Think back to the single worst event in your life; Did it defeat you or did you use it to your advantage and turn it into the greatest moment that ever happened to you? In today’s episode, we've got a special guest by the name of AJ Garcia, whose story is nothing short of inspirational! From rubbing shoulders with celebrities as a high-flying marketing executive to suddenly staring at a prison sentence of 25 years to life,  AJ shares the day that everything changed for him and how he ended up beating the charges but still hitting rock bottom when the judge sentenced him to serve 7 years in prison. Despite being written off by friends and family, AJ never wrote himself off and actually committed himself to develop his mindset and psychology while serving his time.  Our goal with this episode is to provide insight to help you with whatever obstacles you’re facing in life. This is a story of how AJ used prison as the launching pad for his personal success, but it's also about how you can use a potential setback to set up your future. Some of the topics we discussed in today's episode include:  The fall from grace and the day that everything changed Being written off by family and friends but keeping it together mentally  Making opportunities out of setbacks Finding motivation during the darkest times Not having control over anything other than what you could control Disassociating from thoughts like “What might happen” and embodying “it is what it is” as a driving motivator The importance of routines in developing and maintaining a strong mindset  The role of gratitude in maintaining a positive outlook on life  Developing an indestructible “I am not going to lose” mindset  Life after prison and being introduced to options trading  The role a strong mindset plays in developing as a trader  Resources Enjoying this podcast? We'd appreciate it if you can drop us a rating and review on iTunes here  Connect with our community online: Trade Pro Academy Catch up with our earlier episodes: Mind Over Markets Podcast

In today’s episode, we are going to be discussing the recent euphoria around the GameStop short squeeze, what actually happened and some of the important lessons that new traders can learn from this recent saga! What Happened with GameStop (Ticker: GME)?  Around this time last year (2020), GME was trading below the $5 mark and over the course of the year, the price traded as high as $20 in January 2021. Then on January 13th and January 14th, 2021, the price doubled to $40 - two days later, it doubled again. As a result of this rapid price increase, the media caught wind of this and started running stories on the stock - anywhere you looked, all you saw was “GME” and how retail traders were making life-changing money overnight and beating Wall Street at its own game.  There was euphoria in the air and everybody and their grandmothers were rushing to open brokerage accounts and pour their savings at GME to catch a piece of the pie. On each of the following two days, the stock doubled again, bringing the price to an all-time high of $483.00 over the span of two weeks - this represented a 2,265.33% increase in prices. At the time of this recording, GME price was trading around the $65.00 price level - down almost 80% from the Jan 28th highs suggesting that the short squeeze is now over.   How Did the Short Squeeze Happen? Late last year, some posters on a subreddit called r/wallstreetbets, started arguing that GameStop actually might be a good buy because the business had a lot of upside relative to the price.  In addition to this, a number of hedge funds had taken short positions on this stock - so much so, that the short float on GameStop was 120%  Shorting a stock is simply borrowing shares at higher prices and buying them back at lower prices to make a profit - essentially, these hedge funds were positioned to profit from the price of GameStop falling.  The Reddit community saw that Wall Street was heavily short this stock and realized that they could potentially orchestrate a massive short squeeze by buying shares of GME together in a coordinated effort, which would drive the price up, and the hedge funds who were short the stock would have to buy those shares back to close their out their position, which would fuel the rally even higher and result in massive losses for the hedge funds. What started out as an investment thesis based on fundamentals quickly transformed into a battle against Wall Street that actually gained momentum and mainstream acceptance from the retail crowd - and they were successful in causing some damage to Wall Street - namely Melvin Capital - which had to get bailed out with around $3 billion in order to shore up its finances and ended up covering their position for a massive loss. Avoiding a Systemic Collapse Using The Silent Exit  Instead of going out on the open market and buying GME stock to close out their short positions, hedge funds actually went to the Retail ETF (ticker: XRT) to unwind their positions! GME represented 20% of the ETF holdings, so while the hedge funds spent more money to buy the other 80% of the stocks, they took delivery of the assets out of the ETF and that's effectively how they closed out their position in the market. Have the hedge funds been squeezed out? The short float of around 20% would suggest yes. This short squeeze really had the potential to create a systemic collapse in the financial markets as hedge funds would have had to pay for margin losses by selling large stakes of their positions in big-name stocks like Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook to name a few, which would have provided downside pressure to the stock indices.  Fortunately, it did not get to this point, but in the aftermath, the ones really affected by this were those that joined the party late, bought into the hype near the highs, and held all the way down "hoping" it would come back. Here are the 5 Important Lessons That We Can Learn From This Someone always ends up holding the bag  We can't all win and somebody always loses When you buy shares, the only way to get paid is to sell them at a higher price and somebody has to buy them from you When everyone that wants the stock has already bought it, who is going to buy it from them at a higher price if demand fizzles out? Nobody - they become sellers waiting to happen Holding regardless of developments in the market is a losing strategy overall  Every stock symbol you could put up will have paid off at some point in its trading history Think about the companies that don't exist anymore (ie. Enron, Nortel Networks) All of the companies that are now defunct exceed the total number of stocks available to trade today  Just buying something and holding it forever without any rational analysis on it on a continuous basis is not a good idea  In the long run, more companies go bankrupt then they stay afloat Looking at the symbols in the market right now is not an accurate way to predict what will happen because you are not looking at the universe of all companies, just the ones that survived. Remember it only takes one bankrupt company to wipe out a portfolio when you are getting greedy  Amateur traders chase gains; professionals focus on managing risk  The biggest focus for amateur traders is to what they will do with all of the profits they imagine that they will make when considering buying a stock seeing momentum  There is no focus on risk management nor is there any strategy or plan; just trading based on emotions Professional traders, on the other hand, concern themselves with entry & exit plans, as well as risk management. They have a trading plan before taking on a position; if you don’t have a plan to get out before you get in, then you are getting out based on emotion. Huge opportunities don't last a long time  Whenever a huge deviation of a move happens that exceeds the level of what it should be, it’s a only temporary opportunity. This is because there are trillions of dollars at work in the market to make it efficient again - this takes the form of arbitrage  If you are in a position and the market moves in a way that exceeds what you were looking for when you entered, it's a good idea not to get greedy but to take profit. Following other people's trades is a horrible idea  The worst thing that you can do to yourself is to lose money on someone else’s idea  If you wanna do that, you can use a financial advisor  It’s your money, you work for it, so why invest in someone's opinion? You should learn how to think for yourself and to build confidence in an approach that meshes well with your personality. The journey is not easy, but it is well worth it! Resources Enjoying this podcast? We'd appreciate it if you can drop us a rating and review on iTunes here  Connect with our community online: Trade Pro Academy Catch up with our earlier episodes: Mind Over Markets Podcast

We often compare the mindset of professional traders to that of professional athletes on this podcast so we are very excited for today's special guest, Natey Adjei, who is a professional wide receiver for the Toronto Argonauts in the Canadian Football League (CFL). Natey has been playing football since the fourth grade and has been playing as a professional in the big leagues for the last seven years. He was originally drafted by the Toronto Argonauts in the 2013 CFL Draft where he played for two seasons before joining the Edmonton Eskimos prior to the 2016 season. Natey enjoyed four seasons playing as a receiver for the Eskimos before rejoining the Argonauts as a free agent in February 2020.   Making it to the highest level of a sport is one thing, but to perform as consistently as Natey has, for as long as he has, takes a different type of mindset - the mind of a champion. What does it take to make it to the top? How do champions bounce back from setbacks? How do professionals stay motivated? What do winners focus on? The answer to these questions and more is a short listen away! Here is a summary of what we discussed:  Who is Natey and what does he do? 01:35 Synergies between trading and athletic performance 04:09 What drove Natey to become a professional athlete 04:51 How self-accountability is what makes the difference between being good versus being great 07:51 Good days and bad days will happen - what matters is how you respond 10:07 Dealing with discouragement and gaining confidence through hard work 14:02 Focusing on the present and winning one day at a time 16:52 Using daily routines to track and understand your performance 20.35 Building mental strength by putting in work when you don't feel like it 25:02 Analyzing your mistakes and correcting your course 31:43 Not all mistakes are created equal 34:30 Why checking the scoreboard in-game is a loser's mentality - it's always a zero-zero game 39:30 How professional athletes self-reflect on their individual performance after a game  43:30 Using visualization to win the battle in your head and improve performance 46:32 Situational awareness and its role in real-time risk management 51:00 If you're going to make a mistake, make it at full speed - no matter what you do 54:45 You can't reach the top without thinking and believing that you are the best 61:32 Self-worth and dealing with the negative pressure and expectations from fans on social media 64:35 When it's really close margins it's the mental game that defines the best 68:00 Finding motivation by striving to get better every day 71:11 Resources Enjoying this podcast? We'd appreciate it if you can drop us a rating and review on iTunes here  Connect with our community online: Trade Pro Academy Catch up with our earlier episodes: Mind Over Markets Podcast How to Find Natey Adjei?  Love sports? Listen to Natey's All Ball Podcast on Apple Podcasts or on Youtube Follow Natey on Twitter and Instagram

In this episode, we focus our discussion on resilience and why it's such an important characteristic for you to develop as a trader!  Despite what you see on social media, trading is not as easy as it is portrayed and the reality is that you will face challenges and obstacles on your journey that will test you financially, mentally, and even physically.  Every single trader, yourself included, will go through periods of losses and drawdown and whether you can bounce back and recover to new highs will largely depend on your resilience. Our goal with this episode is to introduce you to resilience, the role it represents in your trading, and some strategies that you can apply to start becoming a more resilient trader! What is Resilience? the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness. Why Is resilience such an important characteristic for traders?  Trading is a very demanding job; you will be presented with challenges, pressure, and adversity The largest source of adversity in trading will be dealing with losses and drawdowns.  Your ability to keep a level head will determine whether you will bounce back successfully or not.  The key is not to try to avoid these periods, but to be in a position to be able to bounce back from these challenges.  Successful traders will endure these challenges and overcome these adversities whereas unsuccessful traders will fail to do the same Now when we consider how to build resilience, we like to break it down into 3 different sub-categories that we can work on as traders. These sub-categories include: Financial Resilience  Physical Resilience  Psychological resilience  Let's dig a bit deeper into each one: Financial Resilience;  If you are going to survive rough patches in the market, you will need a sufficient supply of capital.  To build your resilience in this category, you will want to focus on having enough personal capital to survive slow periods and drawdowns without the need to make money trading in order to pay the bills If trading capital is a large portion of your personal wealth then every loss will have a double impact; both your trading capital and personal wealth will take a hit which increases the pain and emotional impact of the loss If trading capital is small, then you can either accept it for what it is and manage risk accordingly or you will force yourself to take on too much risk while chasing unrealistic expectations. Having a good base of capital will allow you to take risks appropriate for the account size Physical Resilience:  This relates to having the energy required to cope with all of the stress and challenges when things aren’t going our way  When trading is tough it can take a lot of out you mentally and emotionally but also physically  You can build up your physical resilience by practicing good habits; getting enough rest, eating well, doing meditations and getting active, and working out.  Psychological Resilience:  This relates to how you mentally deal with tough situations What you choose to think and say to yourself in tough times and the beliefs, attitudes, and perceptions you have about them determines the outcome that you will manifest.  Cortisol production shoots up when you are stressed and adrenaline increases when you are elated; this takes energy to produce and removes energy from you - almost like a withdrawal from your energy bank  Similar to what we refer to as the mental capital meter- you need to have a high amount of mental capital (7+ out of 10) in order to be able to handle the stresses and pressure from trading.  When you are low in energy your mood gets affected and you become more easily irritated and frustrated which is the opposite of what we want as traders  One strategy you can use to build resilience in this category is to ask yourself what a loss and/or drawdown means to you and examine your responses. Take note of positive and negative beliefs and commit to reframing the negative ones with positive beliefs (ie. I am not a successful trader if I make a mistake - reframe to mistakes are an opportunity to learn, trading is not a game of perfection ) Consider taking the “big picture” approach to events and looking for the positive in any situation; Ask yourself  “What can I learn from this”. This line of thinking generates new possibilities for future outcomes; see losses or setbacks are a cost of learning. Another idea is to think back to a loss or setback and visualize yourself 6 months or more into the future reflecting on the loss or setback - what do you notice?  Practical Strategies to Building Resilience Ensure a positive relationship with personal capital, your trading capital, and the size traded  Maintain and top up your mental capital meter; focus on sleep, exercise and nutrition  Develop positive resilient beliefs, take positive perspective of events and practice positive self talk Resources Enjoying this podcast? We'd appreciate if you can drop us a rating and review on iTunes here  Connect with our community online: Trade Pro Academy Catch up with our earlier episodes: Mind Over Markets Podcast

In today's episode, we are excited to bring to you an interview with a special guest by the name of Etienne Crete, who is a full-time swing trader and is also the founder of the Desire To Trade podcast. Etienne is known as the traveling forex trader and he really practices what he preaches - in fact, he has built a life of freedom that allows him to travel the world and pursue his passions while making a full-time income swing trading the forex markets. When he's not out exploring new cities and destinations, Etienne also mentors serious traders looking to quit their jobs and pursue trading full-time while also providing huge value to the global trading community in the form of his well-known Desire to Trade podcast. Our very own George Papazov has made several guest appearances on Etienne's show and you can check out his latest interview here.  We recently had the chance to sit down with Etienne (virtually, of course) for a great discussion on what it takes to be a successful full-time trader, how he made his breakthrough to profitable trading, the importance of developing a trading strategy that fits around your lifestyle, as well as the process of getting funded as a trader. If you are even remotely interested in making a full-time career out of trading while creating a life of ultimate freedom, you do not want to miss this episode! Here is a summary of what we discussed:  Who is Etienne and what does he do? 01:25 How Etienne was introduced to the financial markets 02:30 What attracted Etienne to trading the forex markets 06:22 Initial challenges Etienne ran into when he started trading 08:00 The importance of developing your strategy as you mature as a trader 10:10 How Etienne used trading as a means to pursue his passion of traveling 15:00 The daily routine that Etienne practices in order to stay mentally sharp  18:20 The big realization that led to Etienne's breakthrough into profitable trading 22:15 How seeing himself as the CEO of a company helped Etienne find consistency in his trading approach 27:15 Some of the limiting beliefs Etienne struggled with and how he overcame them  30:20 Why working with a performance coach helped Etienne develop his trading mindset 33:00 How professional traders handle losses and drawdowns  38:57 Starting a trading podcast to meet other traders and learn from them 42:50 The most common characteristic of successful traders 46:20 Getting funded by a private investor and going full-time with trading 50:00 How to know when it's the right time to leverage your trading by taking on other people's money 53:15 What Etienne would tell himself if he had to start trading all over again 57:12 Resources Enjoying this podcast? We'd appreciate it if you can drop us a rating and review on iTunes here  Connect with our community online: Trade Pro Academy Catch up with our earlier episodes: Mind Over Markets Podcast How to Find Etienne Crete?  Check out his website and podcast here: Desire to Trade  Check him out on Youtube Follow him on Twitter and Instagram

In today’s episode, our discussion is going to be focused on expectations that new traders have about trading, and more specifically, how unrealistic expectations can be extremely toxic for your journey.  If you’re serious about becoming a trader, it’s wise to understand the nature of the beast now rather than learning it the hard way later. Unrealistic expectations are one of the major catalysts that lead to emotional trading and ultimately a lot of frustration with trading - in fact, the majority of mistakes you will make in your trading career will be a result of expectations that are misaligned with the reality of the markets. Since you are here with us today, our goal is to set the record straight and provide you with a dose of the realities of trading so that you can better manage your expectations in order to give yourself the best chance of finding sustained success!  So what are expectations and why can unrealistic expectations be dangerous?  An expectation is a strong belief that something will happen or be the case in the future Expectations also bring about emotional highs and lows; meaning that you feel good when your expectations are realized, but you will feel disappointed when your expectations don’t come to fruition When emotions creep into your trading, you become vulnerable to making emotional decisions, which is what can really harm your account Unrealistic expectations are the catalysts that lead to most of the mistakes you will make as a trader These expectations are often the result of buying into online marketing about trading and how it possible to master this craft and attain riches seemingly overnight with a $100 trading account.  This marketing leads people to have a mistaken perception of what successful trading really requires and starts you off on the wrong path for the journey you are about to embark on If you expect to be perfect in your trading or even to be consistently profitable within a short period of time, then you are most likely going to be let down The interesting thing to note here is that when your expectations are unrealistic, you will struggle with trading because at a subconscious level, your monkey brain will realize that reaching those expectations is likely to not happen and your mind will go into “fight or flight mode” at which point, your decisions will be made on autopilot without your control.  This is the real danger of unrealistic expectations! The fact that you will sabotage your own plans and rules when things don’t go the way you expect them to There are generally two types of “expectations” as it relates to trading :  Expectations you have about trading  Expectations you have when actually trading  Here are some examples of each type: Common unrealistic expectations about trading  Expecting to flip a $1k account into a million dollars within a year  Expecting to make money from the first week of trading  Expecting to be able to make money without any training and practice Expecting an easy ride without any work (trading is easy money)  Expecting to make more profits by spending more time in the markets Common unrealistic expectations when you are actually trading  Expecting to never lose a single trade  Expecting each trade to be a home run  Expecting to catch the tops and bottoms with every trade  Expecting to never take any heat on trades  Do You Have Unrealistic Expectations About Trading?  In this next section of the show, we are going to ask you some questions that we want you to be brutally honest with yourself in order to determine whether your existing expectations are realistic or not.  If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then your current expectations about trading are likely unrealistic and it’s time for a reality check: Are you taking too many trades or re-entering the market after taking a loss out of anger and frustration? Do you force random trades because you expect that more trades mean more profits?  Do you tend to hold on to losing trades despite the market moving against you?  Do you try to take on too much risk for your account size?  Are you constantly hopping from one strategy to the next when you run into a loss and/or streak of losses?  Do you constantly shift from demo trading to live trading and back to demo when things don’t go the way you expect them to?  Setting the Record Straight: The Reality of Trading (the fishing hook)   Reaching your trading goals will take much longer and require more effort than initially planned  You will constantly be challenged and must remain persistent in the face of these challenges in order to overcome them There are 4 general stages in the journey to profitability and the most important is the first one because most traders never make it out of this stage when their expectations are not managed accordingly In the first stage of your journey, you will be taking losses as you start to get skin in the game; You are still learning and refining your execution so you will make mistakes and the goal here is not to make money but to learn how to survive in the markets by establishing structure; getting comfortable with your strategy and risk management & develop good habits and discipline; do not rush this stage! In the second stage, as you start to develop confidence in your strategy, you refine your executions, make fewer mistakes and overall feel more confident in the markets, you get to the point where you are no longer losing money and in fact starting to make some money.  In the third stage of the journey, you are now at the point where you have recovered the drawdown and have reached the break-even point in your trading - meaning you are now covering costs and commissions without bleeding the account out  The fourth stage of the journey is where the trader finally starts to make profits and this is where the account growth can occur exponentially, however, most don’t ever make it this far due to unrealistic expectations Managing Expectations as a Trader  The most productive mindset for a new trader is to focus on the process of trading, rather than the profits that come with them If you do that successfully, you will have plenty of profits, but there are no shortcuts Our job is to trade with the odds and accept the probabilities that the odds may not play out on any particular occasion Redefine what a good day means! Have a goal going into each trading day and plan to achieve that goal.  It should not be related to making money (for example, If I make money today it's a good day), instead, it should be process-focused based on what you can control (A good day is a day that I followed my trading plan) Resources Enjoying this podcast? We'd appreciate if you can drop us a rating and review on iTunes here  Connect with our community online: Trade Pro Academy Catch up with our earlier episodes: Mind Over Markets Podcast Check out George's Path to Profit book here 

In today’s episode, we are going to be discussing the concept of a financial thermostat and how your default setting may actually be holding you back from achieving the trading success that you know you deserve! It’s no secret that trading is linked with money; if you think about what initially drew you to this industry, most people would agree that it is the allure of making life-changing money.  After all, what do we spend most of our days fantasizing about? How life as a successful trader would look like! Luxury homes, large bank account balances, exotic sports cars, and really, the freedom of time to do whatever you want whenever you want.  Now, if you’ve been with us for any amount of time, you’ll be aware that it is the logical side of your brain that actually desires and wants these things, but it’s really the subconscious mind that actually runs the show! So if your relationship with money is not aligned with your financial goals as a trader, then you will find a way to self-sabotage yourself and your results.  Our goal today is to help you identify what your default financial thermostat setting is and how to adjust it so that you shake out the beliefs that don’t serve you and replace them with those that will!  Your Relationship With Money  Before we dive into what a financial thermostat is and how to adjust it, we believe that it is important to first identify your relationship with money.  Every single human being has a certain relationship with money and as traders, the type of relationship that we have with money will impact the trading decisions we make regardless of whether they are in our best interests or not. A lot of successful trading has to do with planning your next best trade and waiting for the market conditions to align so that you can execute according to your plan. The issue for most people is that they are unable to follow the plan successfully and this is where your relationship with money may provide some insights into your own trading behaviors and habits.  The unfortunate reality is that if you have an emotionally unstable relationship with money, then regardless of how hard you work, you are setting yourself up for failure as a trader.  Think about your own thoughts and beliefs that come up when you think about money. It might represent things like social status, security, safety, scarcity, opportunity, even resentment. Did you know that a majority, if not all, of these beliefs, were formed during your imprint years up until the time you were about 7-8 years old? These beliefs were created by the things we heard, by what we saw, and by specific incidents we experienced as a child.  Most of us don’t know why we make the choices we make about money and wealth because they are the result of programs we run in our minds automatically based on the beliefs we learned during those crucial imprint years! So for example, if you grew up hearing things like "Money doesn't grow on trees" or "Money is the root of all evil" or you saw your parents struggle to pay the bills on a monthly basis, then your default reaction to material things might be "I can't afford that". This leaves a negative imprint on your psychology because you associate money with feelings of scarcity, pain or even resentment. In an industry like trading, where you have to risk capital, regardless of whether you want to make money or not on a logical level, if you truly believe that money is scarce then this will override your logical thoughts and sabotage your ability to follow your plan.  Now that we have covered your relationship with money, we can move on to the concept of your financial thermostat. What is a Financial Thermostat?  Your financial thermostat is actually very similar to a regular thermostat!  The thermostat is set to keep your room temperature within a certain range - so the thermostat regulates the temperature automatically and will kick in to ensure it always remains in that pre-set range.  Think of your financial thermostat as the amount of money that you are comfortable with, the amount that you have set for yourself.   Let’s say the average American makes $36 k per year, which means that the monthly paycheque would come out to around $3000 - most Americans also live paycheck to paycheck so for example sake, the financial thermostat for an average American would be around $3k on the high end and say $250 on the low end.  When your bank account rises above your thermostat, let’s say you get a larger bonus than expected, for example, you find a way to blow the cash. When your bank account drops below your thermostat, you start to work harder, be more diligent and tighten up expenses to bring it back up. If you reflect on your own experiences with money, does this hold true?  This is why lottery winners usually end up right back where they started after several years - because they never worked on increasing their “default” settings on their financial thermostat.  The level of your financial thermostat determines the level of your wealth. This level may gradually expand over time but seldom, if ever, does it expand rapidly. The faster it expands, the more volatile you fluctuate between the upper and lower bounds of the range.  To bring it back to trading, if your money beliefs are such that you associate money with risk, scarcity, and danger, while you logically strive to make more money, can you see how this misalignment can create a conflict between what you think you want and what you actually believe you deserve?  How Does Your Financial Thermostat Manifest Itself in Your Trading?  There are a number of ways that your financial thermostat asserts itself in your trading and these include:  Position sizing - If you trade positions that make you emotionally uncomfortable, you effectively put yourself in a position where you are too scared to trade because you don’t want to lose money, so you scale back or don’t trade at all. On the flip side of the coin, if you trade too small, then you are not as engaged emotionally and this can lead to sloppy executions and straying away from your plan because the monetary rewards simply do not motivate you.  Self - Sabotage - you might get to a stage in your journey where you are starting to make money and have built up somewhat of a profit cushion. At this stage, you might be above your current financial thermostat range,  and as a result, you self-sabotage by telling yourself that you can take more drawdown now because you have a profit cushion, so you decide to increase the trading size, take on more risk per trade and aim for larger profit targets.  Practical Strategies to Adjust Your Financial Thermostat  The goal of adjusting your financial thermostat is to uncover all of the limiting beliefs living in your head that are hindering your prosperity and challenging them so that they no longer affect you!  The first step is awareness - whenever a situation involving money comes up, take a moment to observe these thoughts as a third party (literally see yourself outside of your body seeing observing these thoughts) and become aware of what you are thinking and/or feeling. When you think about the material things you desire, what kinds of feelings come up?  Do you feel like you deserve these things? By becoming aware of these thoughts, you allow yourself to identify where your financial thermostat is currently set.  The next step is to change how you speak to yourself once you become aware of the thoughts you are having! If you believe that you don't deserve something, then challenge that belief! Ask yourself why you believe that or a personal favorite, "Why are you arguing for your limitations?”.  Remember that limiting beliefs are deeply ingrained and while on the surface they seem like they might be against you; they are really there to protect you.  Your money thermometer might be set really low without your knowledge because your relationship with money might be that of disappointment or resentment, so your brain will try to protect you because it saw that money always brought you pain in the past. The next time you have a positive experience with money, reinforce it by using positive self-talk! The final step is visualization - Use a vision board to make compelling pictures of wealth and income, or of material goods that represent wealth. Take a few minutes every day in a quiet place to visualize your desires and how grateful you are for possessing them! Get very detailed here and don't be shy! If you want to make a million dollars trading, visualize seeing that balance in your brokerage statement. What would that feel like? What would you do with that money? Visualize all of these things in great detail until it feels real! You are now in the process of shaking out the values that don't serve you and replacing them with those that will!  Resources Enjoying this podcast? We'd appreciate if you can drop us a rating and review on iTunes here  Connect with our community online: Trade Pro Academy Catch up with our earlier episodes: Mind Over Markets Podcast Check out George's Path to Profit book here 

As another new year approaches, most people have an idea of what they want to accomplish but their goals might just seem so out of reach, so out there, that it’s almost too intimidating to start.  We often assume that if we want to achieve big things, we need to take big action - but the problem with this approach is that the bigger the action you need to take, and the more drastic the difference is from your current way of doing things, the more likely it is that you will have trouble sustaining these actions in order to accomplish your goal.  But what if you focused on getting just 1% better each day and seeing how your results compound over the next year? That's exactly what we are going to be discussing in today's episode!  If you were to break down your big goals into tiny, sustainable daily actions that you can practice consistently then you might just be surprised with what you can achieve!  In the beginning, these small decisions might seem insignificant, but over time, the small improvements (or declines) begin to compound and the difference between the two camps becomes quite noticeable.  If you get only 1% better each day for just one year, then compounded, you will end up around 37 times better by the end of the year - on the opposite side of the coin - simply being 1% worse each day, compounded over a year, means you are 97% worse off. So imagine for a moment achieving a 3700% return on investment and in this case, that investment is YOU! Why Small Habits Make a Big Difference  The concept of improving only 1% a day seems negligible - but over the long run it can be very noticeable  The societal norm of instant-gratification these days means that small changes are often seen as insignificant  Coupled with the slow pace of seeing noticeable results leads many to let bad habits slide.  Similar to how every chemical reaction has activation energy, we can think of every habit or behavior as having activation energy as well No matter what habit you are trying to build there is a certain amount of effort required to start the habit In chemistry, the more difficult it is for a chemical reaction to occur, the bigger the activation energy For habits, it’s the same story; the more difficult or complex a behavior, the higher the activation energy required to start it For example, sticking to the habit of doing 1 pushup per day requires very little energy to get started, meanwhile, doing 100 pushups per day is a habit with much higher activation energy. It's going to take more motivation, energy, and grit to start complex habits day after day Regardless of whether you are successful or not at this moment in time, what truly matters is whether your habits are putting you on the road to success or veering you off the path Your current trajectory (daily habits) is more important than your current results as habits are the compound interest of self-improvement Your biggest breakthrough moments will occur as a result of many small actions that compounded over time will build up to make a huge change It is so hard to build the habits that last because we often expect progress to occur in a linear fashion and when things don’t occur as quickly as we’d like, we dismiss the habits as ineffective and throw them out the window  This line of thinking makes it easy to pass on the good habits for the comfort of the bad habits that you are already accustomed to. If you find yourself struggling to build habits or break bad ones, just understand that progress takes time and that your efforts are not wasted The period between taking small consistent actions and achieving noticeable improvements is coined by James Clear as the “Plateau of Latent Potential”  Once you break through this phase, people on the outside will see it as an “overnight success” but in reality, it’s the result of all the small actions that you took which makes today’s results possible How to Get 1% Better Each Day as a Trader  Small, Smart Choices + Consistency + Time = Radical Difference The first step is to have clarity on what your goals are and who you want to become and the lifestyle that you want to live  Create a larger vision of what you want to achieve - you can reference our goal setting episode #7 - Goals and Actionable Outcomes for the New Year to help you set NLP-based goals Reverse engineer your stretch goals into actionable small steps that you can execute daily  For example; If you want to develop your trading mindset, you can start by listening to one episode of this podcast per week and as you apply the strategies, you can increase your efforts to two episodes per week and so on and so forth and watch how much your trading mindset improves over the course of the year.  Over time these small smart choices made consistently will provide compounded results Resources Enjoying this podcast? We'd appreciate if you can drop us a rating and review on iTunes here  Connect with our community online: Trade Pro Academy Catch up with our earlier episodes: Mind Over Markets Podcast Check out the book Atomic Habits by James Clear on Amazon

In today’s episode, we are going to be discussing a topic that people don’t really talk about much in this industry and that is the fear of success and how it can be detrimental to your end goals as a trader.  Take a moment to reflect on this question:  “Do you fear your own success?”  You might be resistant to this idea at first because after all, why would you fear getting everything that you want? Sounds crazy, right?  But you might be surprised to find out that the fear of success is actually responsible for a lot of the self-sabotage that occurs in our pursuit of what we think we want.  Fear of success is easily confused with fear of failure as both can keep you from reaching your full potential; however, the main difference between the two is that the fear of failure has more to with beating yourself up for underperforming, whereas fear of success is more built in the anticipation of how others will react to your accomplishments.  It’s one of the hardest things to pin down so our goal today is to identify why it happens, how you can overcome it as a trader and how you can become more self-aware so that you can go about dealing with this effectively.  Why would you be fearful of achieving the things that you are working so hard for?  Definition: Fear of success usually doesn’t mean a literal fear of success. People fear the results and consequences of making lots of money, for example, not the money itself. On a conscious level, you don’t actually fear achieving success but at the subconscious level, you might be holding on to a script or limiting belief that is at play which you have to face and challenge.  The subconscious mind works to prevent that which it fears: If you have an unresolved and unreasonable fear of success Your subconscious mind will continue making what your logical mind believes to be mistaken, but the subconscious always overpowers logic and wins. 0.004% vs 96.996%. If you haven’t programmed your mind to succeed, then you have programmed it to fail, and it’s carrying out your orders without your conscious awareness!  (Train tracks example). So why do we fear success? Fear of success is something usually learned in the early years of our lives. It is linked to the beliefs and values that we pick up from parents and others and store at a subconscious level Our parents and friends coach us to avoid looking like losers, to do our best and to always be a winner.  These appear as stories that we tell ourselves at a logical level but when you peel back the curtains there is a deeper underlying belief at play  It is often linked to a low level of self-worth The fear of success can show up in your logical thoughts in the form of the following thoughts: Success will ruin your relationships with friends and family  People will think you are always showing off or bragging Success might not be all it's cracked up to be  You fear the added responsibility that success entails  You fear the changes that success will bring into your life What if I become somebody that I don’t like  When you take a deeper look, these thoughts can be linked to values and beliefs that you picked up in your early childhood years:  “Successful people are bad, evil, etc” “Successful and rich people are lucky, inherited” “You have to work hard to earn a mere living” “It’s lonely at the top” “I am not worthy of success” These kinds of beliefs can really hurt you in the pursuit of your goals because despite your best intentions on a conscious level, at the subconscious level, you do not really want to become that bad or evil person or become socially isolated, so in order to maintain your current status quo, you will self-sabotage your results. Now the reason that you self-sabotage is because your brain is a fan of certainty and changes represent the “unknown” and potential danger to you.  For example, if you believe that achieving the success that you want will bring about negative changes in your life then you will find a way to self-sabotage and become the only obstacle in the way of what you want and deserve. What Does Fear of Success Look Like?  While fear of success can manifest in many different ways, here are the common red flag signs to look out for:  You strive for perfectionism and when you fall short, it’s enough of a reason to not proceed forward. Have you been taught to always be a winner? Are you afraid of looking like a loser? Do you feel the need to win at all costs?  You set goals that don’t really scare you! If you tend to be the type of person that sets a low bar for your goals, you fear challenging yourself and the circumstances of accomplishing them  If you tend to procrastinate and stall just enough for good opportunities to pass  Just when you are on the verge of success you find reasons to quit Do you fear change and the unknown?  Fear of success is both painful and embarrassing because it can cause mixed emotions such as guilt, anxiety, and pressure.   Fear of Success Examples in Trading: I really don’t want to make $5,000 USD a day, I’m fine with just $100.  I just want to REPLACE my income.  Why not increase it? I’ll leave my job to trade full time when I’ve made $250,000 and am out-earning my current income. I’ve got self-doubt that I won't be able to make it. This is too good to be true, what if I am unable to make this last What happens when you finally do get money or get consistent profitability? You have not found what the next step is and you consider throwing in the towel.  Any moment that you start to find success, you find a way to mess up, sabotage, and give it all back. Where do these insecurities come from? A lack of self-worth.  If you don't feel worthy of success then we fear it and when we fear it we find ways to mess it up (self-sabotage) How Can One Overcome a Fear of Success?  Have goals that are lifestyle based, not money goals Reflect on your own past experiences with success and figure out what happened as a result  Are there any stories and beliefs that you adopted in your early childhood years that you’ve held on to?  Make a list of all the ways that you are sabotaging yourself to put it into focus. Once you can identify these behaviors you can put together a plan to counteract them.  Grab a pen and paper and write down the answers to the following questions: Get as clear on your "why" as possible.  “What do I want to do with my life?" “Why do I want to be a trader?” "What kind of experiences do I want to have?" "What kind of people do I want to surround myself with?" Use visualization to imagine your ideal lifestyle. Achieving a goal you have set, what might happen as a result of achieving that accomplishment, and different ways that you can go about dealing with it.  Find a community of like-minded positive people with high self-esteem that you can absorb so that you reframe your mindset. We’ve got a great community but it doesn't have to be with us!  In addition to the above tips, you may also find that making lifestyle changes can help with managing the stress and anxiety brought about by the fear of success. Some of the steps you can take include eating well, taking time to get active each day, making sure you get enough rest, and finally leveraging a journal to help keep you in touch with your feelings and gauge your progress.  Resources Enjoying this podcast? We'd appreciate if you can drop us a rating and review on iTunes here  Connect with our community online: Trade Pro Academy Catch up with our earlier episodes: Mind Over Markets Podcast

In today’s episode, we are going to be discussing a topic that we believe will help a lot of traders out and that is why every trade idea is not necessarily a trade that you should execute.  New traders as well as traders struggling to find consistent profitability tend to find themselves in a hamster wheel of frustration which occurs as a result of wanting to jump in on every single trade idea that they come across in an attempt to make as much money as possible as quickly as possible. The issue with this approach comes down to the simple fact that quality always trumps quantity and that the key to trading profitably is to only execute on the highest probability setups because that is where you have positive expectancy.  We always mention that making money is the easy part of this industry, the difficulty, and were a lot of traders struggle, is in keeping those profits as you continue trading!  The real difference between professional traders and unprofitable traders is that the professionals will pass on a potential trade idea if the market doesn’t give them exactly what they want to see, whereas the losing trader will take every single trade idea regardless of the quality of the setup.  Our goal today is to provide you with some actionable tips that you can use in order to find the right balance between identifying trade ideas and executing on only the best ones!  Before we get into trade ideas, let’s pull back the curtain on thoughts in everyday life and how those translate into trading:  It is estimated that humans have on average 6,200 thoughts a day A lot of these thoughts are ideas (hey I should clean my car, I’ll work out today, etc) You have 6.5 thoughts a minute - but how many of these thoughts turn to action? Very few - most of them enter our brain and exit without any meaningful action taken Trading ideas are the same It is a thought about the market - but it’s not a direct call to action, not every thought or idea will turn into a trade We look at trade ideas as opportunities…. but not all opportunities are the same, and not all deserve your capital and mental energy So what is the call to action for a trading “idea”? You have to filter out opportunities to find only the best ones One way to filter out these ideas is to use qualifiers You can’t expect to have the perfect qualifiers on your first trade ever, it takes screen time and experience to refine them The problem is these qualifiers change on market conditions A good strategy to apply is to talk aloud when qualifying a potential trade idea.  By doing so, we become the listener as well as the speaker. It gives our ideas greater objectivity - we become more aware of those ideas, it adds a layer of mindfulness to what we’re doing.  Let’s say I have an impulse to get long or short an asset because of the way it’s moving and I don’t want it to move against me.  If I say out loud what I’m thinking and what I’m about to do, immediately I can recognize if it sounds ridiculous: “This is not how I do my best money management, I’m being completely reactive.”  We get a layer of self-observation when we talk out loud that can be really useful. It makes us in a certain sense accountable.   The process from trade idea to execution can be broken down into two categories:  Trade Idea Formation - Morning mindset and wellness routine Pre-market preparation - news, market drivers, and catalysts Draw your levels of support and resistance Wait for the market to enter your level - this creates a trade idea, opportunity Qualify the trade using your engines (qualifiers, filters) Trade Execution - Use order flow to pick a good place to put in your limit order Once in a trade, manage risk until you’re at breakeven Then manage the winning side of the trade to run the profits Repeat Tips to help you transition from idea to execution Split the process into two jobs.  Job one is to be the analyst, do all your thinking and modeling in this time period.  These are steps 1 to 5 above.  Job two is to be the trader that executes the idea, stop thinking and worrying, all that should have been done by the analyst. Speak your ideas out loud to hear your thoughts and become more mindful of your intentions. The key idea here is that when you talk an idea out loud - whether to yourself or a fellow trader - you force yourself to put the idea into clear words and make it understandable. This forces you to not only speak the idea but to hear it as you are speaking it. This can give you a fresh perspective of what you're thinking and where your psychology is at! By observing your thoughts you become more mindful of your intentions. In this process, you might hear yourself talk out loud and realize the trade idea is not well-formed, other times you might be surprised at the conviction you have in the idea.  It's amazing how bad our worst ideas sound when we actually put them into words! Journal your trade ideas, not just your trades.  Write down your thought process, record what you were looking at, and how it ended up working out.  In the beginning, you can learn a lot about trading by journaling your process, this is “free learning” with zero risks. Remember that not every idea is a good trade.  The problem with new traders is they assume it is their job to be in a trade, but in reality, it is our job to be in the good trades. There is no perfect trade.  Many traders focus on finding a trade that is a risk-free, guaranteed winner. The problem is by the time everything looks perfect, it will be too late to enter, you missed the move.  It’s a business of risk management, not risk elimination. There SHOULD be risk in every trade, and you should feel like it’s “still a little risky”. The only thing that is 100% certain is the past, but it won’t make you any money.  The only time you will EVER KNOW how a trade will work out, is once it’s done.  Focus more on reading real-time order flow and less on trying to predict the future. Practice the process until you create a flow.  Go to replay mode, and work on repeating the trading process steps until the transition between idea and execution feel seamless and fluid.  Repetition is key until it becomes a habit, it will eventually become second nature.  If you suddenly feel fear when you are about to trade, this means you haven’t practiced enough, it’s a confidence issue due to feeling incompetent. Resources Enjoying this podcast? We'd appreciate if you can drop us a rating and review on iTunes here  Connect with our community online: Trade Pro Academy Catch up with our earlier episodes: Mind Over Markets Podcast