June 24, 2019
Steven Goldstein & Mark Randall
This episode of the AlphaMind podcast jointly explores the subject of 'Trading Mindset' through the lens of Carol Dweck's Growth Mindset philosophy.
This conversation covers a broad swathe of themes around the subject of 'Mindset' in trading, including:
So much great wisdom shared in this conversation. We think you will really enjoy it.
AlphaMind: Powering Performance in Global Markets
AlphaMind brings powerful change, growth and development to people and businesses within global markets.
Driven by a deep understanding of how markets work, and how people and businesses function within them, we partner with clients to create personal performance improvements that elevate returns across their trading activities.
Go to the AlphaMind website to know more.
June 24, 2019
Steven Goldstein & Mark Randall
This episode of the AlphaMind podcast jointly explores the subject of 'Trading Mindset' through the lens of Carol Dweck's Growth Mindset philosophy.
This conversation covers a broad swathe of themes around the subject of 'Mindset' in trading, including:
So much great wisdom shared in this conversation. We think you will really enjoy it.
AlphaMind: Powering Performance in Global Markets
AlphaMind brings powerful change, growth and development to people and businesses within global markets.
Driven by a deep understanding of how markets work, and how people and businesses function within them, we partner with clients to create personal performance improvements that elevate returns across their trading activities.
Go to the AlphaMind website to know more.
Hello and welcome to the Alpha mind podcast. I am Mark Randall and I am Stephen Goldstein. Alpha mind is a series of regular podcasts that will focus on performance, mindset, behavior, and emotional intelligence for traders, investment professionals and market participants.
Speaker 2:Please join us on this journey as we explore together the aspects which lead to an optimum mindset for the creation of our phone, what we call an air for mine.
Speaker 3:[inaudible]
Steve Goldstein:so wrapped into the, uh, the third session of the Afro podcast. I'm Stephen Goldstein and my name is Mark Randall and we're going to be talking today about mindset in trading and investment performance.
Mark Randall :And, uh, I know Steve's had a great Vaco away and it's taken care of that of expert mindset within. So ponder over for, I think that the third time, uh, I'm learning some great skills from that Nichols mindset is significant mindset. Could Michael break here? Is someone facing the complexities of the financial markets? There's a lot you need to cope with. There's a lot of things that can go wrong, do go wrong, will go wrong. And that's how you, your mind deals with that. That it's very, very important and things that do go wrong. But after the failures, it's important to learn from those experiences and to move on. Um, but people often get stuck with those experiences and Robinson's thing's been a failure. It becomes something where you start to consider that you yourself are failing. And the, I'm a failure and that then brings about a negative mindset. So I don't have Steve of you've picked up that message, right. And Kendall's great book, but it's very much the case, isn't it?
Steve Goldstein:Yeah, yeah.[inaudible] as you just said, you're right. You say that it was a, I've read the book before and a few things I've made led me to read it again and now I'm actually reading it third time because the second time it's even better than the first time. And now I'm making notes. I was so engrossed and grossed in it, but I recognize so much of myself in it from when I was a trader and I recognize so much of my clients now as a coach or aspects of them in it. And I, and I notice how, you know, run into things. That's clear to me is how the really successful changes I work with tend to have this growth mindset. Yeah. So I might maybe just to give'em a quick, quick overview of Carol, Carol direct's theory here of the growth mindset. It's really saying that we have as individuals to run two mindsets, a growth mindset and a fixed mindset and we predominantly run or we are predominantly the other. I bet we could also switch between the two. Um, and a growth mindset is a mindset where really you're, you, you want to learn your, your, your, your talents are not considered as fixed, but you're always up for learning. You're always up for growing. Um, you always think you can get better. You're not the complete, um, finished article. And I don't know if that's a complete description as hell. Sorry the book describes it or Kara would describe it. But that's my interpretation. And the fixed mindset is one where we say to our talents are fixed, that we are already good enough, that we are talented in a sense that we deserve a success. And then we don't need to trust our hold. And we don't need to learn.
Mark Randall :[inaudible] interesting. I think one of the things that I questioned in that book was the sum. It talked about almost been one or the other in terms of mindsets and uh, but of course from my own experience when I was down on, for example, that the early days of the life law, I had a pretty fixed mindset about maths. Really. I didn't like maths, didn't like anything to do with maths, but I had a growth mindset around the art of the markets and the creativity of the market and the, the networking of the market and the people of the market because the market is all of those things. And so I think her book is interesting, but I think we are slightly more complicated than some of the things she's spoken about. And we had this bandwidth for things that we are, that we know were rubbish. So we don't focus our attention there and we concentrate on our strengths and build them and learn by them and fowl and build again and learn. And we have to have a growth mindset for that. So I think collectively and as we grow older that can change. So I'm more susceptible now to mathematics and it wasn't the fall because I've matured and maybe I've learned some tricks and things, but that then has to be linked into growth mindset.
Steve Goldstein:So yeah, I mean I think the thing about the broke is, is a is a little bit, you know, she's given his own problems. Yeah. And she has to sort of specify some clear examples. Yeah. For the point she's making. Yeah. But of course it is far more complex than that. And you know, I recognize my son when she talks about that going into a fixed mindset sometimes and into growth mindset and the other times, um, but you know, it, like I said, a lot of the people that I've, I've mentioned I've worked with as coaches or, or really successful traders, they have very growth mindset, you know, and I see that. And I know that when I've worked with, even before I knew the theory of growth mindset, I knew I was trying to give them a growth mindset. And I was trying to turn them from that because they've got a lot of fixed mindset aspects. And could you determine that very quickly in the conversation with a person or did it evolve over time that you think, oh, this guy's got a growth mindset[inaudible] side, but I will give you an example. Um, so there were, there was a, there was a guy I was coaching in the early days who was, he was a market maker at a bank, uh, in London. And his manager said to me, stay, could I work with this guy? He's a really good trader. He's been doing the job about 20 years and he comes in on budget every single year, Bang on budget, you know, not very far away. He's budget on a, on an ethics trading desk at his bank with$2 million a year. Okay. And that, that was just market making, the flow that came through the books. But he was really good at it and the manager said, somebody, I know we can get a lot more out of him. I just don't know how to get it. Could I work with him? And you know, I met with the Troy done and he agreed to go through this process. But he said to me at the very start of this, he said, look, you're not going to change me. You know, I am who I am. This is how I work. You know, I'm not going to be a perpetrator. He said, I've tried prop trading in the past and it hasn't worked for me. Um, and I'm good at market making. This is what I do. I tried to flow. So I said, look, you know, the, the, the guidance I've got from you is that, you know, you could make more money. And he said, look, I'm up for anything. Let's just experiment. And, and we did this coaching program and we explored every aspect of UNICEF but straight, the fixed mindset here. And the fixed mindset that became apparent was that he was staying inside his comfort zone. He didn't think he could go outside it. It was a little bit scary. You know, he, every single day, you know, he was locking machine. He would make money, a small amount of money every day from the flow, you know, he'd be making on average 10 grand a day. There would be days where he'd make 30 or 40 grand and other things where he make nothing. He hardly ever lost money. He would be down one in the morning and if he was damn, he would always get back to flat. It was a really strange, so he would work longer into the afternoon to get back to flat, but you'd get to flat. He would stop if he got to a certain amount of money by about 12 one o'clock he would stop. So that, that was kind of where he worked, you know. So you know, we were talking, you know, do, do you have any more capacity to move beyond this? You know, and we just explored it and as I, over the months as we s we talked about that, you know, he started to cellular on holding a little bit more risk overnight or I'm staying with it longer into the afternoon. There's no reason why I shouldn't. He's really don't know why I put those barriers up in his mind. You know? So they were in the barriers then maybe his own brick wall internally. Yeah. I might not think he was growth mindset to a point. And then he would change to fix mindset. Yeah. You know, it was fixed mindset about himself or very much gross mindset towards his job to some extent on what he was doing in the market. Yeah. But you knew from this coach, and actually there's this other side terms that are slightly inhibited in this fixed mindset, personal approach, so that if you could give him the opportunity to switch that into a growth mindset as well. Fantastic. Things were starting to happen. Yeah. And that's what you found. Yeah. So we didn't use the learn language or growth mindset, but what we did was we, I suppose we explored where he's potential worth and he was limiting his potential. You know, the thing about growth mindset is growth mindset. People always believe they've got potential. I've got more potential. And that through learning and working on it and stretching themselves, they can realize that potentially is fundamental in it. Yes, absolutely. And then when they get to that, they then got further, much further potentially so they can push out further if they never ever think in a complete article. But when they think that they complete article and then become fixed mindset and they start defending themselves. Yeah. I mean you, you've see, and I know you've seen this cause we spoke about this. Yeah, I see this an awful lot where people get stuck, stuck in a Rut to some extent, don't believe they need to bother to go further. Um, but we know all know that we will have the capacity right up to the day. We'd tie it to progress and develop and to learn and that journey and change directions, you know, that critical points. And that could be changing direction in terms of trade strategy, which clearly in this case gave a different perspective to what he was making money on and how to make money in the market. Yeah, I think it is unexplored. I don't know of anyone that's looking apart from their discussions and buying in this inner game and outer game to the potential of creating people that are so heavily geared towards making money in difficult trading environments whilst getting the most out of themself. Yeah. Manage that bit of them, uh, in a way that, uh, acceptable to, you know, their normal behavior and not doing anything different. Not spend any money really. I won't tell them to spend money to go and buy an app or anything. We're training them a toolkit for our approach. We were telling them to invest in themselves and I think this is runabout the challenges that the traders have, any investors have, you know, they don't sense it. This industry tends not to them. People don't invest in themselves. They have to have as to being out to, particularly in the UK. I don't think that happens very many places. I mean, they invest may be in some training, you know, let's go on a technical analysis course. Yeah, let's, let's subscribe to a service. And I'm not saying don't do that. I think there's great services out there, especially for private Victoria. Does that kind of made soar them? Um, you know, everyone's willing to learn a program, but you know, I think, you know, to become a successful trader, you can't succeed if you don't have the right mindset. And most people, in my opinion, not only do I not have the right mindset, they don't even work on developing this such a valuable aspect.
Speaker 5:No, no. If you're looking down as the owner of the business, so your portfolio of traders, um, you probably know now who those people are that have the fixed mindsets and you know, the people who've got the growth mindsets because their bottom lines are very, very different. And that mindset comes across in how they talk to you, how you interrelate with them, the general attitude of guest, their presence, you know? Yeah. Um, so it doesn't just affect performance, it perfect. It, um, really impacts your relate-ability to others. And of course that extends to the social world. We're not just talking about, you know, at work here, we're talking about life in general. And if you've got a fixed mindset for life in general, then boy, you're missing out on a whole bunch of stuff.
Steve Goldstein:Right? I mean, you know the great thing about the book and sort of, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm not plugging the book here, finding the right, it's run of the bestselling books anyway. Um, but I'm, I'm such a huge fan of it.
Speaker 5:Well, it's combining your knowledge and if you take us 70 years of what's that 359 pound farm payrolls just on my career, plus your career, that 700 nonfarm payrolls have experienced and not the payrolls was always the big number right there. Quite a few families, Bank of England meetings and exactly. Or crises, those, those, it enough together as well as you combine that and throw it into this world and say, okay, well, you know, the audience gonna want to know, well, what have you, what are the key things you've learned? What was it been to have a growth mindset in these great crazy times? Would you we'd never survived with a fixed mindset.
Steve Goldstein:No, but you know, I look back on my career so I,
Speaker 5:we wouldn't have defined it as that. But actually through our nature we had that going on in the background and for our own personal practice and like whatever we were, we were taught with open mindsets as, as youngsters. And that carried us through to the present day. Um, that's defined us to the point where we now say the market needs this way and now want to deliver this to the market because we know that it's not being covered. And people out there are going to sort of tell us the secrets t t tell, tell us what you've learned, tell us what's been very, very special. And of course for them to absorb that and learn they need a growth mindset.
Steve Goldstein:You need a growth mindset. I think this market is market puts you into a fixed mindset because it beats up on unity every single day. Yeah. You know, and you end up getting defensive, you hide behind your, your ego comes in and you're trying to protect your own sense of, you know, your own self belief. And that's when you start doing that. That's when you're going into fixed mindset, you know, and you, you don't, you then don't learn from your errors. You think you doing, you, you took a line that I learned from my mistakes, but I don't. Um, and, and that's never healthy. That starts that downward spiral because you come into this job, normally believe in, you're good. Otherwise why you going to do it? You know, I'm, I'm, I'm giving a talk on Saturday to a group of FX traders for a conference and I was thinking about how do I start this? And they're mostly relatively new traders. They have some who have left businesses and still send them setting themselves up as traders, maybe not ever been tried as before. No, no. So the, the, there's, there's some different groups, but they're mostly quite used to truly novice. Yeah. Obviously. Yeah. And I thought I'd start with something that many people don't think too much about, which is you come into trading in a way that is unique. So on day one of trading, you are potentially up against the George sources. Paul Tudor Jones. Yeah. Traders from Goldman Sachs, big hedge funds, you know, they could be the other side of you were trades. I know they're not going to be on the other side if you're doing a small amount, you don't think. But they are because they do much larger amounts and they'd taken in the aggregates in the spirit traits. Okay, so you're stepping into an arena on the very first day trading with some of the biggest names, experienced traders, successful traders, hedge funds, investors with different timeframes. I don't think you have any other activity in the w orld that is like that where you are literally up against the best on day 1. Imaging if you decided to become a golfer, a tennis player, or a boxer. You're not going to s tart facing Tiger Woods, Roger Federer, Floyd Mayweather. You're not going to be stepping out to play Augusta, Centre Court, the MGM Grand. Its going to take years of development and growth to get even remotely close. But when you're trading, Boom, that is what you are literally doing from day 1. And you think you are going to succeed in those early days. Wow you have high expectations. You may make some money, you may lose some money. Both don't matter at this stage, thats just randomness or luck. To become good however, you must learn, you must keep learning, only worry about learning. Every great trader and sports professional starts like that.
:Yeah. And we prejudge ourselves. We think I'm not good enough. These guys, that guy, I'm like, I'm against Lauren. Y eah. A in't t hat interesting. Warren's view is that, well, listen, y et, the only thing that w e're o n d oes differently to us is that he flies first class more often. He tends to i t, h e'll sleep in a similar bed to us. You know, h e'll drink coca cola here. Elite very, very similarly t o charter works. C all it probably dry h igh d oes d rive away. Right. U m, and I t hink t hey already think when he looked up his world o n our world, anything that he did differently was h e flew more f irst. P lus. Yeah. Plane Travel. Then you know t hat t he only difference, everything else is the same, but his mindset clearly is
Steve Goldstein:great. Is Ronald sings his mindset is phenomenal. Learning, learning, learning. Yes. Yes. Him and Charlie. Monica as well. You know, I used to tell you when I read them, I think they're fantastic. It's about Phil.
Speaker 5:Yeah. Having a feel for the market and what does fit, where did you get feel from? You don't get it from a closed mindset.
Steve Goldstein:No. So I brought a fixed mindset. The fixed mindset. Yeah. Which, you know, it's not, it's not too dissimilar to a closed mindset. Not Optimal. Yeah. The fixed mindset ease. It says, you know, the failure describes you. Failure defines you, and a fixed mindset person would think of that. So you're kind of in year one or two against almost impossible odds to succeed. Okay. Just to expect to succeed would be ridiculous. Okay. Some people do, obviously there's some randomness. You know, it's like you could play cards against the poker champion poker, you know, and you end up getting their better hands at night. You're gonna make money, but then you're gonna think I'm a star. But if you play that going over a hundred nights, he's going to have brought the floor with you. Sure. Insulin. And then you will think I'm a failure cushion or failure. You're playing with a guy who's played all over the world. You know, you've got to accept it as now I'm not failure. I'm learning. Yeah. But this becomes a problem because, yeah,
Speaker 5:to tell me my verb turning of a two foul into a noun, I'm, I'm a failure.
Steve Goldstein:That is a fixed mindset aspect, mindset. And then what you do is you defend yourself against that. And so what the fixed mindset person does is they start blaming others. Yeah. I start coming out with conspiracy theories. Yeah. That excused themselves. So if want a team stress. Yeah, sure. Let's do something to bring the team down with you. You, I, I, you know, I'm, and I may have spoken about this on another podcast. I can't remember. There was a period and I think it was 1995 I was a trader, a Credit Suisse and I was on a, I'd been chosen to join the prop desk cause I had a brilliant year in 1994 now 1994 I was completely growth mindset. Of course I'd never heard of it. The theory had been devised then, but I know you know where I was at that time, 1994 was a huge bond bear market. Yeah. You know, like got on the trade correctly. I was avoiding mother grant with doing nearly all the traders I worked with at that time were losing money. They were already infested the other way around. You know, I and I, I, you know, I had this short bond, high their rights, you know, view that that was happening and I, I was open to that and I made a lot of money that year and I got chosen the next year to go onto the prop desk. I got faded, you know,[inaudible] Steve's done really well. He's great chelator, making a lot of money here for us. He's got a jury in on new prop desk, which was starting. And it was almost like I suddenly expected it. And that's the fixed mindset thing. You expect your talents be rewarded. You don't have to work so hard.[inaudible] you know, and it's another thing. Success often also puts you into a fixed mindset. Complacency. That's where a lot of traders, I don't know if you're familiar with with the house money effect, it's a, it's a bias. Um, behavioral finance label it as a bias when you suddenly have a big win in poker. Yeah. You start playing loose and false and putting no as much effort into it. And we see this, we trade as a lot. Yeah. You know, I know one hedge fund it when a trade has made a lot of money, they reduce his capital[inaudible] tennis. You sit and go, who's given up? Like if that way that as much I for, but that's what I think I had fun. Yeah. In 1995 you know, and I, I I, it might've been 95 or 96 but I remember having a horrendous loss and I was sitting on a, on a big position in, at the time it was, it was s and p and I was going to paypal dive in. The market's wrong. I'm right. And the mind when you hear yourself say, I always want to say as I think about it, I know I said that. I know, I thought that if I did say it, I know I thought that. And I, it, that's fixed mindset. You're blaming someone else. Like, you know, I remember we, I didn't have a mobile phone in those days. We had pages, you know, that's how I would, I, you know, I used to look at the prices in the evening in Chicago. The futures price is on this thing and sometimes it just went flying across the room, you know, and I hated those pages. But it was, it was a time of, yeah, that, that was it. The markets are, I mean, I'm right. I didn't want to speak to people. You had a different view than you were. They were right and it was, you know I was, again, I was confirming my biases here you got confirmation but you know
Speaker 5:these boxes are interesting. All of the consequences of something. Yeah. That was me in the fixed mindset. Yeah. Fixed mindset is where you've got a position on ego, you look, you look at bull trade on and your looking for things to back up your bull trade growth mindset at the point of having a bull trade on is then looking for information to put a bear trade on. It's about canceled your position as the best warning sign as to whether your trade is still valid for the market. Yeah, because we will see things that we wanted to see. So if we've got a ball trade on, we're constantly looking for things to support our bull trade. What you, what you should be doing is looking for things that do the opposite where you're, you're looking for things that actually validate your talent, your self and your[inaudible]. You can read research and read in sweat what you want to support your position. That is fixed mindsets. Pick your mindset. Your talent deserves a room.
Steve Goldstein:World Wars. Yeah. And anything that stops at reward happening that is not your fault, but it's somebody else's fault. Yeah. That blame. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And, and it stops you from learning of course, because you know, you're not going to look at what you did wrong. You know, you might even excuse it. It's a bad market. You know, you saw it was a really bad market and no one was making money. You know, you hate that. Or with a ton of us, it's absorbing yourself. Responsibility. Yeah. And you're porn where he's in a growth mindset. You've been going, okay, so I, I lost money that, that tried. It didn't work out. So we'll kind of learn from that. What can I learn from that? You know, it might the vitamins then as the long rights guy, it doesn't look at it as a filing that says, do you know, well, actually in this business trading, you're going to have many successes and many failures. And if your strategy, for example, is one where you have lots of small losses and the occasional peak wind, but much bigger, then you've got to live with a lot of failure. Not at the time. You know, it's a lot of traders trade like that, you know? So yeah, it's, it's, it's given that failure a place, but not labeling yourself for failure.
Speaker 5:No. I guess to say that as well. That was interesting. What can I learn from that? That was that, that point of when those failures that will always occur like a, what is it? Hmm. Interesting. Fine. Move on. Reflect, reflect, think about it. Yeah. Put that behind you Zack stone
Steve Goldstein:asking new questions. Yeah. For the next round. For the next day. What is the market telling me? What am I saying? Yeah. How, you know, how should I enter the market for the next stretch fresh offering me something here. Yeah. Yeah. If no, let's write through night. Yeah. But you're not fighting the last battle.
Speaker 5:No. Which if you do that, your stress is going to go up when your market observation will go down. Yeah. So you're not going to spot the next opportunity and it's at the end of your nose. Yeah. And you know, because you, you're blinded, you're blinded by this dwelling on and refilling that they are, they are. And if you had 10 profitable trades in a row, but one area that was just a bit of a nightmare but you still make money, you'd still think more about the era than you thought about the profitable traits. And on that, it's just not helpful. It's this like the experience. If you go to the Christmas sales and you're looking for new pair of trainers and you find this amazing pair and um, and you, you find, you know, nine other good sales experiences, uh, and you have one person that gets a bit aggressive against you and says, you know, sorry mate, I haven't got time to look into your query. You know, where you want it in the store. And when you get home, you might have nine fantastic phone purchases, but the thing you're thinking about is that one bloke are upset that it's that sort of thing. Yeah. I remember he does that to sort of almost fight against that to some extent because in trading, in trading that blocks you off from reality. So I think it's incredibly important that the audience understand that growth mindset can be nurtured.
Steve Goldstein:Absolutely. I do. You know what was really interesting, some of the things from the book that really stand out and you can succeed with a fixed mindset is just that it's much harder to succeed. Yeah. Like on your side. Yeah. Mindset isn't everything. You know, you have to have ability, so you have to have the skills, you know, and, and the book talks about some people who succeed in, in fixed mindsets. So for example, John McEnroe, Ron mentioned in the[inaudible], I've got the sense she spoke to him for this book, but he talks about having a love of tennis when he first started and that he rose almost certainly growth mindset. But he was a fixed mindset person and he said, I didn't enjoy my time in tennis. And so, and if, if anyone ever saw that, and you know, I know, I'm assuming we've got a lot of younger people listening here today as well, who may not know who John McEnroe is. Okay. So he, he rows maybe just to explain it, it was a great tennis player from the 1980s and I saw him play it. We moved in, actually, I remember standing on the sensical and watching him throw attention. Yeah. And one of his most famous runs Neil lister time, he always threw tantrums. So he was always blaming somebody else. And this is what he said, he would blame anything. He would blame the weather. He would blame someone who's coughed in the crown, which yeah. You know, he would, he would not take responsibility for a failure or loss ever. You know, he, he was always seeking to blame anyone else for his failures. And the point was that there was two things here, right as he was, he may have, even, because he was a brilliant plan, aren't, he was just incredibly, what's the road she could do things that would blow your mind. I know you're a tennis fan. Absolutely. You know, he was doing, you know, it was a time of bureau book, John McEnroe, Jimmy come to us, some great players, all different styles. Berg was an incredible plan. Well, some of the greatest games in history. Yeah. You know. Yeah. Really.
Speaker 5:Yeah. So you go out there today as great games with smaller gut string record.
Steve Goldstein:I still I Makarov versus commerce. Yeah. I started real SKO turnover versus, yeah. As well. Gottfried versus broad, you know, on those, you know, we used to bunk off school and queue up and get into that standing areas sensical. Um, it was a, they were great games. McEnroe to me was probably the most skilled of all those players.
Speaker 5:Sure. Well, they wouldn't be looked back today despite what said in any book or any reflection as to something. And of course that is always slightly looking back. Yeah. Um, we would, if we were to go back and say, well, name 10 greats from the past appeal on that list.
Steve Goldstein:Yeah. But th th they were saying that, you know, there was a cost by the sound. Yeah. He, he probably could have run more if he had a growth mindset, almost could've been a lot better performance. You know, he had even more potential. So changing that negative energy and so yeah, but also what they were saying pastors, it was the last bad point. The important bit was it wasn't pleasurable for him. Mm. It wasn't pleasurable for any run around him. That's what it says here. Yeah. In that book, you know, it wasn't, it was just a horrible, you know, it was hard work being around him.
Speaker 5:So can we take the into the trading world and ask that same question, you know, a trader that is, you know, blaming everything else, blame, blame in the system, blaming the latency of speed to market. Yeah. Um, when actually
Steve Goldstein:you were, you were the buttered back cause you were a abroad, you are annoy your broker fee, fixed fix, anything that anyone wanted to try[inaudible] broker. Yeah. And you, you, you must've got the blame all the time. Cause I saw it. It would have ran me.
Speaker 5:Yeah. I mean, I had people like one, one chap on the desk that was, it was the bar of everything from this one particular trader, from a German bank and a, at one point he was told that he wasn't compatible with his scope box. All right. That's our bad. The relationship got so broken. One of this was getting so much heat because of ms strides and misinformation and that, um, that the bottom was, he was told it was not compatible with his first school books. Um, so yeah, people reach for the crazy stuff when they're under pressure, when they're not making that, when the mindset is fixed on blaming everything apart for them from themselves. Um, and this latency idea is important. Speed to market at time is important for traders. The time to get that thing in and yeah, we hear it all the time, you know, latency, the market for black boxes are ways it's super fast as is what's needed. But, but the one thing that we don't ask the question of is our own latency from our own point of view, US impacting the world. If we've got a fixed mindset. And where we're stuck on the negatives and we've not got an engaged in learning mindset, then we've got latency, we lose that sharpness. I remember. So this is about sharpening up. You're letting your own latency shit,
Steve Goldstein:Jerry, you must have heard this all the time, but I can recall myself saying it at times and I know it was during batch, I did periods. I knew that was going to happen. Yeah. On. Yeah. I should have brought it. I knew that was going on. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. If you let every, like if I knew it was going on, why didn't I just buy it? So I can't blame Eddie run errors. Yeah. But I'd look to blame someone else, you know? And I did have times where I thought, you know, it's nice to hit the conspiracy stories. You know, I have, you know, one of the things I hear from private traders, and there's a lot listening, you know, the banks, so the banks, you know, the banks didn't have more information. They have more flow going through, you know, but the trade is instead, it was very rarely, you know, other than that period we know about sort of, you know, the call was, yeah, you know, I know there's, you know, there's been a sense of that, you know, it's an advantage today in terms of way the market's going I don't think may have any advantage. They just get more news and more flow and more information. Well,
Speaker 5:they got the distractions, the distractions go. They've been hit by hedge funds. Well, they've been hit by regulation and compliance and you can go on this training to get yourself, you know, try it out with the latest stuff you need to do your job. Um, you know, come into this meeting that's got no agenda. We need to talk about a few things that being distracted. They may have an email culture that's grabbing their attention away from, you know, the markets. There's plenty of stuff that gets in the way. Um, and their own attitude to those distractions is what, what in terms of the training I provide, it's about your attitude towards stuff and understanding the stuff that's taking your time away from the market. Very switching you into a fixed mindset. Yeah. Yeah. The switch new into a fixed mindset and distressed, those unaware those blocks, that's foggy. That's, you know, adding things up wrong, making simple mistakes and not seeing opportunity. Yeah. So that fixed mindset can lead to disastrous things. String of events. And it would, it could just be, do you get to have a normal day rather than an outstanding day? Yeah. And that's the difference between fixed mindset and growth mindset. What you want is to be fully primed up to have an outstanding day every moment of the day. And if you have a moment that's not gone your way to be able to reset, refresh, reapproach go forward with a growth mindset rather than to be dragged into that negative mindset. So negative mindset is a risk to the business
Steve Goldstein:with it. Absolutely. I mean it's you, you are less resilient, farmers' resilient. If you're in a fixed mindset, your resilience crumbles. If you're on a growth mindset, it's just a setback and you bounce back from a quicker, you're, you know, you're more likely to take advantage of opportunities. When you're in a growth mindset. You run beside anew. That was going to happen. You would have already been long or you'd be not sitting there and dwelling on it, but you'd actually walked right through now. So, so it, it freezes you and it causes you, yeah. It blocks you out. There's congestion going on in your head
Speaker 5:and you're also not full of the success either. No. Um, it's quite interesting when you talk to people and some of the greats that I dealt for, um, and dealt with over the years. You know, the people that are very balanced, people that are of great, great control, they don't boast about their big trades. Um, they don't dwell on, I lost a fortune yesterday type conversations. They're just super, super present for what's about to unfold. And of course that's settable every month, every morning or, or ever needed or wherever their day starts in terms of their trading day.
Steve Goldstein:Yep. Do you know, I heard a great podcast, um, last year. Uh, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna plug another podcast here and a trade day was quite, we and I even on a, on Switzer, um, the podcast was chat with traders. I don't know if you've ever heard that one. I have, yeah. Really good. Um, and this was one of their podcasts with a guy called trader Dante or Dan of you, if you had to be on, say, a rock. He's a London trader and he's very pick on Switzerland. Got,
Speaker 5:oh wait a minute. I think I have noticed them. Yeah,
Steve Goldstein:yeah, yeah, yeah. The car color for with his language, but an interesting character and it was of, it was a great chat and he was telling a story in this podcast of he was working in a prop trading room and[inaudible] and the, you know, there was some really big traders in that room and there was one trading guy where the market was really fun with tile and one of the guys, he was probably the top choice in the room, had a big six figure die. I don't know how much it was. It was perhaps three, 400,000 pounds. You know, he'd made him one day and everyone was kind of, it sounds like everyone was a bit, you know, worth this. And he left the office, I think about five o'clock or you know, this, this don't say tried to, Dante left the office about five o'clock and went home and he got home and he realized, I think he'd been out for maybe a quick drink first and then go home about seven and didn't have his keys. He left them in the office. So he went back to the office and it was dark by now and he expected no one to be in the office and there was one light on in the corner and I, he thought, who's that? So he walked over there and it was the guy who had made her with the money, that big money that day. And he said, you know, what are you doing here? And he said, or I'm looking back on my traits for the day. I'm reviewing them and I'm thinking about some Eto I'm planning for the next day. He said it was amazing because he just assumed he'd be going out down the pub, you know, ordering some champagne or you know, having to be celebrating a great day. This guy makes more money than anyone else was working harder than anyone else. Yeah. He was working hard to continue learning what he'd done where we could have done better painting for the next day. And that to me is growth mindset.
Speaker 5:It is. However, yeah. As we know in this, the wealth that's evolved in the stuff that we learned now about managing itself. Yeah. He probably could have done better by also managing himself in a better way. Because of course, if you work from 8,000 reds all day long into the night, do it again next day. Do it again next time something starts to happen on a negative, he must have been doing something else to maintain that energy. We don't know. I mean, I bet he did. I bet he had something going on that was self-management to guess. Keep him fresh, keep him with that energy to get through long volatile days. Possibly. Yeah. So he may have had that. I mean that he was a very successful trader and I'm,
Steve Goldstein:you know, it, I'm minded to think of another guy that I coached, um, back in the early days, I actually coached some of the guys he packed. So it was another private trader. Um, I won't mention his name because I think, I think that would be unfair.
Speaker 5:But, um, I was put, so
Steve Goldstein:I was put, I was connected to him through a broker. Um, I think this was about 2011 or 2012 and the, the funny thing is as we were putting together and we met, we met, you know, you know, in a pub in the city when we called them, we knew each other. He had worked in the middle office. It's look bank I started with in the mid 1980s. Fantastic. And he'd bring a trader for about 15 years in banks and then he decided to be one side for going on the floor when he went on the left. Yeah. Um, and he was exactly the same guy. It was exactly the same way. He'd been phenomenally successful. Yeah. This was a guy who was a seven figure guy and a big seven figure guy every year. He was a big name on the floor, you know, it was a big, my electronic trading then supply. Now they were in electronic trading and I think he was working in the tower trading room in London. Sure. Um, he hadn't changed. He was that same person. His Ego was, you know, when he was in the middle office, you know, he was that person. And when I met him, this must've been 30, nearly 30 years later, 25 years later, he was exactly the same person. And we're not like, I coached him a little bit. We had a couple of coaching sessions, even though I was meant to be coaching his people, I, he, he was so comfortable in his own skin. Yeah. And he was, some of them familiar and you know, as we talked, he had that growth mindset. Yeah. You can sense that when he talked to those, those types of things. Yeah. And never ego. Yeah. You know, and I think that made a difference.
Speaker 5:Yeah. Some of the biggest failures I've seen on the huddle in the markets have been those that say the boast about thing, but come out and boast about things and ego gets out of control or they want to kind of show off during lunchtime and start trading. They're at lunch and all that sort of stuff. Yeah. Been there, done it. Probably you could probably sum up the worst traders I've ever met. I've been of that type of mindset. Yes. You know, I guess moral standards, low, um, lack of focus, lack of sort of ownership of the role as it were then slightly loose and uh, not being present, turning up for the show. Yeah. You know, it, they're, the guys have got a fixed mindset. They take their time until you're ready and they don't think they can fare and they don't find out. All I need to meet
Steve Goldstein:called, you know, I, you know, I deserve, I expect to succeed because of who I am. You know, and a lot of people come into trading who may not be like that, but it makes you very quickly like that. If we go back to what I said earlier on about day run, you're up against these guys and year we're on, you're up against these guys and, and if you think you should be making money in that year, you know, well, you know, may be a bit of luck comes your way, but it would be ludicrous in any other form. It's a think, you know, any other game to think. Yeah, I'm going to, I'm going to remember the year one[inaudible] around.
Speaker 5:Well, it's part of your education. There's not plans, snakes and ladders slightly. It'd be with Wikipedia, snakes and ladders if you know, heard about the[inaudible], it's like snakes and ladders. You move through this journey every now and then you get a boost up, but every now and then you may fall back below from where you've came from. Yeah. Um, and it's learning that persistence will get you to the end of that game. Yeah. Yeah. And it's that belief that you will be on a positive trajectory overall. Yeah. Despite what you know, the throw the dice has given you, um, and the ability to learn from what did that mean? That's just happened. What does it mean? Fine. Okay. Interesting. It's a never ending, never ending journey. Um, but you have to factor into the fact that at some point you're going to be going backwards. Yes. But in just get back with you, go forward, all that sort of stuff. Um, and if you've got the wrong frame of mind and you're in this fixed mindset stuff, I see that going backwards is a failure. You're in chapel and there may be a colleague next to that's rolling a dice and he's moved up to number 70 on the snakes and louder Borden you guess can't get through. Number 20 you're comparing yourself. Pair comparison isn't Namath, it's another rope. But you know, why should you be winning Jessica's and Abigail is winning. Yes. This going, he's seen something different and it's working for him. Don't play somebody else's game. Yeah, I see that so often with clients. And then clearly there's also this sort of, you know, if you see somebody in the markets and you hear they've got a big trade on that you hadn't seen, you might be tempted to say, I hope it goes wrong. Oh God, yeah, I hear that all fall off.
Steve Goldstein:Some of them were issue, but Richard, I've done that. Yeah, it is horrible, I'm sure. But I know I'm human and I've done it yet. I've said to get crashes, that guy is long. Right. And I didn't get along. And you can, you're sort of looking at you. You've never decided to go down. You're thinking, yeah.
Speaker 5:Ums, and, and so we, that takes us away from managing ourself cause we'll then try to manage other people. Uh, and that's the only moment you weren't alive and in control of anything is in this thing called the present moment. And it's only your present moment.
Steve Goldstein:So I'm, I'm conscious of the time, we're getting close to the end of this, but I want to ask you from your experience and any work you do cause you've done, you do some brilliant work with what you call mind fitness. Okay. And you, I know you've, you've done some work to bring people into this growth mindset even though you may have not have known the term, that growth mindset, um,
Speaker 5:give an example of something you do. Well, I think you explain it like this. The, I'm trying to get people into something called present moment awareness with an attitude of positive mindset. Yes. And that's from several reasons. It's the background reason is that if we're, if we're happy, if we're positive, we tend to be happy. If we are happy, tend to be healthy. And if we go on into volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous markets, we need to be damn fit from a mental and physical point of view and that's our foundation point. So you need to be hydrated, need to be able to get enough rest, need to have oxygen fundamental point to then face the market. You then need to face that market with an attitude of reset and refresh where you learn from experience, you learn from somebody that's negative, you have, you have a self belief in what you're doing, but a a learning capacity and you can only learn if you've turned down the things that are stressing you because they're still bugging you. And it might be that the way that research is getting presented to you has done in four, four scaps that you've got to read through rather than a summarize bullet point. It may be because you're getting dragged into stupid meetings about regulation and compliance that you have to do to be in your role. I'm being dragged away from the market at perhaps the wrong time of the day. You're out of your control, but you're getting stressed by that. It's how you manage that. Do you do, can you manage the culture? Do you have an engagement in terms of the way you engage with people and communicate with people to improve the things that are getting in your way, to turn them down if they're physical distractions so that you can be more present with the market. So it's a case of personal control. It's cultural control to optimize yourself for whatever you are doing. And this thing called the present moment, right? Because if you're going to be facing a complex market and wanting to make money out of it, you've got to be pretty damn highly tuned
Steve Goldstein:now. Now I think that that brings us to a great point to say that our next podcast, whereas we've had a chance today, it's going to be me interviewing you about your work and the man's appearing. Yeah, yeah. But the next one, the next one podcast for, yeah. I am just intrigued. I think your work is fascinating and I think our audience will be fascinated about it. Sure. So this might be a good place to wind down. I think so. But to say, you know, if you've enjoyed this podcast, this until our other podcasts, podcast four is my interview with Mark Randall about his work, and I think people will be fascinated by it. Look forward to it. Fantastic. Thank you for listening. Thank you.
Speaker 2:Thank you for listening to the third episode of the Alpha Mind podcast with myself, Steven Goldstein and my colleague Mark Rondo. AFA Mind is a collaboration between myself and mark. Please check us out. It's our block after mind block.blogspot.com
Speaker 3:or say a rep side. Our front-mine.net will follow us on Twitter at air for mine.[inaudible].