A single-speaker YouTube monologue (Kardec Trader) arguing that traders fail to follow their rules because of biological wiring and psychological issues. Key claims: the emotional brain reacts in nanoseconds while the thinking brain lags (~half a second), producing fight/flight responses that override rules; traders struggle with feelings of adequacy, worth, power, and perfectionism which sabotage performance; successful trading requires rebuilding one's mindset to "wait" (ambush/cougar metaphor) rather than chase outcomes (lion metaphor). The speaker closes by inviting listeners to the website for books and courses on training the trading mind.
Chapters
Follow your rules. That's all it takes in trading. How many times have you heard that the moment that you start following your rules, you have an edge, you can produce the kind of potentiality that trading can really give you. But there's a problem here for Houston. Nobody is able to follow their rules very well. At least people who are not trading well, the profitable ones, the consistently profitable ones. Why is it you can't follow your rules? Well, the truth is, there's a reason. There's a couple of really good ones, as a matter of fact. The first is really about your biology. The very brain that you have was never built for the world of trading. It was built in another time, in another place, millions of years ago. And it was about controlling the environment, outcome, being able to predict what's going to happen. Okay, it was very important to be able to do that. And you know the thing in that control, it wanted to believe that really bad. And it was built around it for short time control. And so when you get into trading, what happens is you're tripping this switch all the time, this need for short term control. You want to win, you don't want to lose, you want control, you want to be right. Yet in trading, what you discover is that it doesn't matter how much you want to be right. What really matters is can you play probability, can you stick to the rules where you're given an opportunity, a potentiality of winning. And then when you hit situations, you know how to cut your losses. That's what doesn't happen with an amateur trader. Okay, they want to win. And that mindset wanting to win goes in and they see that trade go against them. And after they've lost one already, they want to make up for it. And before you know it, that need to win overwhelms logic and reason. And there you are again. Okay, that's the way it happens. Then we go on and say, okay, that's the brain. And what you discover very quickly is this, is that the emotional brain makes a decision and it makes it in nanoseconds. The emotion of the emotional brain is already in the system, wired and fired in nanoseconds. To get that information.
To the thinking brain takes about a half a second. Do you see the problem here? You experience, you experience this conundrum, oh my God, is it going against me? What if I lose? And you've already triggered the fight flight response? Boom. Friends, that's just biology. It may show up as chasing the trade, chasing prey, or it may be that you don't want to lose and you don't end up in trades and you pass good ones by and then you're primed to jump into trades that you don't want, that you don't need to be in that aren't your rules. And all of a sudden you realize, where did my rules go? I threw them out. I had this idea. I promised myself I was going to try hard to stay in my rules. The biology overwhelmed you, friends, and unless you learn to manage that, you're not going to win at this game. It's very simple. The second part.
This part right here, is what people finally figure out. This distance between your ears, your mind and the psychology, the trading psychology that you bring is all wrong. What you discover very quickly is that you have a traders that's notorious is they have an issue and concerns about their adequacy, their mattering, their worth and their power. You want to see power activated, have a trade turn against you and all of a sudden your power is taken away and you go bananas. You know when you see worth. I've worked with people who every time they crossed a million dollar trading account, they would lose back down into the 600s, 600 thousands and that had gone on for five years. And ultimately there was, he did not believe he was worth a million dollars mattering friends.
I would not have a business if it weren't for a man literally in their 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s, who were trying to prove to someone, usually their dad who's dead, that they matter. And they're trying to say, look at me, look at me, look at me win. Look at me, win. But the truth is the trading gods don't care. That's psychological material that has to come to the surface and worked with and moved out of the mind you bring into trading. The last one is adequacy, particularly with perfectionists. What happens is you want to say, I want to do everything right, then I'll be right next to know that doesn't work in trading. No matter how good. Perfectionism worked in another field, no matter how good. Being an alpha, wanting to win, not lose and making things happen worked in another time, in another place. It's the wrong environment.
It's kind of like the American cougar and the African lion. The African lion is a stalker. It chases prey, okay, and they're high casualties. But yet if you took that lion, put him into the American North American forests, he'd starve. Meanwhile, you take a look at the American cougar. What does he do? He doesn't stalk, he ambushes. He gets up in a tree. He hangs out there. And what he does is he waits. He knows the deer comes along that trail. He sees the setup. It's a matter of time, and the forests are going to get and give him. If you looked at a cougar that was hunting, you'd swear they were asleep. They're not. They're patiently waiting for the deer to show up in the trap. That's it. What I want you to see that mines are built differently. And the big deal that I want you to really take away from this, unless you're ready to rebuild the mine, you're not going to be a winner. You're not going to be winners in trading. You're going to know all the talk. But in the ultimate thing of when you look at your trading account, you're going to see that it's stagnant, or you've lost, you've blown up accounts, or you bleed.
That's where you can have to really go in and say, do I really want to follow my rules or do I want to be right? And the thing is, the moment you want to be right, you're not going to be following your rules.
So the deal is this. If you, if you're interested, if you're going. You know something? I get it that the mind I brought to trading is not going to work for evolution and for psychology reasons. And how do I build it? Well, my invitation is to come to our website, start really looking at the materials there from my book, free books at the courses that we offer that really go in and expressly teach you how to train the brain that you bring into the moment of performance in trading. That's it, friends, good luck. I hope to see you. Meanwhile, have a great time trading.
