The AlphaMind Podcast

Tom Canfield is a private retail trader with over 20 years in markets. Tom talks in-depth about the pain and the joy of trading and the emotional challenges he has faced in his career as a trader. Tom is a major contributor to the financial market twitter (fintwit) world and is known for his honest, deep and brutally frank reflections and insights about the reality and challenges of trading.We have been trying to get Tom on the Podcast for some time, however it was in response to a sensational Twitter thread which he pasted on the 1st January this year, that prompted us to try again. That Twitter thread, which got huge attention, inspired many to respond with their own stories. A transcript of the full thread can be read below: After trading profitably for a living every year since 2000, in late Jan of 2018 I lost 500k in an hour in the XIV blowup. It destroyed me mentally. I couldn’t think clearly for 18 months. Couldn’t stop “trying to get my money back” which just made it worse.Finally, I shut it all down scared shitless that I couldn’t trade any more. I had to protect what was left of what I had built over the previous years. The village of idiots in my head had somehow taken over the castle. I had to dive deep and fully accept the financial loss and so many other life losses that I was carrying with bitterness and anger to find neutral again. My career had become my compulsion to fix the wrongs of the past, my opiate that had huge hangovers. Thru the painful process of true awareness of what I was doing, I started day trading 100 shares of AAPL just to keep connected to my roots. Not thinking, not caring just trading my feel of the day from all that I had seen over the years.Not caring was liberating. It felt so good to trade and simply not give a shit if I made money or not. I just flipped 100 shares around based on my feel of the tape and I did this for 3 months while I licked all my wounds trying to figure out how to let it all go. cSummer 2019.The 1st month I made like 1500, 2nd month over 2k, and by the third month I had bumped to 200 shares without really realizing it, had 1 red day and made over 5k. So in Sept of 2019 I realized “well, fuck, I guess I’m a day trader.”Don’t care, don’t think, trade the tape.....just like I did as a swing trader before I went off the deep end. The rebuilding process has had its ebbs and flows as I’ve grown and clarified my structure. I’m trading more than AAPL now and I’m not trading 200 shares anymore. I’ve grown about 15-20x since that realization 16 months ago that I was now a day trader, and I’m starting to think and care again which worries me. So, here’s to 2021. Don’t care, don’t think, Trade the tape. It’s just another way of saying “Be Dumb, Follow Price” You can follow Tom on his twitter handle https://twitter.com/canny4 The tweet thread and some of the amazing responses can be viewed here: https://twitter.com/canny4/status/1345037742711971841?s=24AlphaMind: 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.

Glen Goodman is a cryptocurrency contributing expert for the London School of Economics and was formerly a Business Correspondent for BBC News and ITV News, interviewing leading politicians, including Boris Johnson, David Cameron and Theresa May.Glen is the author of The Crypto Trader, published by Harriman House. In this Amazon bestseller, he draws on 20 years of trading experience to show how to trade cryptocurrency successfully.Glen's Facebook page, Glen Goodman – The Shares Guy, has a quarter of a million followers. It focuses on teaching people how to invest sensibly in cryptocurrencies and other investments. He is regularly interviewed about cryptocurrency and other business topics for BBC TV & Radio, Reuters TV, Al Jazeera, LBC, The Guardian, The Independent, The Telegraph, Forbes and Newsweek, among others.Glen started trading cryptocurrencies while they were still in their infancy and quickly discovered there were enormous profits to be made. With his trading experience he was able to make those profits – and keep them, while most other traders were losing their money during the Bitcoin crash of 2018. Glen has continued to trade cryptocurrency successfully during the market recovery.You will come across few people with a greater passion and enthusiasm for trading than Glen. His first experiences of trading were in the dotcom bubble. Those first experience, as with so many who enter their trading career in a raging bull market, ended up being a painful one. However, Glen was hooked and was determined to learn how to trade, so that one day he could beat the system.Whilst Glen worked as a news journalist and reporter, he continued to learn how to be a trader. Eventually after a number of years, he hit upon the sort of consistent performance which meant he could commit more time to his passion.Combining his work and his passion for trading led to some interesting incidences. One story Glen tells is of the time he was reporting from the middle of anti-capitalist riots, being surrounded by mobs of anarchists throwing bricks at bank buildings and battling the police, whilst all the time he was busy trading and booking profits on his phone. These days, Glen is a full-time trader. As you can hear from this vibrant conversation, Glen has great enthusiasm for trading. In this interview, Glen shares his story and his journey into trading, talks about his early experiences, his learning journey and the time when it all started to come together. We also discuss crypto trading, its challenges and the nature of the crypto which differentiates it from other asset classes. Glen, as you will hear, is refreshingly honest, objective and well-informed about all things crypto. He is not an obsessive ‘hodler’ of bitcoin who believes it’s the greatest thing since the dawn of time, he is just curious about crypto, actively trades it, and is willing to be long when it's bullish and short or out when bearish.To know more about Glen Goodman you can visit his Facebook page: The Shares Guy and follow him on Twitter: @glengoodmanGlen’s book: The Crypto Trader is published by Harriman House – details of the book can be viewed here: https://www.harriman-house.com/cryptotraderAlphaMind: 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.

There's something incredibly potent and calming about insights from people who have been there and done it many times over.  AlphaMind hosts Mark and Steve have over 8 decades between them in markets, and thousands of hours coaching traders to move forward and progress in their work and get past the many mental and emotional challenges trading throws up. In this episode, Mark and Steve share 10 powerful insights and pieces of wisdom that they feel will help them to become better more productive traders and risk-takers. In their unique AlphaMind way, they distill these to the audience through a vibrant discussion based on the sharp lessons they have picked-up from their own struggles and experiences over many years.Amongst themes discussed are: Making space for yourself and stepping back form the screens and markets to be more present as a trader, more effective as an individual, and more grounded in the moment. The concept of a ‘Tripwire’ which brings you back to yourself and pulls you up when your process is going astray. Thinking of trading as a process with process orientation rather than a results orientation. Taking positive learning lessons from your experiences, digesting these and applying them to your work.Looking forward not looking down: Backing yourself, believing in yourself, not undermining yourself by lacking the faith you need in yourself to succeed in this very challenging world. Avoiding trying to perfect trades: Optimise and be happy with 80% instead of 100%. The importance of planning, even though plans rarely work out , planning is still vital and essential.  Detachment: Learn to walk away, be willing to recognise your fallibility and don’t’ dwell on errors. This comes back to having 'Tripwires'. How clearing the head and mind, and taking actions to do this, becomes a powerful source of insights which lead to better trading and more effective performance. How we need to improve how we develop our ability to generate insights, as opposed to just reducing the aspects of trading that we fail at. Understanding your reason for why you are trading, which market you are trading and why you are trading the way you are.Looking to other markets, products, styles, timeframes, and considering the  options open to you. Detaching your ego from your trading, and not seeking to validate your ego as a goal for your 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.

Our guest this week is Chris Camillo, a unique and quite astonishing trader. Chris was recently featured in the Jack Schwager’s new book, ‘Unknown Market Wizards’. The title chapter for Chris’s interview was ‘Neither’, and it referred to Chris’s approach to trading, which didn’t make use of neither Fundamental Analysis nor Technical Analysis. Chris uses a unique approach to trading which he calls Social Arbitrage. It could best be described as ‘Observational Awareness’. Chris is also a big fan of the work of Peter Lynch, one of the legends of investing and author of one of the most influential books on trading and investing, ‘One up on Wall Street. Like Lynch, Chris seeks to find the long shots from which can produce "tenbaggers", trades or investments that have strong growth potential compared to the initial investment. However, unlike Lynch, Chris doesn’t crawl through company financial data, investigate the make-up of the board, or find opportunities within company accounts, instead he looks for information from the social environment that detects change early and then connects that change to investable opportunities. Chris has achieved incredible success in trading by searching out for new trends, without needing to carry out any fundamental analysis or technical analysis. He looks for information imbalances which find cheap value and exits when he gets what he considers ‘information parity’. In this interview Chris shares his passion with us, and talks about the challenges of trading, the advantages of being a retail investor, his love of the treasure hunt, and his dislike for trading using standard practices. He also tells us about the company he bought and sold ‘Ticker Tag’, which he would use to analyse twitter data for social arbitrage opportunities and identifying new trends hidden within the conversations on Twitter. We had a lot of fun with Chris on this great chat. As you will hear, Chris is full of passion for what he does in his work and in life in general. He also is involved increasingly in philanthropic causes and raising money for charity and plans to move his trading into a foundation to invest and make money for paediatric causes that are close to his heart. You can find out more about Chris at the following resources:Chris YouTube ChannelAnd their Twitter handle @DumbMoneyTVChris’s own Twitter handle is @chriscamilloAlphaMind: 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.

Our guest today is Marsten Parker. Marsten is one of the featured traders in Jack Schwager’s Unknown Market Wizards, the 5th book in the iconic Market Wizards series.Marsten is the only truly systematic trader featured in Unknown Market Wizards. Marsten started off as a software engineer before he developed his interest in trading after his company IPO’s and he found himself with a considerable shareholding. After leaving his company, and ignited by a new interest in markets, Marsten started trading fulltime in 1998. He soon moved from discretionary trading to systematic trading and developed his own 100% mechanical/quantitative strategies. Marsten's track record and consistency have been exceptional and over 22 years his average annual return has been in excess of 20%, with only 2 losing years.In addition to trading, Marsten has developed his own Multi-Strategy Portfolio-Level Backtesting Software called RealTest. This software is unique in being able to test out multiple strategies at the same time A key feature of Marsten’s success has been his curiosity and willingness to experiment and try new things, constantly looking to build upon and improve previous iterations and to constantly test out his ideas and assumptions. Marsten terms this his ‘Spirit of Experimentation’ a term which perhaps describes one of the key aspects of Marsten’s mindset and overall philosophy, which has been a key pillar of his success.One of the Real Surprises of this interview was, as you will hear, Marsten’s admission that he doesn’t even like trading that much, his real passion is designing and testing computer software. Trading if anything is the vehicle which allows him to pursue that passion. And perhaps somewhere within there maybe the secret to his success in that it ensures he does not get too attached and hung-up on the day to day outcomes of his trading. Despite his admission by Marsten, he has achieved outstanding performance and consistency as a trader and also software designer. In addition, Marsten is also a classically trained violinist, who had his interest in software design and the series of events which followed not occurred, we may have heard of him achieving success in a very different field.We hope you enjoy the conversation.You can find out more about Marsten and his RealTest product at:https://mhptrading.comYou can follow Marsten on Twitter: @mars10pAlphaMind: 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.

This is the podcast interview we have been waiting to do all year. We have been huge fans of the Market Wizards series of books since the first one landed with a splash in 1989. That was a time when trading had first exploded beyond the confines of the old-fashioned stock and commodity exchanges. There were new futures floors, new instruments, and rapid expansion of trading activities buoyed by the growth of futures and derivatives contracts and juiced up by the early computerised trading systems.Through a series of interviews for the book Jack Schwager introduced the world to trading legends, until then relatively unknown outside their small corner of the world. Traders such as Michael Marcus, who busted time after time after time, before finally growing $30,000 into $80,000,000 over a 10-year period. We learned of the wisdom of Ed Seykota, the feats of Paul Tudor-jones, and the skills of Richard Dennis. Jack introduced us to the Trading Turtles, and to many quotes which even now people repeat over and over again as inspirations. Schwager followed up the original book with 3 more outstanding versions, the New Market Wizards, Stock Market Wizards, and Hedge Fund Wizards, and now he has done it again, taking us in one sense back to the beginning and in another sense into the 2020s, with Unknown Market Wizards.We were delighted to have a chance to talk with chat, and for once Jack the interviewer, become Jack the interviewee. You can hear the fantastic insights Jack shares with us in his own words from years of talking to and working with the best around.It was a pleasure for us to this interview, and we are sure you will get something from it, whether you are new to the scene, or like us, have been around the markets for decades. You can find out more about Jack Schwager at his website https://jackschwager.com/Jack is also a partner of Fundseeder, a financial data and analytics company which provides a free trader platform that provides performance analytics, data tracking, and monetization opportunities for promising traders. You can find out more about Fundseeder at https://fundseeder.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.

There are a host of different factors which lead to great trading and investing performance, but at the end of the day, we live and die by the quality of the decisions, we make. It is ‘Where the Money Is!’.Our ability to make good quality decisions in financial markets is heavily compromised by our inability to be truly objective in the face of the extreme complexity, uncertainty and randomness. What we think is the best decision in the moment, doesn’t necessarily yield the best outcome.The world of Poker provides some great examples of how to make decisions in situations characterised by complexity, uncertainty and randomness. Our guest this week, Annie Duke, is a former professional poker player and world champion. Annie authored the brilliant ‘Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts’, and has a new book out called ‘How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices’.Annie believes that we can all become better at making good decisions, and that this ability can increase our odds of success in the financial markets. In this interview we explore these themes with Annie, some of the topics touched upon include: •      Identifying and dismantling our hidden biases.•      Extract the highest quality feedback from the markets. •      Accurately identifying the influence of luck in the outcome of your decisions.•      When to decide fast, when to decide slow, and when to decide in advance.•      How to make decisions that more effectively help you to realize your goals and improve your performance. •      How to better manage your emotions and reduce their undue influence in your decision-making process. We are pretty sure you will find Annie’s reflections extremely valuable. You can find out more about Annie at https://www.annieduke.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.

This week we are delighted to have Dr Tara Swart on the Podcast. Tara is a qualified psychiatrist and neuroscientist. who left the world of medicine to set-up her own Neuroscience based leadership coaching consultancy and became a coach, working with leaders and increasingly with top traders in Hedge Funds. Tara also lectrues in Neuroscience at MIT, is an in demand speaker, and author of ‘The Source: Open Your Mind, Change Your Life ‘, which has been has described very favourably as ‘The Secret based on Science’. The Source has become a UK best seller, and is now being translated into 36 different languages. Tara’s work with Hedge Funds has seen her described as the ‘Wendy Rhodes of London’. For those of you unfamiliar with Wendy Rhodes, she was the Psychology Coach in the Primetime hit show ‘Billions’. In this episode we had a great discussion about Tara's book ‘The Source’, and expanded this out to explore how traders can develop an ‘AlphaMind’ by developing their ‘Brain Agility’. Brain agility facilitates the mastering of your emotions, developing greater resilience, being aware of the brain-body connection, accessing your intuitive abilities, making good logical decisions, staying motivated and thinking creatively. This conversation is laced with references to neuroscience, psychology, emotions and references to our cognitive abilities allied to how people think about and make decisions in risk, trading and investment situations.  Tara talks extensively about how to think better, how to hone your thinking, how to develop brain flexibility and how to manage and create your optimal physical environment through better quality sleep, nutrition, health and daily life management for optimal brain function. The podcast also explores other areas including how to cope with fear and anxiety related to trading.You can find out more about Tara on her website https://www.taraswart.com/. You can also read the Spear Magazine Article which Tara refers to later in the interview at this link: https://www.spearswms.com/stop-work-killing/Another great article worth a read mentioned by Tara was Ghosts in the Executive Suite : https://syncreticsgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/Ghosts-in-the-Executive-Suite-2-26-16.pdfTara is married to Robin Bieber, one of the world’s leading technical analysts and a guest a few podcasts earlier. 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.

This weeks guest was 'us'.In this episode Ralf and Moritz of the Tradeciety interviewed AlphaMind Podcast hosts Steve and Mark about their work helping traders to become more effective by tackling the psychological, mental and behavioural aspects of trading.  This interview covered a wide range of themes including: Developing Resilience. The importance of ‘Letting Go’ and overcoming unhelpful attachments. Overcoming the inevitable downward spiral.Self-compassion in trading as an antidote to the times when we are overly harsh on ourselves.How we unbalance and undermine our ability fo be objective.Confidence levels.Aspects of ego: How too much ego can undermine, as does a devalued ego. Grounding yourself. Working beyond comfort zones.The importance of exploring your risk process.Opening yourself up for self-examination.Developing Risk Capability.Over-reliance on analysis. How our deep held unconscious beliefs and values impact our self belief. The importance of understanding how the markets work.Doing forensic preparation and planning, and how this can and does pay-off.Taking breaks to reset, refresh, and recalibrate. How your cognitive abilities are impacted by your physical behaviours.Being at your cognitive best.  The importance of having an edge. Ensuring you are trading when and where you have an edge.Avoiding times when you have an edge. The importance of risk management.You can find out more about Tradeciety at https://www.tradeciety.com/And view a video version of this episode on Tradeciety's youtube channel at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HR5H4d_c5QAlphaMind: 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.

'The Psychology of Money' is a new book written by former Motley Fool and Wall Street Journal finance columnist Morgan Housel. The book has been called "one of the best and most original finance books in years." by the Wall Street Journal.You can tell the quality of a book by the people who have reviewed it. When you have an investing legend like Howard Marks comment on the book, you know it is going be worth investing your time to read it. This is what Marks had to say about the book. ‘Housel's observations often hit the daily double: they say things that haven't been said before, and they make sense.’The Psychology of Money is one of those books that I feel people will talk about for years. We were delighted to have a chance to read the Psychology of Money pre-publication and were fortunate to have the opportunity to interview Morgan and ask him about some of themes which ran thought his book. In this interview Morgan tells us about the book and what inspired him to write it. We also discussed some of the great anecdotes in the book and some of the stories behind them. We hope you enjoy this episode and will feel inspired to go and read, and quite possibly re-read, 'The Psychology of Money'.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.