A YouTube monologue (speaker Sam) arguing that evolutionary survival instincts—particularly a deep, limbic ‘need to win’—harm aspiring traders because markets are probabilistic, not certain. Sam explains that this inherited trait drives overconfidence and impulsive attempts to force outcomes, causing losses (he cites ~95–98% of traders blowing capital within 3–5 years). The remedy is internal: regulate emotions, uncover and change hidden beliefs under stress, shift orientation from ‘must win’ to performance-focused discipline (curiosity, patience, impartiality), and build a psychological edge to complement a methodology that has a statistical edge.
Questions this video answers
January 30, 2020.
Approximately 95–98% of traders "are going to blow through their capital" in three to five years.
Chapters
What is actually one of the very first things that you need to do as an aspiring trader to become the trader you could be. Believe it or not, it has to do with, with your evolutionary psychology. You know, that just belief that you have a strong desire that has you believing that against all odds that you're going to be one of the winners in this game, that you're going to conquer trading. You've done the numbers and my God, do you look at it and go, oh my God, you can make a lot of money. I can get rich quick. I can man. I can be in financial freedom. And you get intoxicated, you start dreaming that dream, you start chasing that dream. And yet at the same time, what you start noticing is that you get in there and you just have this enormous motivation to win. You see the vision, you want to conquer it. And yet at the same time, that very mind is from your distant past. There was a time, not too many tens of thousands of years ago, where we needed to believe against all odds that we were going to survive. We were in a very hostile environment. And we human beings didn't have all the cool tools. You know, they didn't have the houses, they didn't have the guns. They had little spears and they were awesome predators around. We had to believe that by migration, whatever, that we are going to land on top and that we're going to win.
That was a limbic learning. That's the way the emotional brain learns. It starts putting learning in that's amoral and just locks it in and it becomes pattern. That became a trait. It was so successful. This need to win, this belief that I'm going to prevail against all odds, kind of that rocky mentality that it became a trait that we started inheriting and it started to become part of our genome. Then nobody said anything. I want to tell you, it was very successful. Without that trait, we're not the human beings we are today. Yet at the same time, when we bring that trait to trading.
Danger, danger, danger. Suddenly, what used to be so good, so adaptive for us, that belief that we could conquer, we could conquest anything, we could become anything, against all odds, suddenly is used against us in trading. Because trading and the environment that we grew up in.
Through evolution are completely different. The environment, the environment of trading is about probability. It's not about certainty.
We needed the certainty of victory, of being able to master something and to win. Even if that's not what was going to really happen, we needed to believe it. We needed to believe it at the very Core of our being. Otherwise we would have not been able to become the species that we are. Yet we take that hard earned trait that allowed us to survive.
Short term survival, we bring it into the long term survival of trading and it is used against us. Suddenly what we discover is that we want to win. We have this desire, we want to make things happen. And yet what we discover is that the more we do that, the more we bull run right into that, that wall, it hurts. We start losing money, we may blow up accounts, we may bleed. And the thing is, is understand that it was very useful back then, yet it's not useful now. Two completely different environments, friend. Two completely different environments. The world of probability.
That requires you to recognize that you do not control outcome. No matter how hard you believe, you can't make things happen. In fact, what happens is you become a good like ambush predator. You don't stalk, you don't go after. What you do is you wait for the opportunity to come to you. Completely different thing you don't have. And you're not thinking I have to win. What you're doing is you're saying, I'm calculating. And I know that I'm going to be losing a lot, so I need to be able to manage that loss. You know that's a dead human species if you're thinking that way 20,000 years ago, but here we are. That's what we bring.
Into the game of trading. We bring an old mind rooted in survival instincts that were good for us way back then. And we bring it into trading and we discover something. It's not useful there. What was good for us then is not good for us now. And what you discover is the mind that you brought to trading is not going to be the mind that produces success in trading. So this thing where you really think you're going to win against all odds, the thing that blows up traders in three to five years. Yeah, three to five years. Remember rough numbers, somewhere between 95 and 98% of traders are going to blow through their capital in three to five years and they're going to be gone. They're no longer in the selection mode, they're gone. And yet, and that's because they're sitting there and pushing their agenda of I've got to win, I'm going to win, I'm going to win against all odds, I can make this thing happen. When in fact you start noticing and trading is you don't control outcome.
You don't control whether or not you win or lose. You don't Control whether or not you're right or wrong. What you're engaging is randomness. You're engaging the uncertainty of the markets. You've got risk there, scary stuff. The risk of life to the caveman that is your ancestor. And you've got challenge. You've got a short period of time when this thing's been happening and all of a sudden those survival instincts kick in and suddenly you have this enormous desire to win. I can prevail. I can prevail. And yet again and again and again, as the capital shrinks, you discover is, I'm not doing it. But the Holy Grail is out there.
Friends, if you survive this particular moment, and remember, most don't, what you discover is the Holy Grail is not out there.
It's right here. It's right here. Friends, what happens is your job is to go in and really start discovering what beliefs.
Are you engaging uncertainty with. Not the ones you talk about. Not the ones that says, I'm going to win, I'm going to do this and I'm going to make all things happen. And, you know, I. Everything, it's just going to be, I've got it, I can win against all odds. No, the beliefs that show up under stress as you engage uncertainty with risk, friends, that's the name of the game. To do that, you're going to have to learn how to regulate emotion. You're going to have to learn a totally different way of understanding emotions, but you're going to have to regulate that emotion. But more than that, you're going to have to get in and find the beliefs that are driving those emotions as you engage uncertainty. Friends, that's what most traders don't do. They keep believing that they can just push through it, that they're going to win at all odds. The truth is, you're not. The truth is, is that you're going to have to have. You're going to have to get at these very deep emotional beliefs that you don't even know you have. They're below conscious threshold. And you're going to have to find them and alter them so that as you engage uncertainty.
It'S not about winning or losing, it's literally about how you play that game. The mind you bring into that performance. And what you discover is the Holy Grail.
Is managing the mind, managing the emotions that give rise to the mind. That engages uncertainty. Friends, that's the Holy Grail. It's right here. It's not out there. It's not in all your. I'm going to Win. I'm going to win. I'm going to win. It's not about looking at the numbers and saying all I have to do is keep emotions at bay. You're never going to keep emotions at bay. You are an emotional being. The key is what emotions are going to show up as you engage the unknown. Okay, Evolution is going to say fight flight, aggression or fear. However, by design, you can learn to approach with curiosity, with discipline, with impartiality, with patience. And as you do that, friends, you let go of the need to win and lose. Your job becomes performance. You realize, ah, what I've got is the performance. I can control the performance. I can control the mind that performs. That's what gives me the mental edge, the psychological edge that takes me out of evolutionary psychology.
That needing to win against all odds and gives me this enormous gift of where my job is to perform, to do my job.
And let the numbers fall.
That's assuming that your methodology, your rules have an edge in them. What you're learning to do is to bring the psychological edge that was always there, but latent, you're building it into the mind that engages that uncertainty. Friends, come and learn. Come and find out more about how you do that. Okay? Become one of the consistently profitable traders that arise and you begin to see is that.
Trading has always been about the mind. It's always been about the emotions. It's always been about literally the psychological self that engages uncertainty. There's lots of systems that give you an edge, but it's this one that drives it all. Come, learn to design that, to drive your method edge. Come and learn, friends. Take care. Thank you.
