14 years of trading psychology in 10 minutes

Look, I've taken thousands of trades over the last 14 years and I've documented almost every single trade. So in this video, I'm going to give you guys the most important lessons in trading psychology that I have Learned from my 14 years of experience being a trader. No matter where you're at in your trading journey, I've seen it all and I'm going to address all of these issues you're facing right now. This won't be like other videos where some kid that's being been around for five years pretends that they're some expert. I'm getting old. I've been doing this for a long time and I've seen traders around me crash and burn. Really smart guys though, who you think would be around forever. Trading psychology is one of the most important things when it comes to trading because it determines whether you are a winner or a loser. So let's get into the lessons that allow me to make hundreds of thousands of dollars directly from, from trading. Look, the first psychological tip is basically to always have a view. And this isn't just a psychological one. This translates over into how you can provide context around your strategy as well. I was taught this when I was about, I think, 19 or 20 by a complete veteran of one of the FX desks at a massive brokerage in London. It was a firm that handles billions and billions of every single day in flow. So it's not anything small and it's not some individual trader that's just, you know, provided me this. He taught me to always have a view. Because when you're receptive to information, whether it's positive or negative against your view, it allows you to basically adapt and understand that the market that you are in, when you're fixed and you don't have a view, it just means that you cannot adapt whatsoever. But also you can't learn anything. And it's absolutely important to always be learning by having a view. It allows your learning to increase and expand at much greater rate than simply ignoring everything that's going on around you. Now, tip two is very, very key as well. And again, it's not directly psychological, but it's to treat trading as a business. So take this analogy, okay? If you're a shopkeeper and you're selling clothes, you have to buy stock, but you expect to sell that stock for a bit of a bigger markup. Think of this exact analogy. When it comes to buying in the market or selling something, of course, you are deploying capital as your risk in the expectation that you are going to be able to buy it for more effectively or buy it back at a lower price after you have sold it or shorted some. Your risk is the same as the shopkeeper going out and buying his clothing stock. Always remember that it's a cost of business. Every time you approach the market and you enter a position, you are putting risk on the line, which can be translated to a a simple cost of business. My second tip is related to the economy, to humanity and how to profit from humanity. My view is consistently that we are going to get growth in the world over a period of 1, 2, 5, 10 years. Humanity tends to want to progress things. Now you might go online and you might hear loads of people talking about, oh, the stock market's going to collapse. Oh, America's doomed. This, that and the other. You need to ignore them because there has only been a growth ice age in the United States 6% of the time. The rest of the time there has been positive growth. A growth ice age is when there's average negative growth for a period of longer than one year. So the probabilities are not in your favor to consistently be talking about the market going down. Be positive. You've got to be positive, especially when you're involved in stocks, because earnings are likely to go up and the world is likely to grow. As a factor of this, humans want to do better. Keep that at the forefront of your mind because it's absolutely paramount to any stock trading strategy. My fourth tip is to make sure that you have another source of income. A hundred percent. Make sure you have another source of income. It is the best psychological tool out there when it comes to money management and reducing stress of trading. To stop making the wrong decisions, you have to ensure that your basics are completely covered. Lots of people say, yeah, save up for a year or two years just so you've got everything covered. I think you need to have a consistent cash flow coming in, whether it's from a full time job or something else. Think of a hedge fund trader. A hedge fund trader will probably earn half a million as a basic, sometimes less, sometimes more. It depends on the fund. But they will then make the bulk of their earnings from effectively their bonuses on how well the whole fund or themselves will perform over a year. Hedge fund traders have the security of maybe getting 20, 30, 40, 50, whatever thousand dollars or pounds every single month. They are then able to take certain risks. You as a full time investor or trader, you do not have that luxury unless you are working or unless you have another source of income. Make sure you have something stable that can cover your necessities. Otherwise, you cannot do your trading job as best as you can. Tip number five. This might be quite morbid, but the best thing I ever, ever ask myself when times get stressful is, am I dead? That simple sentence changes absolutely everything. Because if you remember the worst time in your life, maybe from a couple of years ago, just keep that at the forefront of your mind. And then to ask yourself, am I dead? What that will do is it will enable you to realize that you can get over bad times. So that little loss that you've, you know, you've lost a thousand dollars or pounds today, it doesn't matter. It really, really doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. Because some of the worst things that have ever happened, you only have a bit of a semblance of the memory of that time. Make sure you recognize that the most important thing is that you're able to push on and that these really quite minor inconveniences don't actually matter in the grand scheme of things. Tip number six. I want you to think of the colors at a casino. It tends to be green and it tends to be red. Absol everywhere. Now think of the colors of your trading platform. What colors are the bars for upticks or candles? For upticks. And what color are the bars or candles for down ticks? For upticks, they're green, and for down ticks, they're red. What does that mean? Well, if you think of a casino, they want you thinking about money and gambling consistently. And there is absolutely the same connotation when it comes to your trading platform. If you look at my charts, you'll notice that everything that I have is black and white. Why? Because that completely minimizes the psychological effort that you have to go through to be able to create some kind of connotation with money and winning and losing. I want to make it completely blank. I don't want to have any emotion at all towards things that I am looking at. Tip number seven. Have one of your accounts where all you do is invest solely in the S&P 500. Do nothing else. Buy an S P 500 ETF and just direct debit £100 every single month. This way, you are completely covered. Passively, you're completely exposed just to the single benchmark that you want to be. Why does that help? Well, it gives you some level of comfort. So whether this is just in your ISO, whether it's in your sip, have part of it segmented where you are literally Just passive. And you do nothing else. Hold it for 20 or 30 years. Because what that will also give you is if all of this goes wrong and you lose all your money being a little bit more active, which you won't if you're actually part of the academy, it means that you still got some level of security over the long term. One thing people forget is there is always the risk of ruin apparent in the markets. Whether it's your fault or whether something goes completely wrong, there is always a risk of ruin. So make sure you are diversified across multiple different ways of investing and trading. Tip number eight, never ever trade your P L. Let's say you have a target at the end of the week or month where you say, okay, I'm happy, I want to have made two grand at the end of this month. Make sure you take most of it out and you either spend it or do something else with it. Whether it's shift it over into a really long term investing account or you actually just put it into your bank account, you need to make sure that that money is real and at quite a few points over the year. The reason I say this is because you have to absolutely make it tangible. Otherwise it's just money on a screen in a broker's account. Of course, you might want to, you know, grow your account by compounding and things like that, but maybe use dividends if you're holding stock to do that. So you can gradually increase your position sizing or at least only take maybe 20% of the funds to be able to compound that. Make sure that you do not lose that money that you have made. Because that is one of the cardinal sins of trading and investing. When you've made money and then you end up losing it, do not do that. Tip number nine is probably the most important out of all of them here. Tip number nine is all about systemizing, okay? And what I mean by that is creating a system whereby you only need to do things maybe once or twice a day. You don't really want to be sitting on your phone all the time. Psychologically, that is completely damning. You will burn out and you will absolutely hate yourself. What you need to do is create systems to ensure that maybe once or twice a day you are being pinged on certain things happening, whether it's risk management, whether it's trade management, whether it's a new signal that has come up, you know, in the system that you have created. You need to see systemize. And that is exactly what we teach at the Fink Academy. Why do you need to systemize because you want to avoid being like that guy who is constantly worried about what is going on, constantly checking stock prices, constantly checking his FX trading plat. You don't need to do any of that. That is for rank day trading amateurs. You need a system that enables you peace of mind effectively. And I'm not saying complete peace of mind. There are always going to be stresses with this. But peace of mind in terms of being able to understand when and why you're doing things. If you found that useful and want actual value from a real trader, someone who's been in the game for 14 years and still actively makes their money from trading, then subscribe and watch this video here. It covers the strategy that may be my first $100,000. I'll see you later.