Trader Mindset

Subscribe to the show Stop orders are like your personal sentries that do nothing but add and remove risk from your portfolio. Click here to get your free copy of The Inner Voice of Trading audiobook.

Subscribe to the show Go to school on yourself and learn from your mistakes. You'll be your own best teacher. Click here to get your free copy of The Inner Voice of Trading audiobook.

Subscribe to the show Running your screens and having your orders ready the night before stops you from getting sucked into FOMO trades and shooting from the hip. Click here to get your free copy of The Inner Voice of Trading audiobook.

Subscribe to the show All you need to do is fund your account and manage the risk. Keep it simple and enter your protective stops. Click here to get your free copy of The Inner Voice of Trading audiobook.

Subscribe to the show Bullish chart patterns show crowd behavior, but they can easily disappoint you. This is where that saying "intuition becomes into-wishing" might come into play. Click here to get your free copy of The Inner Voice of Trading audiobook.

Subscribe to the show ...your position is probably too big. Learn how to trim the hedges along the way so that any particular earnings announcement is irrelevant. Click here to get your free copy of The Inner Voice of Trading audiobook.

Subscribe to the show You can fantasize about how much your account balance can explode if you get lucky. However, margin cuts both ways and you can get blasted more times than not. Protect your capital and play superior defense. Treat every trade as serious business. You can learn to do great things and grow your funds systematically. Click here to get your free copy of The Inner Voice of Trading audiobook.

Subscribe to the show One bad earnings report can impact several of the other names you own. Trade your equity curve and cut your position sizes if vol increases. Click here to get your free copy of The Inner Voice of Trading audiobook.

Subscribe to the show Making a big bet before an earnings announcement is a gamble. You can't infer what the company is going to report because "you see something" in the chart pattern. Here are my thoughts. Click here to get your free copy of The Inner Voice of Trading audiobook.

Subscribe to the show This might be too "inside baseball" for some, but you can study the simulated backtest of a model and use the insights gained to go back and adjust your rules. You can segment the winning trades from the losing trades and study both outcomes to improve your entries, bet size, and exits. By doing so, you might be able to improve either your winning percentage or the expected value of a trade for the rules you'll follow. Click here to get your free copy of The Inner Voice of Trading audiobook.

Subscribe to the show Trading systems have different accuracy rates and ratios between winners and losers. Knowing these ahead of time might better help you determine which is most suitable for you - at least to start with. A trend following model might have 30% winning percentage with winners being 3 times the size of the losers. A chart reading model might have a 70% winning percentage, but a winner / loser ratio that might be smaller than 3:1. Both can have a positive expected value of a trade, so they can be worth following. One might be a better fit for you although both are expected to make money. Of course, knowledge of yourself first is the best way to evaluate trading rules when determining compatibility. Click here to get your free copy of The Inner Voice of Trading audiobook.

Subscribe to the show Your data feed might only include what we call normal trading hours or "outcry only." For some of you, it might make sense to analyze what happens in pre-market and after-market activity. You may be able to define a small edge to either improve your entries or exits. For your exits, you might be able to effect a trade in the pre- or after-market to improve your price and limit losses or to better protect unrealized gains. Click here to get your free copy of The Inner Voice of Trading audiobook.

Subscribe to the show Most system traders can screen for tickers by price, volume, and volatility. You can also add some overlays if you want and test those parameters also. Here are a few thoughts on running screens. Be mindful to find the data on the securities that don't trade anymore and add that data into your overall data to screen. Else, you'll only be looking at survivors and it would be good to know how your rules would have worked if your model had initiated longs on ENE or BSC that eventually went bust, or other names that were taken over or merged. Click here to get your free copy of The Inner Voice of Trading audiobook.

Subscribe to the show Most system traders do not just increase their bet size on a whim. Many have their risk systematized to be a fixed percentage of their overall equity conjugated with the volatility of the instrument. They increase their risk systematically and only trade larger when their capital base grows due to gains or from adding capital to their account. Chart readers can do the same thing although they have to do it by hand. Be careful if you increase your size because you think "you are on to something..." and get too big too soon. That can come from hubris which we spoke about recently in another episode. You can look at your winning percentage and ratio of win size to loss size to help determine if/when you should increase your bet size / risk unit. Click here to get your free copy of The Inner Voice of Trading audiobook.

Subscribe to the show In this episode I recall how I got stopped on CSCO for a loss and why that was a great trade. Click here to get your free copy of The Inner Voice of Trading audiobook.

Subscribe to the show If someone you know is bearish and they're not short, they're full of it and probably like to hear themselves talk. Do them a favor and call them on their nonsense. Ask them where their stop orders to enter the market are. I find this happens with people who are looking for attention and trying to show you how smart they are. What a snooze. I don't care about opinions and theories. If this is something you're falling victim to, you can gauge your own level of self-deception by listing all the entries you have for your theories. Click here to get your free copy of The Inner Voice of Trading audiobook.

Subscribe to the show Selling short on valuation at historic highs is a quick way to lose a great deal of capital fast. Selling long on valuation is a quick way to incur staggering opportunity costs and missed opportunities. Don't try to be smart - focus on making money. Click here to get your free copy of The Inner Voice of Trading audiobook.

Subscribe to the show Buying a pullback works in raging bull markets until it doesn't work anymore. Is it a 2-stage pullback...or is it the end of the trend? You don't want to be buying when the trend reverses. Know what you're going to do beforehand. Click here to get your free copy of The Inner Voice of Trading audiobook.

Subscribe to the show It's easy to get blinded by our success when we're in boom times like we're in now. If you get used to it, you can lose perspective and forget that sometimes what's around the corner is going to be more than just a short-term pullback. In this episode, Michael Martin remembers what happened during previous boom times in his career for context. Click here to get your free copy of The Inner Voice of Trading audiobook.

Subscribe to the show You want to trade rules that are robust. That will give you a better chance of surviving when the markets inevitably change. Backtest your rules with a minimum of 10 years of historical data. Click here to get your free copy of The Inner Voice of Trading audiobook

Subscribe to the show I don't worry about trying to make realized gains each day. It's not my goal to reinvent myself each day - I want the market to do the work for me. Focus on process and the results will follow. Click here to get your free copy of The Inner Voice of Trading audiobook

Subscribe to the show Raise you hand if anyone from your clearing member has called you when you're in a protracted drawdown or are overtrading and they tell you to stop... Click here to get your free copy of The Inner Voice of Trading audiobook

Subscribe to the show You can count on "the other guy" to do the wrong thing most of the time. Click here to get your free copy of The Inner Voice of Trading audiobook

Subscribe to the show So let's say you get five signals. You don't know which one to take. Will you take all of them with the requisite amount of risk that you're willing to take, then you let the market activity unfold. The market will tell you which one's going to be the best one. You can count on it. So if you're taking it home with you, you have your protective stops, whether you're trading off of a reversal, or whether you're doing some kind of swing trading technique, or whether you're trailing with ATR or whether you're trailing with structure, there's a whole bunch of ways you can offset winners which are hard to visualize on an audio only format. So I'm not going to get into it here, but the market will unfold accordingly in ways that you can maybe predict - maybe you can't. But the point is that if you sit on your hands and let the auction process work, the market will let the individual name one of the five, maybe even two of the five, raise their hand and say, I'm the biggest winner. Now, maybe you'll be lucky enough to say, Hey, that was the one that I was going with. But you don't know. There were times when in the mid 2000s, when China was buying up as much of the commodity markets that you could possibly get, you'd get signals on the same day in tin, zinc, nickel, high-grade, silver, and gold. And you'd be sitting there saying I got the entire metal complex is firing longs, which ones do I take? What do you think you should do? Click here to get your free copy of The Inner Voice of Trading audiobook

Subscribe to the show Focusing on your process can keep you placated as we said yesterday. It can also help you improve your attitude. When you're not chasing your tail or going outside the boundaries of your trading rules, you're conserving a great deal of energy. When you don't react, you develop of quiet sense of confidence about you. It doesn't mean you're infallible, but you're in control. You can take that feeling of being in control of your behavior and repurpose it. Then it begins to compound. Day after day, week after week - after a few months you can look back and see an change in yourself. Click here to get your free copy of The Inner Voice of Trading audiobook.

Subscribe to the show Focusing on your process can keep you placated. It can also help prevent you from getting too emotionally invested in an outcome that you don't have any control over. This is good advice and something that can help in life also. We talked about having an expectation about a trade that you've been stalking for several weeks. One where you saw the set up a mile away, yet it reversed in your face. I've learned the hard way that such expectations have built in disappointments. When you focus on the process you go to bed at night having done your best - and that's all you can do. You're powerless over where the markets go. Click here to get your free copy of The Inner Voice of Trading audiobook.

Subscribe to the show What parts of your process can you delegate and even improve your results? You can learn to trade and make money without being there. Click here to get your free copy of The Inner Voice of Trading audiobook.

Subscribe to the show You can spend weeks stalking a chart and have the set up work perfectly, only to have the name reverse, sometimes in the same day. You put all this work in and the name doesn't have the common courtesy to go up... How do you feel about that? For some of you, it can lead to disappointment or anger. If that's the case, you can sometimes become derailed and trade on those emotions - whether you have systematized rules or not. It's important to remember that we are guests at the market's party and we're lucky enough to be invited in the first place. False breakouts and reversals don't care when you get long. Sometimes the market is not amenable to your trading style. It has nothing to do with you or your ability so you might consider not taking it personally. Click here to get your free copy of The Inner Voice of Trading audiobook.

Subscribe to the show It happens from time to time that you make a huge win. You should celebrate it and understand that they don't happen all the time. Many traders will intuit that they are "on to something" and without any thought, start to trade larger. They also start trading names or asset classes outside of their core ability. Plan to grow methodically and not get to invested in the hubris that we can feel after large wins. Someone a lot smarter than me said "pride is a big banana peel." If you stick to trading a fixed percentage of your assets, you'll be fine. You can condition yourself to feel the same about all your trades - you're just following your system. Click here to get your free copy of The Inner Voice of Trading audiobook.

Subscribe to the show What does trading mean for you in your life? What do you want your money to do for you? When you know the answer to some of these type of questions, figuring out the best asset class and trading style will be easier. Know and master yourself first, then figuring out the trading part is much easier. Click here to get your free copy of The Inner Voice of Trading audiobook.

Subscribe to the show Attitude is the one thing that I can't teach you. I can help you change your paradigm and that in turn can help you have a good attitude. However, you're going to want to do the work. Sometimes attitude can carry you when nothing else is working. According to General James Mattis, to the "USMC, attitude is a weapon system." Think about that for a minute... How do you think you can use this information as you manage risk? Click here to get your free copy of The Inner Voice of Trading audiobook.

Subscribe to the show If you know someone who trades across asset classes and trading styles, they are likely gambling. A person becomes the casino when they stick to one asset class and one style of trading, and get that down cold. Making predictions, fading the Fed, and fighting the tape are all examples of gambling. Tell them to keep their opinions to themselves and focus on getting good at one thing, and grow from there. Click here to get your free copy of The Inner Voice of Trading audiobook.

Subscribe to the show Many traders learning the craft are governed by the need for success for public purposes. Some like to peacock. Some are just flat-out greedy. You'll make a more progress sooner if you're clear about what your motivations are. In the end, consistent behavior predicts where you end up in life, not throwing around size trying for hero trades. Click here to get your free copy of The Inner Voice of Trading audiobook.

Subscribe to the show A trader can gun for 100% RoR, but at what cost? You need to conjugate what you're doing with risk (and time). Your open trade equity shows allocators the risk that you're taking for the returns your endeavoring. Most allocators are looking at daily vol and risk-adjusted returns. If your ethos is to chase hero-sized returns, you have to know that those are often a result of good timing. And if you continually trade too big, it will catch up with you - it's just a matter of time. Slow and steady wins the race. Know what you're trading for. Click here to get your free copy of The Inner Voice of Trading audiobook.

Subscribe to the show Commodities are cyclical whereas equities are secular. You can take advantage of that cyclicality by trading seasonally or by trading commodity spreads. When you combine that with good risk management and maybe some trend following tactics, guess what happens? Click here to get your free copy of The Inner Voice of Trading audiobook.

Subscribe to the show Alan "Ace" Greenberg had a great rule that he mandated on the Bear Stearns trading floor: "If the name is down coming into Friday's close, it trades." He didn't wait for stops to be hit. If the prop trader was long and there was an unrealized loss, they sold it before the close on Friday. This simple, but brilliant rule is one that you might want to employ. By selling your losers and going flat, you have a clear head that night and the rest of the weekend. Life is good. Click here to get your free copy of The Inner Voice of Trading audiobook.

Subscribe to the show Things don't always go as planned. Give yourself some room to expected the unexpected. This is the best way to hedge against your blind spots for which you have many. Click here to get your free copy of The Inner Voice of Trading audiobook.

Subscribe to the show Your sole purpose in life is to play superior defense. Where do you think you can express that ethos the best? Click here to get your free copy of The Inner Voice of Trading audiobook.

Subscribe to the show Nothing happens randomly. You decide that you want to trade voluntarily. Whatever happens after that is your responsibility regardless of the outcome. The best traders I have known over the years are the ones who live in a paradigm of personal responsibility. Let go of judgment of yourself and others and focus on risk management. That's what traders are at the end of the day - risk managers. If you don't manage risk, the risk manages you - and it's your fault. Click here to get your free copy of The Inner Voice of Trading audiobook.

I think it's important to trade small at the beginning of your career so that you can find out what your edge is. Once you have it, then you scale and trade larger. You should think of it like panning for gold (to find your edge). The goal isn't for large trading gains right away, but to discover and shine the light on your edge.

It's more than rate of return...

Marshall Ulrich is an American legend. As a mountaineer, he's climbed the Seven Summits - completing each on his first attempt. The Seven Summits consist of Mount Everest, Aconcagua, Denali, Kilimajaro, Mount Elbrus, Mount Vinson, Puncak Jaya, and Mount Kosciuszko by order of elevation. Marshall has completed 130 ultra marathons, each over 100 miles in distance. Most notably, he's known for completing the formidable Badwater 135 ultra marathon across Death Valley 18 times - winning the event 4 times - including 3 in a row. Temperatures can reach 130 degrees F during this race in July.

Steven M. Sears is a contributor to Barronsonline.com and the former editor of the Striking Price column of Barron's magazine. He is the author of The Indomitable Investor: Why a Few succeed in the Stock Market When Everyone Else Fails published by Wiley.