Steven Goldstein
@AlphaMind101
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Author of 'Mastering the Mental Game of Trading'. Order at: '. Trading Performance Coach, Co-Host of the AlphaMind Podcast Gooner 🔴⚪️
London, UK.
Joined March 2012
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The real quality it takes to succeed at trading may surprise you (A long thread)
Having coached many great traders I have gained a deep insight into what it takes to be a great performer in the trading world. Last year, one client was named HFM Asian Hedge Fund Manager 1/32
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I bookmarked this tweet from
@MarkHertling
from the day after Russia invaded Ukraine.
How many people could have been so prophetic in the 24 hours after Russia first invaded Ukraine. - Extraordinary.
#Ukraine
#Ukrainewar
After one of my
@CNN
appearances, one of the anchors asked me off-air why I had confidence in Ukraine's army to push back agains the illegal Russian military onslaught.
I used a bit of "battlefield math" to explain my rationale. 1/16
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I want to be a pilot - Learn for 5 years
I want to be a Lawyer - Get a degree then learn for 5 years
I want to be boxer - Practice for 4/5 years.
I want to be an athlete - Practice for many years.
I want to be a Trader - Start tomorrow.
Any guesses why so many fail??🤔🤔🤔🤔
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New Trader: ‘I want a Lamborghini next year’
Trader after 1 year; ‘Maybe I’ll get a Lambo one day’.
Trader after 2 years; ’A Ford would be nice’.
Trader after 3 years; ‘This bike is making me fitter‘.
Trader after 4 years; ‘Walking is good for me’.
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For almost 25 years I earned my living as a professional trader, it was a fascinating job that I loved.
But there were times too when it wrenched the very living soul and every ounce of self-esteem from me. - The advertisers and gurus won’t tell you that. 🤔🤔🤔
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No Trader who achieved sustained success, did so because they learned to beat the market. They did so because they learned to beat themselves.
Beating the market, is not that difficult, as paper trading demonstrates.
Beating yourself however, that’s the challenge of a lifetime.
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The great traders I coach do the same dumb things as the rest of us mortals. They buy false breakouts, take profits early, under size, over size, tinker with stops, beat themselves up. They are human like the rest of us.
They just do them less.
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Your trading strategy is not your edge! It’s not unique, there’ll be many who use the same strategy.
Your edge is your ability to apply your strategy effectively.
Since very few can do this, that’s what truly makes a trader unique and successful.
This is your true edge💰
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Not long ago, a despondent 45 year old trader who, after 5 yrs trading, was struggling to achieve consistency and told me he felt he started too late and was taking too long.
I shared the story of Jim Simons with him.👇
Trading is a deep skill that takes many years to master.
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Movies for Traders to watch whilst isolated:
- Wall Street
- Wolf of Wall Street
- The Big Short
- Trading Places
- Margin Call
- Boiler Room
- Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room
- Glangarry Glen Ross
21 and Molly’s Game - Gambling rather the trading.
Any more??
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10 years ago I coached one of the most phenomenal traders I've ever worked with.
He didn't talk to me about finding value, analysis, his views on markets, he just talked about risk.
He knew that this was what the game was all about, 'Risk'.
If you want to become elite at
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Risk Management in trading has 2 effects::
1 - It reduces upside.
2 - It keeps you in the game.
If you want effect 2, you have to accept effect 1. Many people don’t do it properly because of effect 1, but all the extra upside in the world doesn’t matter when it’s game over.
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Trading is:
not Economics but Crowd Psychology.
not Accounting but Risk Management.
not Analysis but Decision-Making.
not Science but Performance Art.
not Gambling but Gaming.
not something learned in a few short weeks, but over many years and mastered over a lifetime.
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The job of a trader is to endure pain.
If you succeeded, it's because you endured a lifetime of pain.
Truth 💊💊💊
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Trading success has a price. That price is psychological discomfort.
No pain📉🥲no gain📈😃
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"Why Great Trader Embrace Doing The Boring Stuff‘
A 🧵
It’s often the case that traders defer putting off the things that could make them better, stronger, more effective, or more productive, because, well, quite simply, they can’t be bothered.
This stuff, these actions
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Many highly intelligent people can’t make money trading, yet many people without a single degree are multi-millionaires from trading.
So I’ll just leave this here:
The key to trading success is emotional discipline. If intelligence were the key, there would be a lot more
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From one of my trading clients.
‘The Art of Trading is learning to sit around and do nothing, when everything in your mind screams at you to do something, balanced with having the guts to do something when everything in your mind screams at you not to do nothing.’
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Don't let your high intelligence fool you into thinking you should be succeeding in trading. Trading is a performance activity, not an intellectual pursuit.
Success hinges less on intelligence and more on attributes like emotional resilience, sensing capabilities, adaptability,
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37 years in markets, ain’t seen many days with price action like today.
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A 🧵 on learning to become a trader.
Many new traders make the mistake of assuming you can learn to trade from a book or course. Whereas in reality, what you get from these are an introduction to trading.
Whilst naturally, you have to start somewhere, it’s easy to be
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Great Traders don’t just think about the market, they feel it.
When you feel the market, your body gives you signals personal to you.
That can be a huge edge.
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Trading will take you to emotionally uncomfortable places.
Trading success requires you being willing to travel to these ‘uncomfortable places’ and then learning to survive and thrive there.
Pain avoidance holds you back. There is simply no painless way to succeed in trading.
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Killer Trading Quotes:
“The discipline which is most important is not accounting or economics, it’s psychology.” - Howard Marks
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There something very special about getting your hands on a physical copy of the words you've written in book form📖
Only another 2 months until I can share it with the rest of the world.
If you are interested, the book can be preordered here:
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The traders who come out on top don’t have the best strategies, the most information or knowledge, or the best systems.
They have a superior mental game.
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Many new traders don’t actually learn to trade, rather they learn to trade a system.
This is akin to learning to play a single song on a guitar rather than learning to play the guitar as an instrument and developing the ability to read music.
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Journaling is one of the most powerful activities a trader can do. It enables you to have a near real time record of what you were thinking & feeling at a moment.
I’ve often looked back at my old journals and been surprised at how much my mind changed my recollection of events.
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When a 20 year veteran trader, and one of the most successful traders out there, says;
"I still making the same f-cking stupid mistakes I did when I started."
You realise, ‘it’s not just you, this remains forever, a hugely challenging job’.
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A trading strategy alone can’t be considered as an edge, as it highly unlikely to be unique or special. Their edge is their ability to apply their strategy effectively. Since very few can do this, that’s what truly makes a trader unique and successful. This is their true edge.
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Our latest Podcast is with the Merritt Black, founder of prop firm Apteros Trading & former head of Futures Trading at SMB Capital.
There's golden nuggets of trading wisdom in every word he says.
🎧
📺
@merrittblack
Soundbites👇
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A thread on the 4 levels of trader learning that I hope you find useful?
People don’t realise how hard trading is and how long and steep a learning curve it is. Most think it’s something simple, and early success or easy wins often masks that tough learning journey.
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Real trades don’t brag about their profits. They know that the moment they do, there’s a plate with their Ass on it waiting to be served.
Only in the online world of marketers hoping to get you to subscribe, do people brag about their “profits”.
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Only trading can do this.
True story: 2 clients (in banks) in recent weeks.
Client 1: Had a day where at one point was up over $200k but finished +$10k. Felt a huge failure.
Client 2: Had a day where was down over $150k at one point but finished -$10k. Felt like a King.
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I once met a behavioural finance PhD who’s thesis sought to disprove Technical Analysis
He presented research that showed H&Ss fail most the time. When I stated that failed H&Ss are one of my favourite trade indicators, which therefore argues ‘for’ T/A, he almost self-combusted
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Every year, when I accepted that I didn’t know where markets were going, I made money. Every year I thought I knew where markets were going, I underperformed.
Not knowing is powerful.
Radically not knowing is even more powerful.
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A thread on learning trading:
When you come to trading you aren’t a blank canvas. You have views about how the world works or should work.
You typically take the same views & philosophies into trading.
This is often where it starts to go wrong.
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The price of success in trading is psychological discomfort.
No pain📉🥲🤕no gain📈😃💰
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Traders make the mistake of thinking that their Trading Strategy is their edge. It’s not.
Their trading strategy is not unique, there’ll be many who use the same strategy.
The edge comes from the trader’s ability to apply their strategy effectively. That requires a high level
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New Trader: “I just need to work out where the market is heading and I’ll make millions”.
Seasoned Trader: “I just needed to know how to control my impulses, not be governed by my emotions, and manage my risk, and that’s how I made millions”
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Your job as a trader is not to catch every market move, but to catch the moves that match your strategy, and to take the ones your strategy identifies. Trades taken outside of your strategy, are temptations laced with poison.
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A while ago a despondent trader reached out to me, he was 45 and after 5 yrs was struggling to achieve consistency. He felt he'd started too late and taken too long.
Trading is a deep skill, and learning it is always a long journey. I then pointed out the following👇👇👇
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My problem as a trader was never losing money, it was what losing implied: Being wrong, being an idiot, a failure, inadequate. That was hard on my ego.
In theory it shouldn’t have been, but in practice, I couldn’t help the feelings my psych generated.
That’s what trading does.
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In 36 years in markets, I’ve known many successful traders. I can’t think of any who made their money from taking buy and sell recommendations given to them by other people.
Still, I’m always ready to be surprised!!
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In my 25yr trading career, much of the time I was just trying not to sink, in doing so, I would learn how to swim. But conditions would then change, and again it was about trying not to sink, then learning to swim again in the new conditions.
This pattern repeated many times.
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Jim Simons is the most successful trader of the past 3 decades by a country mile.
He didn’t predict/have views on markets
He was wrong about 50% of the time
He didn’t apply ‘run your profits/cut your losses.’
He constructed a process (his system) and adhered to it religiously.
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I’m going to state it plain and simple. If you as a trader suffers from bouts of self-doubt, fears of inadequacy, concerns you may not be good enough, worries you’ll be found out, and so many more aspects that you feel are deeply personally to you, well your not alone, far far
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First look of my new book📚’Mastering the Mental Game of Trading’ described by Brent Donnelly as “One of the most important trading book in years, an instant must read”.
Its release date is Jan 16th 2024, but it’s available for pre-orders on Amazon at
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Trading is:
not Economics but Crowd Psychology.
not Accounting but Risk Management.
not Analysis but Decision-Making.
not Science but Performance Art.
not Investing but Poker.
not something learned in a few short weeks, but over many years and is mastered over a lifetime.
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“Why do you think unsuccessful traders are obsessed with market analysis?”
-Mark Douglas
👉👉👉Douglas knew it !!!
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Trading: It's not you versus the numbers on the screen, it's you versus a lot of other people
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A great poem for traders, or anyone facing the performance challenge.
👇👇👇
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I‘ve see many people on Twitter boasting about successful trades, great wins, outstanding calls.
I worked as & with traders for over 3 decades.
This is not the behaviour of genuine traders.
When I look back, I can’t think of a single successful trader who behaved like this.
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@datepsych
They’re probably a terrible trader or investor!
‘If you've got 160 IQ, sell 30 points to somebody else because you won't need it in investing.’ - Warren Buffett.
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Traders, ‘Let Go’ of your
- need to be right
- need to make money
- unrealistic expectations
- fear of failing
- fear of feeling stupid
- your drive for perfection in a world of uncertainty.
- your should have and could haves.
Let it all go, and let it come to you instead.
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To succeed at trading, you have to master the ‘Art of Losing’.
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A 🧵 on trading👇
Despite knowing that there’s no magic system, secret formula, or special indicator that leads to trading success, I still spent many years as a trader, foolishly searching for them.
Then, after 13 years, I started working with a coach. This was the start
1/12
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So a random YouTube guy says he turned $100k into a $1million in a year trading his system. He then says you can buy it from him and make 10x your capital in a year.
What an idiot, he’d be much wiser to use it to turn 1mio into 10mio rather than sell it!
Daft🤔
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Ok, I'm going to challenge you!
Are you a trader, but you spend all your time doing analysis. - Somehow I managed to maintain a career for 15 years, as a trader, behaving like this.
Performance was Ok'ish, but mediocre in truth.
I then shifted, to focusing less on idea
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When you Focus on the Trading ‘Process’, the odds of making money increase significantly
When you Focus on the Money, the odds of corrupting your Trading Process increase significantly
It’s the process that makes the money, but the money that corrupts the process🤔🤔🤔
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People in most jobs: ‘Fck! It’s Monday, do I have to go in’.
People in trading: ‘Fuckk Yea it’s Monday’
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One of the most transitional moments in my trading career came after more than a decade trading. It became apparent that often I was more analyst than trader. I made great calls, but was poor at monetising them. Addressing this led to a sharp increase in my performance.
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Early success in trading can give people a false impression of their likelihood of future success.
However it’s the length & depth of the dip & the loss of heart from it, that causes many to give-up.
Learning is a process & an art that takes time.
Have faith, stay the course.
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If you’re finding markets tough right now, just remember, all the great traders started in bull markets, but were made in bear markets.
Now your growth journey is really starting.
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Trading is a mental game. We'll always think we could have made more, lost less, been sharper, placed more risk, been quicker, not taken the trade, or done it differently.
The market is the arena, but the battleground is always inside your head.
#tradingpsychology
#mentalgame
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One of the most important moments for me in my trading career was when I learned to live by the mantra ‘love your losses’.
Ridiculous as this sounds, your losses are your capital. They need to happen for you to win.
If you can’t stomach a loss, you’ll never succeed.
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What most people don’t get about trading is that it’s a performance activity . That means it takes skill, craft, acumen, intuitive nous, the ability to improvise, be creative. It’s art not science. You can not just learn it from a book or a YouTube video, you need to experience
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Traders. Here’s a useful model for your journal. It’s call a 331
Every week, write down:
3 things you did well that week?
3 things you did not do well that week!
1 big thing you must improve going forward?
Over time you’ll build a valuable behaviour record to work on.
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In the first half of my trading career I was good at calling the market moves, but poor at being able to monetise them.
Later in my career, this changed as I placed a lot more emphasis on my risk process.
Being good at the analysis is meaningless if you aren’t good at risk.
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One of the primary reasons for failure in trading, is that most people don’t know how to ‘learn’ the art of ‘high performance’.
Learning to do something challenging is incredibly hard, yet most people think they should ‘just be able to do it’. They spend their time acquiring
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Most Traders when struggling: ‘It’s not me, its the market!’
Great Traders when struggling: ‘It’s not the market, it’s me’.
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There’s many in tools in trading, that cost a lot of money and barely make any difference to your performance.
Yet journaling is one of the most powerful tools any trader can have, is virtually free, and can be used in all sorts of beneficial ways.
One of my old journals👇
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@AdamColb_
You forgot to add that you are also lying to yourself. You can’t have it such that everyone else is lying and only you have completely clarity about the truth, this must be the case as you are part of all other people’s ’everyone else’.
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Many people enter trading with their full account, despite never having traded before.
That’s like deciding your going to get into mountain climbing and starting off with Mt Everest on day 1.
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“It was never my thinking that made the big money for me, it always was sitting. sitting tight."
Jesse Livermore
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Me to 2 new traders: Guys how’s the learning going?
Trader A: I’m focusing on Anaysis and Stock-Picking.
Trader B: I’m focusing on Risk and Money Management.
Revisiting the traders 1 year later.
Trader B: Trader A’s not here any more.
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Each day, in markets, as you sit down at your screen, millions of other traders are doing the same, each one looking to come out on top.
But none of them are your toughest opponent. That honour goes to you.
The only opponent you must try to beat, is yourself.
Good luck 🤞
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The only field of performance where people develop their skills and go it alone, is trading.
Trading is a deep skill: Yet most people seem to think they can make money when they are the least skilled.
The early years should be on learning & development, not making money.
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George Soros's Best Quotes:
"I'm only rich because I know when I'm wrong...I basically have survived by recognizing my mistakes."
#soros
#trading
#investing
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Revenge trading is actually your ego taking revenge on yourself for making a decision which your ego probably made you make.
Is there anything in trading more fcked-up than that?
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‘Most people think that winning in the markets has something to do with finding the secret formula. The truth is that any common denominator among the traders I interviewed had more to do with attitude than approach’. – Jack Schwager, Market Wizards.
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The 2 impacts of Risk Management in trading:
1 - It lowers your returns.
2- It keeps you in the game.
If you want 2, you must accept the reality of 1. Many people don’t do Risk Management properly because of 1, but all that extra upside is meaningless when it’s game over.
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If you think trading is a science: Good luck, keep trying
If you think trading is an art, you are on the right track. Now learn the art.
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One of the deep skills some of the best traders develop is the depersonalisation of trading.
They don’t see their wins & losses as vindication’s of who they are, but instead as merely the inevitable outcomes of random processes.
This is an incredibly hard act to pull off.
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I’m never ever going to apologise for over-posting this Victor Sperandeo quote from Market Wizards
“The key to trading success is emotional discipline. If intelligence were the key, there would be a lot more people making money trading.”
#trading
#EmotionalIntelligence
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If you're great at Analysis but OK at Risk. You'll probably struggle at Trading
If you're OK at Analysis but great at Risk. You'll probably be highly successful at Trading
Analysis matters, but it's really all about Risk. ⚠️⚠️⚠️📈📈📈
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The first half of my 25 years as a trader,
Mostly Mediocre performance, with a couple of strong years to live off.
The second half of my trading career. Consistently strong performance on much higher levels of risk.
What changed?
First half of my career, my mindset was
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Focus on the Process, and the odds of making money increase significantly.
Focus on the Money, and the odds of corrupting your process increase significantly.
It’s the process that makes the money.
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The dumb-shit you do in trading is the same dumb-shit everyone else does.
Becoming self aware therefore makes you more aware of the market and what it may do. That’s a powerful edge.
By continually working on your self-awareness you actually become more market aware.
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All trading involves analysis. But analysis isn't trading, it's part of it.
One of the biggest sources of failure is an overfocus on analysis, at the expense of a focus on risk-taking.
Risk-taking is the major part of trading. It's where the rubber meets the road.
Work on it!
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@girdley
Great thread. Thks. Useful one to add.
We spend far too much energy worrying what other people think about us, when the reality is they’re barely giving us a second thought because they’re too concerned worrying what we (and others) think about them.
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The graveyard of trading careers is littered with traders who took an intraday trade, and were still holding it days, or even weeks, later.
Trader's need 'to be right' lies at the very heart of this.
Letting-Go of the 'need to be right', is one of trading's great liberators.
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A Paradox of Trading is you spend far more time on analysis then on risk processes.
You will therefore probably spend far more effort in developing your analytical skills than your risk skills.
And yet it’s your risk skills which are far more important to your success.
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The reality of Trading is that it takes you to ‘Uncomfortable Places’ emotionally. But if you aren’t willing to travel there, you have no chance of winning.
Your approach must enable you to travel these ‘uncomfortable places’ in as comfortable way as possible for you.
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A thread on the mindset of trading🧵📈📉
My new book 'Mastering the Mental Game of Trading' was published this week, and is off to a flyer, reaching the no 1 best seller spot for 'Online Trading and Investing' on Amazon UK.
While the book explores trading, its primary
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When I finally found trading success, I wasn’t suddenly finding winning trades. I’d been finding them for years.
Rather, it was my ability to effectively monetise them because I developed a more robust risk process.
Trading is far more than just screens, charts and numbers.
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I never knew if the S&P was going higher or lower.
I didn’t know where the EURUSD was heading.
I had no opinion on the right level of Gold.
By not having a view, I remained open-minded and would find good trading ideas. When I thought I knew, I often got into trouble.
My
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When someone says Technical Analysis doesn’t work, that person is merely revealing their ignorance.
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