Do You Have What It Takes to Be a Professional Trader

Season's greetings. I realize that most folks will be seeing this in January after the holidays, but the truth is, right now, it's the holidays. It's the season. So from my family to yours, I wish you a great holiday. Now, let's take a look at this. I want to ask you.

In terms of your trading, the way you treat your trading, are you a fan, are you a novice, an amateur, or are you a professional? Let's take a look at these, okay? It's really important. You will have seen them all the time. You will see indications of this. Take a look at a fan. What does a fan do? They talk the talk. And you're sitting there and you listen to it, and what you're hearing is a bunch of if onlys and all this. And you talk about the turtles. You talk about all sorts of things. But the truth is, it's talk. You know, you may handle, you may trade. The truth is you're not. You're not really in it. Like, gosh, you know something? I need to really become a player rather than just sipping here on the outside and kind of watching a fan. Okay? An amateur. This is where the vast majority of traders actually lie. Let's talk about. Let's talk about it. Let's talk about an amateur. What does an amateur want? They want to be good. They want to score well. They want to be able to extract capital out of the markets. They want to be consistently profitable. And they run around and they do a lot of things in order to be able to start moving toward that. But what they're not doing is they're not leaving ever stone unturned.

They don't have this thing. There are certain areas that they do not want to look at. And therefore what happens is that they somehow don't keep hitting the numbers right. Something. They talk, they talk, and at the same time, there are places they don't want to go. Okay, let's compare that to a professional. And let's take professionals like in golf or as a sprinter, okay? What they're doing is everybody at the elite level, everybody is good in golf. Everybody can drive, everybody can putt. Okay? The difference is that the people in the money, the people are really in the elite area. What they've done is they have turned everything over and they say, what are. What is it I need to see to get to the next level? What am I missing here? That if I knew and if I really worked, I would be working at a different level. They're no longer talking. What if they're not talking, if only. What they're doing is they're courageously recognizing they can't let their fragile ego get in the way of the improvement of their game. They start going, you know what I really recognize on any given day.

Everybody shows up and they're some of the best. Like in sprinting, you get to the Olympic caliber. There are hundredths of a second between people who medal and people who are just oceran hundreds of a second. People are looking for that edge that give them that much, and they end up finding it here in the head. They find out the head game is as, at least as important as all the skills they've developed. Once you get to the level of being a really good amateur, what separates the really good amateur from the professional is that the professional is willing to look at the ego and going, you know something? I realize this may bruise my ego. I realize it may not feel good to my ego. But the thing is right now what I recognize is there's something going on in my head, there's something in my thoughts that are stopping me from achieving the next level.

That's the difference. An amateur is not going to do that. They'll talk that talk and say, yeah, I need to look at trader psychology. I know my performance, Ah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you'll see them buy another indicator. You'll see them jump across trader trainers. You'll see them all do all sorts of things, but you won't see them doing the big thing. You won't see them going, you know something? I need to look exactly where I don't want to look. I need to look at my comfort zone. And what I recognize is that until I'm able to get out of that comfort zone and feel the discomfort of that, I don't get to where the new magic is. I don't get to the point where I get to experience a higher level of performance. I know that I'm stuck. And the professional athlete, the professional trader is going, okay, look, I'm going to tell you something. It's more important to me to be a consistently profitable trader. It's more important to me to have an edge on any given day than it is for me to talk a talk and to feel good around other people. Now I want to be good. That's the difference, friends. And you look at it and you go, well, the sprinters, again, you look at them hundredths of a second and what they're doing is they're going, okay, what is it in my head? What is it about My belief system that I'm projecting into the moment because I know everybody's showing up to win and I know that I'm not going to win every time, but I know that I have to bring my game, my A game to that performance every time. And then at some moments everything lines up and I win. Sounds like trading, doesn't it? The professional traders come to a moment of recognizing, you know, I recognize that in trading, I know that I'm not going to win every time. I know that my job is to keep losses small. My job is when a nice one comes along to stay with that. What I also know, and here's the biggie, I know that my brain has been developed.

For short term preservation. That means it is much easier to say, you know something, I don't want to go there. I feel better, okay? The demons I know are a lot better than the demons I don't know. I'm going to stay here where it's comfortable.

But the consequence is I stay amateur, you know, I stay stuck, okay? I stay stuck at a particular point where I'm making some money, but I'm not making the money I need to or I keep blowing up. So you're looking at it and going, okay, now I know that my brain is totally against me moving from amateur to professional because I have to move from certainty, being able to control outcome to uncertainty where what I recognize is that I give up the illusion of control. I know that no matter what, I can't really control anything. I can't tell the markets where they're going. But what I can do is I can see what they're giving me. And what I can do is I can really monitor myself. I can build a head that allows me to say, you know something, if the markets are working with me in probability, then I'm going to let that move on. However, if it's not, I need to get out. That's what a lot of traders can't do. Or they come to a moment of saying, you know something, once I'm in here, I've gotten some profit, I need to get out before it's taken from me. There's the scarcity thinking, that's the self preservation. In the short term, make sure I live now, okay, the heck with the future versus the probability thinking of a professional trader who's going, hey, I know this is probability and I know the only thing that can really control is the mind that I'm bringing into performance. I'm letting go of the need for control. I'm Learning how to live to manage probability. If you're a golfer, you're sitting there and going, you know something? Every one of these guys are showing up and they all have a head game, they all have sports psychologists, they all have got that stuff done. And what happens is I need to put my head in a place where, depending on the way the chips fall, uncertainty, I can be in the winner circle. And I'm going to maintain that. And it's not about one shot, it's not about a putt, it's not about a drive, it's about the head that I'm bringing into that moment of performance.

That friends, is the difference maker. You are literally looking.

In both your biology and your psychology to move from this short term orientation. That has been a bias for the last six or seven million years. Okay? And you're going, it was a very successful bias. It got wired into simply my ethos, the way I naturally perceive without even thinking. It's been great. However, it is not going to make it great. In trading, in trading, completely different mind. If you wanted to build the antithesis.

Of what your brain was designed for that short term survival, okay, well that's what trading is. It is the antithesis. What you have is you have to think long term thriving. You have to think that, okay, this is really about probability. I can do everything right and still be wrong. And I can do everything wrong and still be right. However, the probabilities are that when I perform really well, I now have an edge both psychologically and from a method standpoint that allows me more often than not to extract capital from the markets and to keep my losses small. Because suddenly small your losses no longer to the emotional brain, understand, losses mean biological threat. To the professional trader, loss just simply means it's discomfort. And I landed on the wrong side of probability. And by the way, the corollary is that at winning all it really means is I landed on the right side of probability. No reason to get all worked up because ultimately what you're discovering is you are going to have to design an emotional state that produces the kind of thinking that engages with uncertainty. That's discipline, impartiality. And it's not done something from the outside, it's done something from inside. Inwardly you're not going to be thinking from fear. I'm going to do everything not to lose. Or euphoria, say I've got the game, I know how to do this, man, I feel hot today. None of that. You're not going to look at losses as anything other than ended up on the wrong side of probability. You're not going to look at wins other than anything. As I just landed on the right side of probability, I can't allow myself to feel good. If I feel good, it's going to produce the euphoria and it messes compromises the mind up to manage probability even though it feels really good for short term survival. So there you go. My question is, are you a fan? Okay, you're not really even willing to look at the need to work on the inner game. Are you an amateur where you realize, well you know something man, I just keep talking the talk and if I can only find something out there, sooner or later I'm going to learn how to win. Yet all the while you keep looking and going, you know something? I keep faltering at this moment. I know that eventually I really in order to get to the next level, I really need to look at my comfort zone. I need to look at this need to win, this need to control outcome and I need to let it go. Woohoo, big deal. I need to retrain it to become a professional where I recognize that this is all about probability. It's about long term success. That's the game plan. That's the gap that exists between amateurs and professionals. You can stay second being an amateur a long time, you can talk the talk, but if you're going to walk the walk, if you're going to pay your dues to become a professional trader, if you're going to get to the moment where you realize my fragile ego just simply isn't worth defending when I really want to become a profitable trader, okay, I need to look at it and I realize that it's only one construction of a self and I'm going to reconstruct the self that can work in probabilities. That friends, is where the professional trader, that's the door that opens for him or her that for the amateur it does not. And you have to choose or you can stay the same. The markets don't care. Depends on how much capital you have. You have to choose. Do I really want to be a professional or am I really much, much happier being an amateur? That's the key. I really don't want to change. I don't want to really get out of my comfort zone to change to hit the next level performance or.

I'm willing to do anything. I'm going to definitely understand that it's my head that needs to change at some moment in order to get the extra bump of performance that I'm looking for. That's it. I wish you a great new year. And what I want you to do is go to my website. There is an article based on this exact thing. The webinar, the free webinar we're going to be having is going to be based on this. So take this as an opportunity to say, man, I'll tell you something. I'm going to look at this year and I'm going to see what I really need to do. I'm going to challenge myself. I'm going to really look. Am I being a fan, Am I being an amateur, or am I really beginning to see myself as a professional trader? So let's take a look at that. I wish you a great year. And by the way, we should be watching what how Santa Comes in the country in North Carolina. So that's what I'm hoping to go out on. Otherwise you'll see something else. But the thing is, is have a great one. Think about that. Fan, amateur, professional. Have a great one.

Sam.