

The AlphaMind Podcast
Steven Goldstein & Mark Randall
Mastering trading is not about mastering markets but mastering yourself. The AlphaMind Podcast focuses on the 'Trader Self'. We look at the person doing the trading, their interactions with the market, the impact the market has on them, and the skills, actions and activities needed to navigate their way through the complex and uncertain terrain of financial, commodity, energy and crypto markets.
Episodes
Mentioned books

Aug 24, 2019 • 1h 31min
#12 Mandi Pour Rafsenjani: Developing Traders from the Inside Out & Women in Trading
Mandi is a Trader and Coach from Australia; she works with new and experienced traders helping them develop the inner mindset skills to achieve success and to progress to higher levels of performance. In this interview Mandi shares her journey into trading and how she came to work with traders as a coach. She talks about the classic mistakes and errors she has experienced in her own trading as well as amongst her clients. Also, some of the qualities she has witnesses amongst highly successful traders. We also explore Women in trading, some of the differences between female and male traders, and some of the hurdles they face in male dominated environments. She also tells of her time recently spent with Linda Raschke, one of the world’s leading women traders and an original ‘Market Wizard’. This is a fascinating interview which covers a wide range of topics including mindset, personality, structure, ego, emotions, gender, social network, identity, relationships, environment, routine and habits and how these come back to impact personal trading performance.AlphaMind: Powering Performance in Global MarketsAlphaMind 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.

Aug 17, 2019 • 1h 3min
#11 Clive Lambert: Technical Analyst to Hedge Fund, Investment Bank, Prop Trading Firms
There are few more informed people in the world about the nexus of technical analysis and trader behaviour in the financial markets than Clive Lambert. Clive is one of the world’s leading Technical Analysts, he has a thorough understanding of the way markets work and how people work with them to achieve success. Clive's analysis can be found in trading rooms across the globe and is used by leading traders from the worlds of commodities, energy, FX, bonds, stock indices and more. Clive is also a leading figure in the Society of Technical Analysis and is a lecturer on their diploma programme which runs at the London School of Economics. In this interview, co-hosts Steven Goldstein and Mark Randall have a lively and at times deeply engaging conversation with Clive about his work, and about how people use, misuse and abuse technical analysis. They also explore some of the how and why behind technical analysis and price action methods and how people use them effectively and productively. This interview is both extremely interesting and highly informative. AlphaMind: Powering Performance in Global MarketsAlphaMind 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.

Aug 10, 2019 • 1h 10min
#10 Dr Brett Steenbarger: Ego, Trading and Spirituality
In this episode Dr Brett Steenbarger shares his profound insights from a career working as a psychologist with traders at some of the world’s leading hedge funds and proprietary trading firms. Brett Steenbarger is one of the best minds in the field of trading and investment psychology. There are so many great insights in this episode that you may want to take notes, possibly re-listen and ultimately try to internalise some of the lessons into your own trading behaviours. Dr Steenbarger talks about the similarities between trading, the medical profession and the military specials forces where people are inundated with vast amounts of information and complex rapidly changing situations and environments. Dr Steenbarger also talks about his new project, an online book called ‘Radical Renewal’, which focuses on the spiritual aspects of trading and investment. This is a fascinating project which looks at how people can harness insights from spiritual fields to improve how they deal with the challenges posed by the clash between the ‘self’ and the 'ego'.This conversation expands into a profound discussion on the spiritual aspects of trading and touches on themes such as positive psychology, how to better yourself, how to focus on your strengths and how to use this to get into the zone where you can be at your most effective. AlphaMind: Powering Performance in Global MarketsAlphaMind 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.

Aug 3, 2019 • 1h 22min
#9 Garth Friesen: ‘A’ List Hedge Fund Manager shares his insights on Trader Mindset
From a small town in Canada, to a trading role at Merrill Lynch to the CEO of a $6 billion hedge fund and a member of NY Federal Reserve Investor Advisory Committee, Garth Friesen has had a unique journey to the top table of Financial markets.Being a successful trader, Garth shares his insights and perspectives on what it he believes it takes to succeed in the Financial Markets and shares his journey into financial markets. Garth also talks about his book ‘Bite the Ass Off a Bear’, which recounts his journey into trading, his experiences working on trading desks and his time sitting with some of the world’s greatest traders and investors at the NY Federal Reserve Investor Advisory Committee. This interview is full of great lessons and wisdom for traders at all levels of experience, from the novice just starting out to the experienced investment professional at the top of his or her game.AlphaMind: Powering Performance in Global MarketsAlphaMind 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.

Jul 27, 2019 • 1h 6min
#8 Adam Nash: 3 Decades of Trading Success
In this episode co-hosts Steven and Mark talk to Futures Trader Adam Nash. Adam has achieved extraordinary success in a trading career lasting almost 3 decades. At one-point Adam was the 3rd largest Euribor trader by volume on the London Futures markets. In this excellent interview Adam discusses his journey from working in a bank middle-office in the 1980s, to becoming a bank trader, to moving to trade futures on the LIFFE (London International Financial Futures Exchange) floor, and finally moving to screen-based trading. Adam shares his experiences, his up and downs, and the lessons he has learned along the way. He also talks about some of the learnings he picked up backing and mentoring young traders and some of the mistakes he sees them consistently make. This is an interview has so much richness and learning for traders of all types and levels of experience and age. Adam is someone who has been there, had the knocks, bounced back, and gone on to achieve extraordinary success, all whilst remaining humble and grounded. Please enjoy this lively hour-long episode. AlphaMind: Powering Performance in Global MarketsAlphaMind 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.

Jul 20, 2019 • 1h 7min
#7 FX Trader Mark Hutchinson Interview : Growth Mindset in Action
Mark Hutchinson is an outstanding FX Trader who has achieved great success over the past few years. In this excellent interview, Mark shares his journey into trading with AlphaMind co-hosts Steven Goldstein and Mark Randall.Mark talks about the struggle of the early years, the trial and error processes, his dyslexia, and the learning process he went through over 4 ½ years before finally starting to succeed.Mark’s passion for trading shines through in this interview, a passion he has also turned into a very successful mentoring and training business, Falcon FX, with over a thousand members across the world. This interview is a great discussion on topics to vital to trading success, including: The importance of having a great process. Minimising the impact of money and how money creates limiting beliefs.The importance of forecasting and scenario planning around these forecasts.How Mark's engineering background and mindset support his trading. The role of randomness in trading and managing within sequential randomness. Walking away from bad situations and resetting. Characteristic of those who become successful.The importance of having the right mindset.The error of rushing to make money too quickly.How ego can kill performance. Learning to see trading as a probability game. How Growth Mindset plays out in trading. The importance of Self-Management. Dealing with losses and setback. Retail trading versus institutional trading, and analyst v trader. Developing a bulletproof mindset.The role of the subconscious in trading. AlphaMind: Powering Performance in Global MarketsAlphaMind 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.

Jul 13, 2019 • 44min
#6 Prop Trading & Market Making
This week’s episode of the AlphaMind Podcast sees co-host Steven Goldstein musing over a webinar he gave to a group of Students from some of China’s Top universities. The students are preparing their applications for US graduate programmes and were keen to explore more about the world of Interest Rate Trading, Originally, we were aiming to record the webinar and release it directly as a podcast. Unfortunately, the sound quality was not strong enough. Instead in this episode, Steven shares his responses to the questions from the students. These covered a wide range of topics which will be of interest to new as well as seasoned traders.Questions asked include: What is the difference between a Market-Maker and a Proprietary Trader? Do traders at hedge funds also do Market-Making?Do Market-Makers just make Bid-Offer spread, or do they also take risk?What is the role of a Salesperson? Why can’t Market-Makers act as Salespeople? What criteria do clients consider, before deciding to trade with a Bank?If clients get good prices from traders, does that mean they will find it harder to make money?What are the different Trading styles used by traders?Is being in an analyst or research role dull?Is there too much Maths in investment banks?How do traders stay within the rules needed to execute effectively?What is the career path like for traders? Do you have any advice to students going for interviews?Thank you to Jing Liu for arranging the webinar. Jing coaches college students in china through the graduate application process. AlphaMind: Powering Performance in Global MarketsAlphaMind 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.

Jul 6, 2019 • 1h 3min
#5 Steven Goldstein - Trader Performance Coaching
Steven Goldstein, one of the world’s leading trader performance coaches is interviewed by the podcast Co-Host Mark RandallIn this podcast Steven shares his journey from his early days Trading Rates and FX in a Japanese banks in London in the mid-80s, to his time working on the proprietary trading desk at Credit Suisse and later Commerzbank and American Express, before opting to start a career as a Performance coach working with Traders and Investment Professionals.Steven shares his philosophy on how he helps traders to break past the self-imposed barriers we put which hold us back. In this interview Steven discusses: How coaching had helped him make a mid-career leap in trading performance. What is ‘Inner Game’ performance coaching.How does it differ from conventional forms of coaching? How Non-Directive coaching powers performance. Working with teamsHow the more successful traders are more likely to ask for coaching. Coaching as a tool to develop Growth Mindset. Understanding the Systemic context of traders. The limits of learning trading Psychology, versus working in your own personal Psychology. How he helped traders recover from negative mindsets. How Relationships, Belonging, Ego. Why Mindset is everything and developing and Mindset for Alpha is vital. Lessons from sports. – British cycling and micro improvements. Embracing the complex.To know more contact Steven – steven.goldstein@alpharcubed.com AlphaMind: Powering Performance in Global MarketsAlphaMind 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.

Jul 2, 2019 • 1h 5min
#4 Military Grade Trading Mindfulness - Mark Randall Interview
In this episode Steven Goldstein interviews co-host Mark Randall. Mark is a Mindulness practitioner and veteran of the Financial Markets. Mark calls his approach ‘Mindfitness’. He describes it as 'Military Grade' mindfulness, basing it on the same principles of Mindfulness used by the US Special forces to help them be optimum when in training and on active service. Mark is a former Futures and Options broker who use to run Natwest and Greenwich Capital Futures. His broking career lasted more than 3 decades and he was present on Day 1 of the London International Financial Futures Exchange (LIFFE) in 1982.Mark learned about Mindfulness decades before it become fashionable having been taught its basics by his martial arts teacher. He used this to be able to perform optimally in the extremely stressful environments he worked in.Having left broking a few years ago, Mark developed his Mindfulness practice to help others, including leaders and managers in blue-chip corporations, and traders and investors in the financial markets, His programmes help them develop their own mindfulness skills to be able to perform at optimal levels in their work, to be more focused and resilient, and to be able to destress and gain clarity and calmness. In this interview I explore Mark’s approach to Mindfulness and how people can use it to improve their working performance to be optimal in their trading and investing performance.Themes which this conversation explores include:How Mindfitness helps people be more effective in their work.How Mindfitness develops resilience and improves decision-making and self-control.Mark’s journey from Broker to Mindfulness Coach and Facilitator.Mindfitness and recovery, sleeps, relaxation, health and nutrition.Emotional Intelligence: Improving Mental bandwidth and personal latency.Getting past mindfulness and meditation as a fad.Seeing the benefits of Mindfitness to Positive Performance.Reducing StressExploring Present Moment Awareness.Calming internal negative self-talk.Making space for clear thinking, creativity and seeing opportunity not threat.Gaining Clarity.If you are interested to know more about Mark's services. You can email Mark at ceo@markrandallconsultancy.comAlphaMind: Powering Performance in Global MarketsAlphaMind 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.

Jun 24, 2019 • 51min
#3 Growth Mindset in Trading - Developing a Mindset for Success
Trading experts Steven Goldstein and Mark Randall discuss the significance of 'Growth Mindset' in trading, covering topics such as success psychology, potential development, managing setbacks, and creating an environment for growth. They emphasize the importance of transitioning from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset for success in the competitive trading industry.


