Performance Coach for Financial Market Risk-Takers. Driving Performance Alpha through Behavioral Transformation. Author: Mastering the Mental Game of Trading.
London, UK.
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40 years in markets — 25 years as an investment‑bank trader, 15 years coaching top traders (hedge funds, sell‑side, retail). I help traders move from good to great through sustainable behavioural transformation.
Email to inquire: info@alpharcubed.com
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At the core of successful trading is the trader.
And at the core of every trader is a strong relationship they have with themselves
This relationship enables them to survive the bruising setbacks which are part of life in the volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world of markets,
It becomes a shield against self-doubt, innoculates them from harmful over confidence, and ensures they remain on,
and return to when they veer off it, the path they need to be on, in order to execute the process which delivers success against the odds.
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99, 97, 92 points tallies.
Going toe-to-toe with a sell-to-buy policy against a sovereign state who broke all the rules and did what they wanted when they wanted to.
Jürgen Klopp’s Liverpool are the greatest modern day PL team.
And he is the greatest modern day PL manager.
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Something I've dealt with several times this year: clients who couldn't accept that their decision was wrong.
They took a market view:
•Short S&P 500
•Short Nasdaq
•Long 10-year bonds, US or German
•Similar positions in metals and crypto
The market moved against them and they were stopped out, or forced to stop. A few weeks later, they re-entered the same trade, only to be stopped out again.
Here's the issue: these weren't really new trades. They were attempts to prove the first idea right. They hadn't let go of the original trade, or of being wrong, and re-entering was a way to vindicate and forgive themselves.
I was a serial practitioner of this behaviour early in my trading career.
I have also seen people seeming to do this and succeed. But when we unpick the trade in a post-trade coaching session, it's often clear that they had completely let go of the first trade. The second one he genuinely was a new trade.
This is clear when I hear the difference in their language: the phrases and words they use, and the way they describe their feelings around each trade.
Jesse Livermore once said:
"There is a time to go long, a time to go short and a time to go fishing."
The traders caught in this behaviour needed to go fishing before returning to the market. I know I did.
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Some of the most intelligent people I know have struggled the most as traders.
It's why Warren Buffett says that if you have an IQ of 160, you should sell 30 points to someone else, because you won't need them to succeed in investing.
In this week's Mastering the Trading Game newsletter (LinkedIn edition), Why Intelligent People Lose at Trading, I look at why Intellect is built for complicated problems: hard, but solvable. Whereas Markets are complex problems, more like a forest, the sea or a shuffled deck of cards. The challenge keeps changing, and no formula can solve it.
What separates the best traders is rarely technical skill. It is mentality. And unlike intellect, mentality can be trained.
linkedin.com/pulse/why-intel…
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The alignment between you, your process or system, and what the market is actually doing.
When synchronicity is high, trading feels natural. Decisions flow, execution is clean, and results tend to follow.
When it's low or breaks down, everything becomes hard work. You push, you force, and underperformance creeps in.
Here's the thing: you can't force yourself back into sync.
But the more work you do observing yourself, the sooner you recognise when your synchronicity is slipping. And the more you develop the skill to step back and re-engage with the market in a healthy way, the quicker that connection returns.
Awareness shortens the drawdown. Not just in P&L, but in you.
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Amazing how true this it.
If it challenges you - so be it
Le post qui m’a inspiré mon texte sur le wokisme, qui a fait 80 millions de vues et a été repris par des dizaines de médias dans le monde — étrangement, très peu en France —, ne venait pas de nulle part.
Il est venu d’une conversation avec un intellectuel français, ancien ministre, extrêmement intelligent.
La question était simple.
Comment la gauche a-t-elle pu gagner pendant soixante-dix ans en Occident, alors qu’on savait déjà que le socialisme est une catastrophe ?
Sa réponse m’a arrêté.
« C’est très simple. Ils ont mis Hitler à l’extrême droite. »
À partir de là, le piège se referme tout seul.
Quiconque veut vendre du libéralisme et de la liberté se retrouve, par construction, dans le camp d’en face. Et le camp d’en face, c’est le nazisme.
C’est pour ça qu’ils traitent Elon Musk de nazi.
C’est pour ça qu’ils collent Javier Milei à l’extrême droite.
C’est pour ça qu’une Sarah Knafo se fait traiter de xénophobe et de raciste. Ils n’ont pas encore osé « nazi » : elle est juive. Si elle ne l’avait pas été, ça serait déjà fait.
Le tour de passe-passe est vieux. On a redessiné la carte. On a collé le mot « droite » sur le cadavre du XXe siècle, puis on a déclaré que tout ce qui n’était pas collectiviste touchait ce cadavre.
C’est pour ça que Milei a dit que Hitler était socialiste. Que le nazisme, c’était du national-socialisme. Que le fascisme, lui aussi, est un socialisme : « tout dans l’État, rien hors de l’État ».
C’est pour ça que la leader de l’AfD dit maintenant, à voix haute, que Hitler menait une politique de gauche. Qu’il n’était pas un libéral. Qu’il était l’État contre la personne.
La vérité commence à éclater un peu partout.
Pas parce qu’une mode a changé. Parce que le cadre mental qui tenait depuis 1945 se fissure. On ne peut plus interdire la question en criant « nazi ».
Cet empire du mensonge est en train de s’effondrer. Et c’est ça qui va le faire tomber : pas une bagarre de clans, le rétablissement du vocabulaire.
Les dettes des pays occidentaux ne sont pas un accident de parcours. Elles sont le bilan de décennies de politiques qui promettent la protection et livrent la dépendance.
Le wokisme n’est pas le cœur du système. C’est l’écume. La dernière couche de justification morale d’un collectivisme à bout de souffle.
Le vrai clivage n’est plus gauche / droite héritée de 1945.
C’est Contrôle contre Liberté.
D’un côté, tout le collectivisme, quel que soit le nom : socialisme, national-socialisme, planification, wokisme d’État.
De l’autre, ceux qui veulent laisser les gens construire.
Nos ennemis ne sont pas des mauvaises personnes. Ce sont de mauvaises cartes mentales. La reconversion est possible.
Il est temps de rendre les mots.
Et d’aller construire.
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Tweet 1:
This week's Mastering the Trading Game: The Self Image Trap for Traders.
Through a real story, it explores how traders rarely fail from a lack of information, but from the fear of looking (or feeling) foolish, which pulls them away from their edge and process.
Link 🔗 in thread🧵below👇
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Read this week's newsletter here 👇
alphamind101.substack.com/p/…
You can follow and subscribe to Mastering the Trading Game at the same link.
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Reposting this from a few years ago.
A brilliant and very honest post.
The aim of posting this is not to put you off, but to help you realise the reality of the challenge you face.
If you think your chances of success are 30% your won’t put nearly as much effort into succeeding as if you think your odds
are 10%.
My view for retail traders is that the odds at the start are closer to 1% and much lower for the sort of phenomenal success you dream of.
If you are still standing after a few years those odds improve, but this guy was still standing after a few years.
You can succeed and people do, but revise your odds further against you - so that you start off with greater realism.
Now revise your business plan (if you have one - I encourage everyone to have one, trading is a business). Now revise the steps you need to do to give yourself a chance to overcome those odds. Have two twin focuses working together - A plan to survive (risk management) and a plan to thrive (risk allocation strategies).
Good luck 🤞
My apologies.
This is long.
This is boring.
I know these aren't fun.
I don't need/want your pity; I just honestly hope I can save one person from this stupid nightmare.
TL;DR - I finally destroyed my gambling account.
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The most powerful adaption you can make to your performance is not technical, nor strategic, nor knowledge based, it is Behavioural.
However Behavioural Change is the toughest challenge, the one that you will resist the most, and the one you will give up the easiest.
It’s why when you explore every great trader, you’ll see there was nothing unique in their strategy, method, technique, analysis, system, data, news source, but there behaviours was the margin that mattered.
Behaviour Change is the Edge
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Just to re-emphasise Mark’s point about it the limits of AI
In many conversations I have with traders and PMs, AI is proving very useful and helpful. And if you already have an edge and valid process, in actually think it’s giving those a slight nudge further ahead.
But there a few points. AI is not the panacea.
If every one is using it, the benefit gets lost.
Secondly as Mark said - Chess is a bad comparison to trading, it’s a completely closed system.
Poker is a much better analogy, since it contains hidden data, unknown unknowns, but even then, there are still finite possibilities which can be calculated by a powerful Ai tool.
In trading there is much unknown unknowns: evolving data and emergent permutations, new news which can’t be accounted for that even AI can’t predict or adjust probabilities for.
Chess is a terrible comparison to the stock market. Chess is a closed system with defined rules, complete information, and—given a position—an objectively best move.
Markets are nothing like that. They’re dynamic, probabilistic, adaptive, and driven by constantly changing variables and human emotions and behavior.
Anyone using chess as proof that AI can simply “solve” the market fundamentally misunderstands markets and market efficiency.
AI is an incredibly powerful tool—but it is not a strategy, and it is not a substitute for judgment.
At Minervini Markets, we use some of the most sophisticated AI tools and programming available. But we use AI for what it is: an assistant that enhances research, analysis, and decision-making—not the final arbiter.
The edge isn’t AI.
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Delighted to be a guest on a great podcast, talking on my favour subject.
Hope you enjoy👇
"Learn to love your losses. They're not the enemy - they're your capital."
In Episode 4 of the @gammaprime podcast, performance coach @AlphaMind101 breaks down the psychological edge in markets:
- Behavioral slippage & ego traps
- Why the best investors embrace being wrong
Full episode👇
piped.video/watch?v=lcdZQw3K…
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What is the hardest thing you find to do in relation to your process?
Keep trying to do it.
But this time persist, even if everything within you is fighting against you.
There is your growth!
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This is an crucially important post
Merkel left office five years ago to huge acclaim. Why? She ripped off Nato, cultivated gas dependency on Putin, cosied up to China and opened the door to a million migrants in 2015 alone. She, not the populist right, was the true extremist of our age
thetimes.com/comment/columni…
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Steven Goldstein retweeted
Warren Buffett is stepping down as Berkshire Chairman at 96 years old.
In his goodbye letter, he says that “Father Time always wins. He has, however, been generous with me.”
His son Howard will take his place (“Howard has been a Berkshire Director for 33 years. That’s a longer apprenticeship than I served before taking the reins at the age of 34. Greg [Abel] runs the company. Howard will guard its culture and values.”)
Incredible 60+ year run. 🐐
Breaking: Warren Buffett is stepping down as chairman of Berkshire Hathaway on.wsj.com/4iBwAaC
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Trading isn't about being right, it's about executing good process.
Most traders sabotage good process by chasing being right.
That misunderstanding, not the market, does the real damage.
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Trading plays a horrendous game with you and your own sense of self.
How you feel, as a result of the outcome of what you did, can make you feel invincible one minute, and a complete fool the next.
This, duplicitous game the market plays with you, will do more damage to your trading than any algo, central bank, hedge fund or broker, or whoever else want to blame for your inability to achieve your trading dreams.
This is why coaching is so powerful, it starts to let you see the real you, neither king nor fool, and helps you shape the right way to be, and manage that, to help you execute more effectively.
Of course, you can try and discover the real you yourself, but then using what your own reflection is telling you, rather than getting the objective perceptive, which cleans up the image, just keeps yo inside the Trap.
This is explained in this week's Mastering the Trading Game Newsletter - Link in Thread below.
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I know gamblers who trade and traders who gamble.
Be the first one, not the second.
A little more context.
The Gamblers I am talking about play gambling games, Poker, Sports-Betting, Blackjack. - But they are taking a probabilistic and a business mindset to it, with robust risk management and strong self management applied.
Then there are traders who gamble: Taking reckless action outside of their process or structure, abandoning sound risk-management principles, taking hope trades and flyers, losing their heads, and going on-tilt.
The line between the two isn't the black and white, I recognize that, often its various shades of grey, but that itself is part of the challenge.
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This week's Mastering the Trading Game newsletter is out. It looks at what performance coaching actually does for traders: not motivation, not fixing you, but helping you see yourself and your decisions with the objectivity you can't get on your own. Link below 👇
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