- I always say to people,
if you're not doing what you think you should be doing, what are you doing instead? I think it's a really important question because you know, we're making
choices all the time, right? We're either getting into the trade or not getting into the trade. We're either doing the analysis or we're not doing the analysis. - What's up, traders? Welcome back to the trader interview as far as the Desire To Trade Podcasts, as quick reminder every single week, I post a new interview
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appreciated of course. This week for the interview, I talked with Steve Ward. I spoke with Steve Ward a few years back, in 2017 for first interview with him and Steve is a trade psychologist. That's really well known
to trading industry, he's been working with
before sport athletes and now move the trading
several years back to have traders become
the main difficulties of trading we needed to
do mindset and psychology. Steve Ward has been
replaced by a lot of people and he came through the sec about things, but more in depth about discipline, about having the right mindset, having the right attitudes and things that you got
asked to be able to work on, to become a good trader. So if you're looking to take
your trading to the next level, this is gonna be the
perfect industry for that as I've run into the interview. Steve we're back on you now, tell people a little bit about who you are and just some background about yourself. - Sure, so yeah, my name is Steve Ward and I am a trade performance coach, I've been in that now for 15 years. So started working with traders in 2005, clients typically people in hedge funds, banks, commodities,
trading houses, flop firms and utility companies. Prior to that spent a number of years working as a sports psychology coach. And along that time also, I've been lucky enough
to spend a bit of time working with professional poker players, which also yeah, pretty interesting and also quite similar to the trading. Well, so yeah, so my work really is, you know very luckily traveled the world, worked with clients, from beginner traders all the way through to
market professionals, 25, 30 years plus, helping
them really to develop the sort of the psychology and also the physiology of their trading. So mind and body to
support kind of the craft would be sort of that the
way I would phrase it. - Excellent, very good, so we are on the TV with it together. I think in 2016, I was trying to find out the exact date actually
January, 2016 exactly. So I'm curious to know what
happens in your life since then. What's been going on? - Okay, so quite a lot, so yeah I mean, I think
since we last spoke, which probably was maybe a year or two after the Trader Mind book had come out, which was kind of focused on mindfulness based approaches for traders. And I guess a recent event
was a new book came out that came out June this
year, Bulletproof Trader, which is focused on
kind of how to deal with the downside with the
challenges or stresses and emotions of trading. And it kind of draws
upon a bit of psychology, some physiology, but also
it will be a philosophy. So, but it's stoic
philosophy in there as well. That's quite a new event, continued growth really
of the business working with more and more clients
which has been great. And yeah, just I guess
more learning from my side into kind of, you know
seeing lots more work in the neuroscience
field and in psychology about kind of decision
making, risk and uncertainty. So the continued learning for me. And yeah, I think that's really, it honestly this year I guess
with COVID-19, coronavirus, that has been a big event as well. And it changed my approach
to working with people, which has been quite
interesting as well, so. - Obviously that is right, I
haven't read that second book, but I'll definitely get
to it after for sure. I think it's definitely gonna be for terminals to be good for me. So I'll definitely get to it and have a look at it for sure. - Yeah, cool. - I know we mentioned the
first video about your story and how you became a HR psychologist, but I'm curious to hear about
what are the similarities between trading and poker? What's similar, what's different and how do both people
kind of have to work on things so you can better? - So I think that the core similarity between trading and poker,
essentially in both, your making decisions under
conditions of uncertainty. So I think that's why I
think trading and poker are more aligned than
trading in sports perhaps. And essentially you're making bets, so you're making a decision, you have to have to take risks that you're betting on that decision. The conditions are uncertain and often these things unfold over time. There's uncertainty, there's a big element
of uncontrollability. There's also a bit of novelty. So I think the conditions are very similar and what it really means
is in both you have to be or the craft is such is
really the risk taking, the decision making and then also use, we know in trading, how
we manage the money. So the money measurement side of things, I think that that's the
crux of what is similar. And then I think, you know within both it's the ability to have some
kind of process or strategy, and it can be very different. As we know in trading,
you can have multiple ways of trading the markets. There's multiple ways
that you can play poker. So there's a bit about having a strategy, a style, which also fits
with you as a person for things really important
that plays to your strengths. And then the skill also is in trading, the discipline terms is how do we execute that consistently over time? So obviously in poker,
the variance is very high. So you lose a lot of hands that can bring or see emotions and stresses and strains such as the, in trading. There's lots of also variants, how do we deal with the losses, the setbacks losing runs also importantly, how would we deal with the winning? So also in poker, you can end up with a big policy pretty quickly, in trading we can end up
with big wins quite quickly. And that can equally strips the system and kind of put into quite an
emotional high level state. So I think there's a lot of similarities and I think in both there's the ability to kind of keep playing
the game of such ongoing and continuing to learn and get better. So kind of the mastery of
the craft, I think is a real and certainly when I worked in poker and I see this in my
best trading clients is. Once you get beyond the
basics and learning the game, I think the ones who
play it for a long time and get really good,
there's a real joy in, you know trying to master the game itself, which I think is a good
kind of deeper motivation. - Does that a good poker
player would automatically be a good trader or are there some things that they have to work on first? - Yeah, I think there are
some good poker players that have become good traders and there are some good traders who also have become good poker players, but I don't think all good traders become good poker players and vice versa. So I think there was some uniqueness and different challenges
around what the actual craft and the skill set is. But I think definitely the, you
could probably take a trader and get them into poker
and learn the game faster than if you took a complete
beginner from another domain and likewise from poker into trading. So I think it gives you an
advantage as a starting point and then I think there's
some uniqueness to nuances beyond that which people
may or may not like or kind of get to grips
with personality wise, which predetermined how
well they did overall. - You mentioned the mastery of trading and mastering the skills trading. So how does that happen, what is the process people
will have to go through to be able to master the skill of trading? - So I think when we look at
the path to learning trade it's similar to learning anything. So the first stage really
is about experimentation, trying lots of things out. Just really, you know
like we would do in sport through might try lots
of different sports out. And we would find that we maybe have a preference for some
others, our strengths, our weaknesses, what we enjoy, what we feel we can be good at. I think, you know trading
that that should be the same and that's maybe where I think
in a lot of newer traders maybe finding or spending
more time just exploring and experimental before
you kind of hook into a certain market or certain
trading start is important. Then I think over time, there's the process of
going from standardized to individualize. So maybe starting off, we
learned in a very formal way, everyone learns the same
way to get the basics, but recognizing that over time, we then need to find our own
way of expressing our views and beliefs in the markets. So that evolution is really important and I think, you know the third factor, which I think is crucial
really or two things, one is recognizing that
the goal is learning. So I think sometimes in trading people come into it almost with a, they wanna make money with it, they come into it with an
earning mindset too early and they forget that
actually the early stages should be about learning
and that learning phase in professional trading, when I've worked with on
graduate training programs, we're talking two to
three years for people that are trading full time. So they're in the office five days a week, 54 weeks a year, 10 to 12 hours a day plus work in the weekends. So we would quite happily say to them, you know it'd be two to three years before we expect you to really start to get very competent
and really get towards a high level of capability in this. So, but it is a learning focus and that means there's
structured learning, there's a kind of progression of learning, teaching, coaching, mentoring, and all that adds huge value
to the learning process. I think some structured
learning focused experimentation and then standardized individualized are probably some of the core ingredients. - Do you feel like people
with different personalities learn trading a different way. Like some people are able
to maybe practice more, do it more by themselves and
people need more like a hand to guide them through the process? - Yeah, I think you
know, like we all things, we are all individual, we
all have different ways of experiencing the world of learning and also therefore own ways of kind of how we're gonna end up trading the market. So there is a lot of
variation and some people, yeah, absolutely will
kind of find real joy in almost trying to solve
the puzzle on their own. Other people will find more joy, maybe engaging with the
community and being part of that. So everyone's gonna find their own way. I think one thing that probably
all people do need though, at some stages you need some feedback. You know you need to be
getting some feedback on how well you're doing,
are you on the right track? And you can get almost so far on your own, but I think there's a real
value in also then being able to at some point in that journey, connect with people who
have either been there, seen it, done it, or can offer something that you can't see in yourself, because for all of us as individuals, we can only see things
through our own eyes and sometimes you need
to move to another level. We need outside feedback
to kind of help us to move along a little bit. So definitely it's gonna be
different for different people. - I remember the last time we spoke we discussed a few topics,
a few things people had to master and three skills
people have to master at. I think we talk about mindfulness, we talk about dealing with discomfort and maybe something else. What do you think are the main factors to becoming a good
trader over the longterm? - I think there's many, I mean there's trading
skills to begin with. So one of the things
you've gotta get good at is actually just the
craft of trading itself. So just, you know
understanding the markets, you know you've gotta
kinda be able to analyze, you've gotta better kind
of find opportunities, you've got managing your
risk and your money. So there's kind of the
trading component piece, the craft piece and then
there's the mind and the body. It also is the psychology
and the physiology, which is my domain. So I think it's really
important to recognize it probably for newer traders, there's a bias towards
mastering the craft. I think early on, you've
really got a focus on getting the basic skills and
the competencies in place. As you go further down
the road of trading, I think then the bias becomes more. Once you've got a good level
of competency in the craft, the role of the mind and the body play an increasingly important
piece to the point where probably for the very best traders is probably the largest
piece of the puzzle is probably what's going on in the mind, in the body and how that enables you then to kind of maximize the craft as such. So I mean, I think
there's a lot of pieces, if we go on the mindset side, I think there's a development
of a mental framework. So a mindset, how you think
about yourself as a trader, how you think about the markets, how you think about risk uncertainty and winning and losing. So there's the development ongoing of that inside that are probably
some mental skills like we've talked about. So mindfulness, I would
say that's a mental skill. So the ability to have this
present moment awareness, which I think is really important for a number of reasons. One of which is, your
ability to be able to notice and observe what's happening
within you, as it's happening, so we can have a chance to regulate it. Being able to work with
thoughts that show up. So sometimes if you're in trading, we get hooked by thoughts
on might be unhelpful needing a trade to win, an anxiety adapt by getting into the market, to being able to work with
thoughts that show up. Likewise, I think, you
know managing emotions is a mental skill that
needs to be developed and how we do that? So what we do with them when they show up is really important. Then I think there's a
piece about a big piece release goes into our previous
chat about discomfort, which is about recognizing
the need to be able to take action, even
though it's uncomfortable to take that action. You know, I think a lot of traders, their psychological challenges are because uncomfortable thoughts or
emotions or sensations show up. And that's perfectly normal, but they read it as being not normal or as being negative or unhelpful. And they create aversions to those. So they kinda try to avoid them. And when we try to avoid the discomfort, we unfortunately often
engage in trading behavior, which reduces our profitability. So you know if we try to avoid
a loss in the short term, that can feel quite
good, but we might end up with bigger losses over time. If we don't take traits,
then we might avoid losing on that trade, but we
miss out on the profits of that trade and so on and so. And I think on the body inside, I think how we manage your stress response is really important. So the physiological level and how we look after ourselves in terms of just basic energy needs. So, you know reducing
the impact to fatigue. So sleeping well, eating well, moving, getting recovery and all these factors. I think there's, I
think it's a big puzzle. It is my short answer,
it's a big jigsaw puzzle and there's lots of pieces in it and it's probably different
for different people. Some things are the same, some things are different
based on what you're trading and how you're trading it. - That was a big summary though, that's quite insightful,
quite interesting for sure. - There's more, but we just don't have the time today to go into. - Yeah, so you mentioned the fact that people learn the
craft of trading first and then later on they go
to psychology, physiology and all these things inside. Is there a way for people
to learn the psychology and the physiology
before they learn trading or do they have to go to the trading and then fail a little bit to be able to learn that properly after? - I think you can know it in advance. When I started trading, I learned to trade because I was working with
traders for the first time when it was completely new to me. So I want you to understand the world, the language and so on. So when I started trading, I was fortunate that I spent quite a lot of time in sports psychology and I was beginning to
really begin to get into and understand trading cycles. And I genuinely believe
having that knowledge helped me to learn
faster and to lose less. So definitely I think
it can be an advantage, but I think there's a
difference between reading about the psychology of losing or about mindset or about emotions in trading when you've never traded,
compared to when you have traded. And when I used to do a lot of work on the graduate training programs and we used to teach trading psychology almost without exception,
people would say, Steve I understand there's
these mental mistakes people might make and then, you know there's all these biases, but look I'm a smart guy, I'm not gonna make those mistakes. There's almost a little bit of a, you know people, it almost
feels run your profits, cut your losses, how hard can it be? And I think at the early stages, it can feel a bit like that. Like we can kind of
understand it conceptually, it's a bit like saying to a child, you know don't touch the flame. We know what it's gonna be like
if they touched your flame, they don't know what it's gonna be like. They've got almost, they've
got to touch the flame and I think trading is the same. So I think you can understand
the concept of it's hot, but I think you only realize
it's hot when you touch it. So I think there's a,
you can know the concepts and that's helpful in advance, but I think there's still an element where people need to actually
be involved in the markets. And this is what I found for myself, you know take some risks, have some wins, have some losses really
feel what it's like. And then I think you understand it more and you're probably more
likely to do the work that's needed to then train it. Cause it does, it takes a
lot of work to train the mind and to train the body, the
same as it takes a lot of work to train, you know the
craft and the skills and the knowledge and the
strategy and that's really key. So we evolved with our graduate programs where we would teach
some psychology early on, but we would do the majority of it kind of once they'd had
some live market experience, just because it was much more meaningful. People kind of go audit, sorry, but I think things around
learning and how to learn faster, some of the basics around, you know thinking in probabilities, just kind of knowing some of
that stuff upfront is helpful. And then I think once you get into it, you start to really understand
why it's really important. - What do you do with
people that are afraid to move into trading more, like people that they
find it a little bit hard, but then you have to go to the next step and you have to go live, you have to go on a bigger size account. How do you have them to
kind of take the next leap? - Well, I think the key thing is, I mean, first of all, I say to him, it's probably it's normal. So I think if a lot of people, when we are taking the next
step, whatever that step is, is public going to be
uncomfortable to some degree. I mean, there might be some anxieties or worries or fears or stresses, which are perfectly
normal to that situation. And I think this is one of
the key factors in trading, I say to lots of people is. Whatever the situation you're facing is difficult is you're not alone. There'll be many people
having the same feelings in the same situation. So what's showing up is normal. And that normalization
is really important. Then we we've all look
up at what is showing up that in some way is getting in your way of you taking this, that'd be wanna take, is it a thought, is it an emotion, is that thought we're just in the moment, is it tied to maybe
memories from the past? You know, maybe you've tried it before and it didn't work and that
memory is coming back in again. So kind of what's the interference it's kind of getting in the way and we could do some work
with that if we need to. Also, why is it important
to take the next step? So let's kinda build a bit of commitment to kind of have some
meaning to take this step. So let's commit to taking action. Let's work with what's showing up in terms of the thoughts and the feelings. So we can kind of take
those steps forward. But also let's do look at the steps because for some people maybe, if you're going from a smaller
account to a bigger account, the bigger account may just be too big. So what's the next size. And this is what I often do with trades, when we're looking at,
you know position sizing and risk is trade is and this
is typically in prop trading. I'll start off with two lots, they go to four, they go to eight, they go to 16, 32, 64, 128 and so on. Now for some people
that works really well. But for other people 16
to 32 suddenly is huge. There's no reason why you've
got to go from 16 lots to 32. You could go from 16 to 20
or 16 to 24 or 16 to 18. So, you know finding the next step, that's just a little bit uncomfortable, a bit of a stretch, but
it doesn't panicking is really important. And then at some points, you know if you're like going
from the simulator to live, sometimes it's like a parachute jump and you're in a leap of faith. You've got to commit, you do
everything you can to be ready. It's never gonna be comfortable and you have to do it anyway. And I think sometimes in trading, we do have to just recognize
that we are in such, I mean even placing a trade, there's no guarantee
it is a parachute jump. You do everything you can to prepare, to be ready to manage your
risk, but there's no guarantee. So you still got to
kind of take the action, even though it feels
uneasy or uncomfortable, just like a parachute jump. So you manage the risk as
you're doing parachuting, as you're doing climbing. But it's not that there's no
risk and there's no discomfort. And I think sometimes people just need to kind of do all that you can and then it is about, we
just all have to realize that when we're doing this kind
of risk and uncertainty work, it can feel challenging. That's how it is, it's not
okay, let's do it anyway. - Earlier today I was talking with a prop firm owner of Whiskey,
a guy who owns a prop firm. And he asked me a question which I tried to answer a little bit, I
kind of use some parts of it, but I'll ask you the same thing. And the thing he asked me was, how do you help traders become profitable? Putting aside the training aspect of like funding strategies,
reading strategies, how do you help people
become profitable traders? - The goal to profitability
is by developing competence. So you can't, you know you're
not gonna be profitable if you're not good. You know, you're not gonna be, you're not going to
make money in football, soccer, basketball,
tennis, unless you're good at what you do. So for me, the whole goal
of becoming profitable actually is and this is what
I think, is a money focus. I would say that the goal
is not to become profitable. The goal is actually to develop skill and knowledge and competence. If you develop the skill, the
knowledge, the competence, then you are likely to
also to become profitable. I think sometimes too much focus on becoming profitable,
several firms and institutions have to have that focus cost because they are risking their money on these people, essentially. So it is a business, but
I think where you can and this is what I would
encourage in people is the goal is to develop competence. The better you get at trading, the more likely you are to make money, but focusing on being profitable, doesn't always lead you
to take the behaviors that will actually make you profitable. If that makes sense. There's a bit, it's a bit of a paradox. Same as being, you know
if we're too focused on the outcome of our trading, we may actually deviate
away from the process that actually leads us
to get good outcomes. If we focus on the process
of making good decisions, we tend to get the best outcomes and I think that's really important, but I think the goal is competency. When I was working with the prop firms, we used to have a little
model called the J curve, where basically it's like
you said, just a J shape. And the bond part of the
J is kind of underneath that horizontal baseline. And we would try and say to people, we want that curve to
be short and shallow. So ideally we want you
to become profitable as fast as we can and
without going too deep down into your reserves as such. But again, how we did that was a real focus on
craft the mind and body, competence, coaching, mentoring, all these things can accelerate
people's learning curve, but it is very much a learning focus. And then we would almost say that the first phase is a learning phase. And then once you've kinda
get good at the craft and the mind and the body, then you can move into the earning phase. And now we're into, how do
we maximize the investment we've all put into your learning. Whereas other people flip it around and they kinda they try
and do the earning first and it compromises the learning. - That's a really good point. And I see it all the time,
people that wanna make money, but don't have the skills to match it up. They ended up not making money or making it short term
and start losing it. And you're right in the
sense that focusing on profit makes you have maybe bad habits
to enclose the trades early, because you want to have some profits and that's not gonna work
well longterm for sure. - Now, I'm really big and it's sometimes, it sounds a bit philosophical, but I think it's also very pragmatic that the goal of trading is to
make good trading decisions. So, you know I think even
in my very best clients, we talk a lot about decision making, what is a good decision,
what factors affect your decision making both
helpful and unhelpful. We talk a lot about I'm becoming
better at making decisions. So the goal actually
becoming a good trader is to become better at making decisions and taking risks under uncertainty. And the better you get at that, the better you get at
trading and in the better you probably end up in
the overtime in terms of, you know maximizing your market return. So as you said, anybody in the
short term could make money. Just through local mind
and that's also important that people recognize that,
you know the outcome of a trade is a combination of skill plus luck. And the skill piece is the trading process and the ability to execute the process. So that's the trading skill
and that's what's controllable and that's what I really try and get into with my clients is, you know let's look at the
developing the skill piece, the process, how you execute the process. When is it good, not so good strengths, weaknesses and so on. All the things that we have control over, we can then use to kind of, you know improve skill
expertise and so on. - Having built the skills then going into maximizing your
profit out of these skills. - I talk about it a bit like
I'm building a tower block where there are some foundations
and it can keep it simple, you know a method, a
mindset, money management or any of that kind of framework, but there's the foundational pieces that you need to get a knowledge wise, which if you've got
those and they're good, you can then basically build
a nice high tower block. If you don't have the
foundations in place, then when you try to increase
size and take more risks, essentially you're building
a higher tower block, but on poor foundations. Now there'll be times when
that's not a problem at all, but when it gets a
little bit windy or gusty or we get a few earth
tremors in the markets, then suddenly all comes crumbling down. So for me you know, I often
really encouraged people to think about and it's hard to get. It means it's a lot of hard work upfront, but get the basics done really well early and then actually scaling
up in size is a lot easier. And I was actually
doing a coaching session with a client earlier today, I went through a very similar process where we're looking at
specific opportunities in the markets, trading them well so far, I've done a lot of work and
putting the ground working, the basics, preparation,
knowledge and skill. And now the next step
is now we can maximize this opportunity even more
because the foundations are in place. And what it means is
if you feel competent, then you're gonna feel more confident and you're going to
experience less anxiety and worry and fear. If your level of competency is low, it's gonna be very hard
to execute without anxiety and worry and fear and stress because you don't have the knowledge or skills which you
need in the first place. So this is why you're the competence has such a big impact
on trade is execution, because that's what fills in the gap between how much fear or
anxiety you're experiencing is really a large factor of, have you got competence and
expertise in what you're doing? - That's very true, I spoke at a time, I was scared of trading,
they were afraid of losing. And it's just because they
didn't build the skills enough to get to the point where they feel like they do the decisions? - Yeah, I mean, honestly
some of my clients who've been trading 25, 30 years. They also still get anxieties
and they still get stresses and they still experience fear that's because we're all traders
all trade in the markets. And that's kinda part
of the common experience that we all have, but
it's the degree of that. And I think, you know the
challenge for newer traders is to realize that sometimes with and this is what they come to coaching, I'm always very wary, is
that some traders challenges, which they think are psychological, anxiety, fear, stress, or actually, they're not a psychological challenge. That's what we're seeing on the surface, but the real challenge is they just maybe don't have a strategy they trust or they don't have the skills
or the knowledge to understand what's going on in the markets or to kind of put the pieces
of the puzzle together. So, we have to be quite aware of it when we're having a
psychological challenge. Is it actually psychological war or is it a manifestation
from somewhere else within the trading process? I even had this recently
with an experienced trader you do some models in his trading and has been experiencing a
bit more anxiety and worry and stress than usual. And all it is is the markets have changed, the models are not as effective under the new market conditions. What he's realized is he
doesn't trust the models to be as reliable in the
new market conditions. And the feedback to that emotionally is some kind of anxiety and worry, but that's kind of what's happening is it's the feedback of
there's a shift and a change, it's not quite right. And the emotional messages
are letting him know that through his feelings. What was good is we've recognized that now we can take action
and now he's refining, updating the models, so they
kind of fit more effectively into the current market conditions. So, it can affect us
all at different stages and I think this is why
it's really important to when we're experiencing an emotion. Just ask the question, why
might I be feeling that, you know where is it coming from? It's really important. - How do you build discipline? What are this regarding
to taking the right traits or keeping the right habits
or anything related to that? How do you keep discipline over time? - Discipline is an interest one. I think it means different
things to different people, I think traditionally we would say, you know if you have a
plan, follow the plan. Some traders are more fluid than that. So some traders are kind
of much more in the flow. So maybe on the outside, they
don't look that discipline, but they do have a framework, but I think, you know discipline really begins with or improving begins with a
clarity of what my process is. So it might be a very intuitive process or it could be a, you know
five, six, seven, eight pages of bullet points or diagram. So, but there's some
steps that people take that enable them to make
money in the markets and there's some kind of edge. I think clarity of that you need to know or that is to begin with
is really important. Then I think if you are able to match your trading approach to
your own personal strengths and who you are as a person,
it makes discipline easier. So if you're trading in a way that's not aligned with your strengths and who you are as a person, then if essentially you're
trying to be someone you're not. So you're gonna work really hard. So that makes it hard to be disciplined because you're trying to be
something that you're not. So I think in the early stages, it's gonna find a process,
hopefully with some kind of edge suits you as a person,
that's the starting point. Within that process,
preparation, research, evaluate, you know analysis,
how do I get ready? Are some of the basics of that discipline. Execution, understanding about, you know when you're executing, what's helpful or not helpful for you is really important to kind
of where's the risk for you? Is it emotions that show
up, it's thoughts and so on. So knowing yourself, you
know kinda knowing whether those crucial spots
are where you're likely to maybe make a bad decision and why then you're doing the work to it to address those
areas is really important. Evaluation, analysis, I
think is a really key part of kind of overall disciplines,
kind of reflection., Again, for some people
it's five minutes a day for other people it's
an hour at the weekend, but you know, I think having
some reflective process, is really key. But I think discipline, there's
kind of the trading part. Then there's also at the personal level, you know if your life's really busy and you're trying to do
everything in the market as well, you might just be tired and fatigued or stressed because life is busy. So then it's hard to be disciplined. So, you know kind of
creating an environment that allows you to have
the energy and the focus to also be disciplined is
very important as well. So and some people by nature are much more disciplined than others. So kind of, again guess
you were building it into your trading framework
is really important, so. - That's good to mention
cause I know plenty of people that think that are disciplined, but it's just that they don't
have the right conditions to basically disciplined. They don't have the right amount of sleep or the right environment. And that makes them to think
that they're not disciplined, but in fact they're just not
in the right environment. - Yeah, nothing, you
know it's a tricky one because there's a number
of factors involved, which is you've got to have the motivation to do what needs to be done. I always say to people, you know if you're not doing what you think you should be doing, what are you doing instead? I think it's a really important
question cause you know, we're making choices all the time, right? We're either getting into the trade or not getting into the trade. We're either doing the analysis or we're not doing the analysis. But if I'm not doing my analysis, what am I doing with my time instead? Because that might just reflect actually there's other things in life
that also really important. And if I'm trying to fit
trading into my life, then it's a balancing of all the things that are important to me,
I've got to try and manage. And I've only got limited time and I've only got limited energy. So how do I balance that all
out into an effective way, which is really important. I think you know, just
energy is key to discipline. If people are fatigued, the
research is pretty clear that, you know when we're tired and fatigued, we don't have the same
level of self control of who would normally have. Self control is a high
order brain function and it requires energy. And when we're low in energy, we just don't have the capacity
to manage ourselves as well. So we're much more likely to, you know not put the effort or the time or have the ability to restrain ourselves. So at the basic level
probably physiologically, you know being energized
or not being too fatigued or too stressed is critical
to being disciplined. And then maybe, you know
sense of purpose goals, you know those things can kind of get a little bit of extra commitment. And I think and also thinking about, you know why you're
doing, why it's important? Who you wanna be, you know
the values can be good ways to kind of leverage commitments
such that discipline is for me, it's easy when we're energized and it's easy when we're motivated and it's easy when we are
confident and when we're happy, but we're not like that all the time. So it's, what can we
tap into that enables us to take action, even when
it's difficult to do that. You know, maybe we're tired or
we're feeling a bit stressed or anxious, but we're gonna do it anyway. And I think that's where,
you know the purpose and the values and the mission, maybe that deeper level
part of the mental framework becomes really important. - What are some of the habits you think most traders should have to be able to perform at their best? - Again, everyone's
gonna be different even, you know when I'm working with clients, we try and define individually
what performing at your best even means, what that looks
like for the individual. And that will determined to a degree then also what those habits are. But I think, you know some
of the basic ones are, there needs to be some way of preparing and preparation would have a
technical tactical component to it as well as a mentally
emotional component. So how do I kind of get
ready at the market level, but also at the me level. So I'm ready then I think,
you know any evaluation or analysis that should be a key habit. That again, in some form traders have, again, suits them in their style. I'm as you know, a big fan of things like mindfulness type practices, like that kind of awareness
practice is really key. And that could be anywhere
between 10 and 20 minutes a day, depending on individual or more. But I think, you know there's
a lot to be gained from that. More recently, I've done
a lot of work with clients around kind of breath work type practices. So that again, could be a
similar or alternative practice to do a journal that maybe isn't part of the normal trading reflection, but maybe it's just a chance
to, you know get thoughts and feelings down and to look at. It's helpful for a lot of
people in some way as well. Then I think, you know just things like, having a daily or weekly or even monthly, but a focus learning something, like a learning focus,
something to work on. So when I was working
with the newer traders, I'd often walk around the trading floor and just ask, you know what
you're working on right now? And sometimes they'd just be going well, I'm just trading, trying to make money. I'm going, yeah, I understand that. But alongside that,
what are you working on? How are you trying to
become a better trader? So I think, you know it's
a really good practice and I try and encourage
it in lots of my clients is to think about, you
know over the course of it could be the core to
the month or the week. You know, what's something you could do to become a better trader and then how can you act on that each day? That's the really good habits. I love the idea of kind of
this ongoing development and we're always working to be better. And as markets evolve
and change as you know, we need to keep updating ourselves. So it's actually critical when you've made like a big poster of about
a 100 different exercises for that mental, you
know watch your Podcast, read an article, speak to an
experienced trader and so on. And then we said to me, you
should be doing one thing from your list every day. And some tasks might take a minute and some might take an hour. But every day try and do
something from that list. So you feel that in some way you becoming a better trader
in a kind of a proactive way. - Do you feel like
meditation or breath work, is the best time in the day to do it? Or you can do it pretty much anytime in the evening or in
the morning or whatever and does make a difference? - I think the best time
or the answer I would give is the time when you can
be most consistent with it. I think the challenge for people is the consistency of the practice. You know you'll get
the gains, breath work, meditation, exercise, whatever it is, the gains come through consistency. And so it's finding the time of day when you're gonna be most consistent, which for some of them might
be first thing in the morning, others lunchtime, some
it could be an evening. I've not seen any research
that shows specifically a better and a worse time. There might be some better or worse times based on the effect that
you were trying to get. But for me, consistency is the key and that's the challenge for most people when they take on meditation,
mindfulness, breath work, whatever it is doing it regularly. So I think that's the biggest barrier. Let's make it as easy as
possible to overcome that barrier and get the consistency first. And again, even timeframe, you know start small three minutes, four minutes, five minutes,
build up over time, make it easy to get
into it, build the habit and then you can always
extend to beyond that. - That's good, after
meditation that gives me a few different times and
what's in store for me. It was like mostly afternoon, but I also see a benefit of doing it before 7:30 in the morning. That's why I wasn't sure about it, but I think both times
worked really well, so. - And again, like we
said before with learning is good for me this is all
about self experimentation. So it's good to try
different times of the day, different lengths, different
types of meditation, try lots of things out
and then you'll start to find out what works. And I think, you know sometimes we almost looking for the answer
too quickly and I think, you know we miss out on the joy, but also the value in the experimenting and the testing and the
trying and the narrowing down. And when we look at behavior change, which is what performance
improvement really is. I always frame that around
self experimentation. Now we're going to do an
experiment, let's test it. We've got an idea, if
we try this behavior, it might impact your trading in this way. Okay, great, that's our hypothesis. Let's design an experiment, let's test it, we'll get some feedback,
we see how it goes and you know, then we'll adapt to it or refine it if we need to. But it's all about this kind of, I guess a bit of a playfulness, you know not to get into a clingy, we've got to solve it right
away in a certain way, but being open to different possibilities. - Definitely super important. So you're working on
a new course right now that you're gonna be launching soon, actually a live training. So I wanna give you
some time to tell people what that's about and who it's for and how it can help people to be able to get better trading? - It's a new course,
it's launching October this year so 2020 and
it's different because it's the first time I've run a course for non institutional professional traders for many, many, many years. And it's come really, cause every year I get asked by individuals for coaching or by groups for program,
training programs. And I just don't really
have the time to do it. And also this year has been
a bit different with COVID-19 and coronavirus. So I've been at home a lot more so and in fact actually
the demands been higher. So yeah, so we're gonna launch the course and the goal really is to help people to develop the trading
psychology specifically. So it's kind of a mental
framework and mental skills, that's gonna be the main focus, seven sessions of about an hour and then some Q and A beyond that as well or delivered live via by Webinar. And that roll over that six week period. Then we'll have a pause for about a month and then we'll have
about four weeks later, we can have like a
little Q and A catch up, checking on progress and share
some successes and so on. So, in total eight sessions
and for my side really what I want you to offer
people with a chance to work on a very sort of
mindset specific program, a chance for me to share
some of the knowledge and the insights that
I've been lucky to gain from working with some phenomenal traders from all over the world,
different institutions and to share with the people
who come on the course, just some of the techniques
and the approaches that I use with those clients, so they can try them out
for themselves as well. And then between the sessions,
we're gonna have some, you know follow up activities, it'd be a journal, some
workbook and exercises. So we try and make it pretty immersive, I think in the Q and A sessions, I was really keen to
do the Q and A session so that people can have
a chance to ask questions cause we can't do one to one coaching. So it's going to be in a group, but people can ask questions, I'm not gonna try and give some advice or guidance in real time
like we're doing now in this Podcast and yeah, do some a little bit different for people. So that's the goal, so
yeah and then I'll say it will run mid of October
through to end of November. And then the Q and A
session will be at the end or put it ended December
early January next year. So that's the plan as it is at the moment. - Awesome, so I'm pulling
beyond the description for that program for sure. I think you're good at
what you do for sure and people that want to
be able to master more, the psychological mindset of trading and physiology as well. We're gonna be able to learn
a lot from you for sure, that's awesome. - Yeah, and it will be,
we're gonna launch it under the website, web address will be, www.trade@yourbest.com. So people are looking for it
that's where they'll find it. So website's not up yet, but
it'll be up pretty soon, so. - Excellent, so Steve,
is there one last advice you would like to leave people with, any last talked or something
you want people to kind of, maybe you work on next few months? - I would say for me and it's been a theme of our conversation. I'm gonna come back down to the goal, I think if people can
really focus on the goal of trading is to get better at trading and to make it a learning
focused mastery activity. I think for a lot of
people that can really make a big difference to the experience they have in the market. So it's all about
developing your competence on the path from beginner
through to kind of expert, keep evolving, looking to get better. You've got to work on
the craft, the skills, the knowledge, the strategy. You've got to work on your mindset. You've got to be mindful of also what's going on in the body as well. And just, you know keep doing to get better at making decisions
under conditions of uncertainty. If you keep that as a core focus, that's been pretty helpful for people. - Excellent, Steve, it was
a really good interview and I really appreciate
the advice to give people, myself and the viewers as well and hope to catch up with you. - You're welcomed and
thanks for inviting me back. Appreciate it Etienne. (soft music)
