from the book, um, it’s, it’s this idea that, uh, you know, there’s an inchworm, you know, that kind of moves like this, right, for those that don’t know the, the, the actual insect. And the whole premise is that there’s this movement forward that has to be matched by the movement at the back end. And and so this is kind of like your A game gets better, but your C game has to get better also. So there will be times where you’re going to make some mental game progress, but then you have to make sure that you’re continually moving your worst higher. So in this case, the desire to want to do the work is the correction. There will be times where you will have that desire, but then the times when you don’t, that is where the biggest opportunity lies. Because even if you, let’s say, normally would have just blown off at the end of a bad session, you know, taken the week off, normally you would have done that, if you spend 10 minutes just taking some notes down about what the hell just happened, that is better; that is progress. Again, along the lines of having the, the, the interest and diligence and doing the work. So it’s those, those little moments; this is how you can achieve your New Year’s resolutions, right? It’s not in the times when it’s easy; it’s in the times when it’s hard. And sometimes we get overwhelmed because we think, well, when it’s hard, I still have to reach that high standard. It’s like, no, no, no, just do a little bit more than what you would normally, just a little bit more is progress that you can then kind of build up, build on, and, in essence, like, scale up. You can’t—turning nothing into something is transformative. Once you have something, well, then you can just add more of it.

I love that. I love that. And one thing I did want to ask you is in terms of, uh, obviously every Trader is different; that’s what—it doesn’t make it a little bit difficult—and just trading as a whole, every Trader has a different strategy, etc. But has there ever been a, a sort of common, uh, practice amongst the traders that you worked with, or a common lesson or theme that really helped them, or you’ve seen in terms of like a—I don’t know how to describe it to be fair—like a common action that you’ve given them, right, that you’ve seen that, okay, this one has been quite a common theme and has worked quite well; it’s been quite effective, uh, even though they may have been slightly different in, in, uh, you know, their styles or their issues, but this, this common practice I’ve given them has actually been, you know, quite effective overall?

I, I mean, it, it’s kind of like at the core of my system, right? The system is designed in ways that match like, kind of the rules of how our minds work. So fundamental rule number one is the emotional system has the power to shut down higher brain function, right? So you can’t think; you can’t plan; you can’t make decisions; and you can’t control your emotions when your emotions get too high. So we have to catch it early. Okay? Rule number two is that bandwidth limitation, and and that shrinks when our emotions rise. So if we’re going to correct our emotional reactions, we have to catch it early and be prepared with logic that is actually correcting the real problem, right? We’re not battling the FOMO, the greed, the revenge; we’re battling the causality of it. So the strategy is: create a map; catch those signs early; you know, use what I call a mental hand history to dissect your problem; and from there you can create logic that is, is like potent and capable of like cutting through the emotional reaction, not just managing and controlling it, but actually cutting through it. Um, and if you do that again and again and again, eventually the emotion starts to wither and die. It’s kind of like killing a weed with like really slow weed killer at its roots, right? And it just starts to wither, die from within. And that, that’s the power of the system. It’s all the specifics on the surface, all the, the various ways in which we think and, and the issues we experience; that’s all secondary. If you’re not playing by the rules, it’s going to be incredibly difficult for you to really make progress.

A very common theme among trading as a whole, and and I’ve been guilty of saying it as well, to be fair, which is like, you know, discipline: you got to be a disciplined person, right? So you be a disciplined Trader; you got to be a disciplined person. And that might help. So like people doing cold showers, you know, to, to embrace hardship, or going to the gym, or dieting, or just doing things that they don’t enjoy and trying to build their discipline; is that enough? Assume you know the answer. I’d like to think so. Yeah, I mean, so to, to really unpack discipline, let’s, let’s be clear on what it is. Okay? Discipline is like the muscle of the mind. So yes, doing those things can absolutely help you to get bigger muscles, but those muscles have to be utilized in a coordinated fashion. So like, while I may be working out far more intensively over the last 18 months, does that mean I’m going to have a better golf swing? Not really. I mean, it helps; it creates the, the potential, but I have to get in there and practice and make the refinements and figure out how to utilize this new capacity. So that there’s that, but then like, I like to think about discipline as kind of being like the, our mind’s effort to achieve our goals. So you know, whether or not you are disciplined or not is like too basic of a question; it’s, it’s how well are your actions lined up with your goals? And we don’t want to be more disciplined than, than is required to achieve them. You can have small goals, and that’s fine; that, that’s what you choose. I don’t choose, you know, the aspirations of my clients, uh, but for a lot of Traders, they are experiencing an, an incredible amount of emotional volatility, and that is forcing their hand to make these mistakes that seem like it’s a discipline problem, and it’s not. You have to first rule out that your violations of quote discipline are not being caused by anger, greed, FOMO, confidence issues before we can define it as firmly within the category of discipline, which I would call, you know, being overly results-oriented, having some issues with focus and distractibility, uh, boredom, procrastination, uh, you know, those are kind of generally the big ones, and they, they tend to be where our mind is getting weak, and it needs to be stronger and more focused and more diligent and more prepared and thinking about the right things, and there’s a training that needs to occur in that. So yeah, all those other things can create the potential for it, even meditation, potential, but then you got to get in there and really refine your mind in the right way, provided that there’s not emotional volatility causing you to break down. Because otherwise, that’s kind of like an injury, right? It’s an injury to the muscles in a sense, and so you’re not able to follow your rules because—or just like a, you know, a football—couldn’t, you know, run properly because they’ve got a quad tear, right? So if your emotions are paralyzing you, that is not a discipline problem. I think it’s good for people to know, ’cause you probably heard it a lot; you probably heard people say like, I’m just struggling with discipline, or you know, I’m very disciplined outside of my trading, but why isn’t it reflecting into my trading? Oh, and I’ll say the other thing too is trading can bring out emotional volatility in ways that life does not. So you might be incredibly disciplined because you’re not dealing with a lot of emotion there, and now all of a sudden that weakness is being exposed here because like trading is just that volatile.

And another thing in terms of like trading mindset, if you will, is it’s, you know, can people work with you in order to help them learn how to adapt to scaling their capital? Does that make sense? So like, you know, when people may, may have been used to trading $10,000, but now they’re suddenly trading 50,000, but they’re really struggling mentally with the new sort of loss sizes, profit sizes, and just general, you know, managing that size capital; is that another thing that they can work with you with?

Yeah, absolutely. So there’s, there’s a certain degree of this which is just conditioning, right? You’re just kind of getting used to it, and you know, if you’re now trading 10,000, getting used to 50,000 is kind of equal to getting used to, you know, a 2,000 when you were previously trading, you know, 500, right? The scaling up can be progressively kind of inoculated and conditioned to. However, that process can be accelerated when you understand, you know, kind of what flaws are typically getting exposed there. It’s, it’s—I would say generally it’s rare that it’s just pure conditioning, right? Just getting used to it. More often than not, there is some element that the previous mental, emotional issues that you were dealing with at that lower level were present, but with enough time you were able to kind of work through them without actually working through them, you know, kind of banding all of it. And and so yeah, to me it’s, it’s just more efficient to now kind of look beneath, look under the hood a little bit, analyze what was going on then and probably is going on now as well. So listen, as you’re scaling up, you know, one of the biggest things that you’re kind of running into now is, is the vision of the potential that you had from years ago, right? Now suddenly the dreams that you had are, are closer; maybe you’re on the precipice of actually being able to realize that, and it can be quite scary to feel like you got that close, right? I was, you know, one step from being in the Premier League, one step from being in the NBA, and I couldn’t make it, right? That, that can be incredibly painful if you were that close; it’s almost harder than if you were never able to even get that close, right? So the, the, the pressure that you now feel sometimes can be magnified then that could be different, right? Um, certainly the, the, the utility of the money, uh, the opportunity to make perhaps, you know, kind of transformative wealth for your family and what that can imply, um, sometimes, you know, there’s a, like a fear of success that can come out, too, um, that I’d say generally is a weakness in confidence. Sometimes people fear who they might become, right? We’ve all seen wealthy people—I’m not going to name any names—um, kind of lose a little bit of their marbles, you know, or like lots of bad things happen, uh, when they are very successful. And so sometimes you’re fearing that; sometimes it could be because, you know, you grew up poor, and you know, now suddenly to feel like you’re having this kind of money doesn’t feel—you know, there’s a bit of kind of imposter syndrome, or a bit of difficulty kind of feeling like you’re worthy enough to have that much capital. And again, it’s not saying that that’s—those all those problems can be solved, right? It’s again sometimes a question of just, um, understanding for you like what you really value, like what matters to you. Because often times, like, it’s like the headlines are the money and how much you’re making at that level, but when you really peel back the surface, it’s like, what do you really care about? It’s so—well, the money represents excellence; the money represents, uh, achievement and success, and and so that’s what matters, and so it doesn’t—you can kind of carry those values and make those more kind of front and center and remove a little bit of the focus on, on the amount of money that you’re trading or, or per, or perhaps making.

Another sort of scenario I’d like to throw at you, and I think this one could be very powerful for Traders out there; I’m sure it’s probably a very common one that you deal with, is how do—what work would you give to people, or what work do you do with people, should I say, who suffer a very large loss—L—that’s holding them back? So whether it’s a blown account or just a very significant loss, and it’s just really hit their confidence and really just holding them back from making any progress. So those large losses really kind of loom large, um, a lot of times because there’s a lack of understanding of really what caused it. Okay? So if you’ve suffered a large loss, um, it’s hard to muster the motivation to want to kind of climb up again, knowing that you’re kind of on shaky ground and that that could happen again easily, ’cause you don’t—if you don’t know what happened, it’s, it’s like, uh, being in a dark room at your house and all of a sudden getting punched in the face, like, like, like what just happened? And then you’re going to do anything you can to kind of avoid that until it doesn’t happen for a while, and you kind of forget about it, and then it happens again. So you know, you want to do the forensics; you want to really analyze like what was going on prior to that L, loss. And without fail, overconfidence is the sneaky, you know, kind of conspirator here, very much under the radar, um, it’s subtle. You know, just having excessive conviction, to me, can be defined as overconfidence, right? Because now you’re starting to believe things about your own ability to predict the future, to predict outcomes that is just not real. Even as much as like, today, you know, is going to be a great day, right? That, that’s overconfident; you don’t, you don’t—you’re not a psychic; you cannot make that kind of prediction. So being able to recognize the overconfidence, you know, building much like I mentioned earlier and the kind of that mapping process is vital, and it can take a little bit of work to see it for yourself, but, um, yeah, overconfidence is, is a big one. But let’s say that the, the large losses happened, uh, you know, three months or longer ago, then we kind of put it into the category of scar tissue, right? Trauma, uh, and there’s a little bit of a different kind of calculus there. Um, yes, you could, if it’s like kind of a singular event, do exactly what I just said, you know, go back to whatever it happened and really try to learn and understand why it happened, but sometimes these things kind of hang around in the background of our mind, even though we may have made some distinct Corrections. And not being able to like firmly understand like what’s still holding you back, um, needs to get worked through; it’s kind of like a, like scar tissue in your muscles; like you need a massage therapist to really kind of work through it. Now the protocol that I’ve developed for this is like an adaptation of the mental hand history that I, I described, and the second step to that is, is really vital. So the first step is to describe the problem, and in this case, describe the memory, describe the loss in as brutally precise detail as you can. Don’t just say, oh, you know, um, shorted Nvidia, you know, four years ago, right? Um, you know, really describe the details of, of what was going on in your life, trading, um, how much the money was, how much it mattered. Second step: why does it make sense that you are still holding on to that loss, right? And by trying to articulate that, it could be challenging; it’s a very hard question for some people to ask that have been trying to block this thing out for most of the time, uh, that question can start to open your mind a little bit, and the answer always is: there’s something for you to learn; you just don’t know what it is yet. And once you learn it, I’m not saying that all that emotion is going to go away, but you now have some bit of logic that you can be deploying into those moments where you’re having that reflex to kind of shy away from getting punched in the face, you know, entering the market, feeling like you’ve got some strength, like you now have something you can use to kind of push yourself through that fear, through that hesitation, to rebuild some confidence and motivation.

I love that. And I think hopefully a lot of people are going to take away so much from today’s podcast. And yeah, it’s—what’s interesting, I’ve been trying something new with our guests recently in terms of doing like a motivational speech, but I feel like that would be, that would be disrespectful to you, um, so instead what I’ll ask you to do is, is if you’d lower your lens, just here your camera, right here, just give 30 to 60 seconds max, your, you know, sort of thoughts or, you know, lesson or message to Traders out there for them to, to progress. I’ll say this: this work is not easy, but it is doable, you know, and just like being in the gym, the biggest gains come when your muscles are burning, right? When you give up, when things are easy and still kind of comfortable, you don’t really gain much, right? The gains come from pushing yourself when it is hard, and when you do that, there is real transformation that is out there, right? You, you can truly not just perform at other levels, but become a person that you can look in the mirror and, and be proud of, not even just because of the income that it produces, but because you know that you have actually progressed; you have actually improved in ways that nobody can take from you, whether you win or lose, whether you make it in trading or not; you have a guaranteed opportunity to make real progress on the mental and emotional side of this game. And, and, and that always de-risks the amount of time and effort that you’re putting into this because I know it’s hard, and I know you could have been spending years doing it, but when you can learn more about yourself, when you can learn skills that will transfer and help you in any aspect of life, and that’s the beauty of trading, you can do that; you can learn things here that can help you everywhere, and and then you’ve basically guaranteed that you’re going to win.

I love that. Thank you. Well, Jared, again, thank you for coming here today, and, um, it’s giving us so much to think about, so much to actually take action on, and hopefully people do actually take action on it, um, that was the main theme for today. But everyone at home, thank you for tuning in, as always. Make sure the links for Jared will be in the description below, so make sure you check that out, and make sure you get yourself a copy of The Mental Game of Trading, um, but yeah, drop a comment with your biggest takeaway from today’s episode. There, there’ll be links on like playlists to other episodes right here; make sure you hit subscribe, and until next time everyone, take care.