YouTube talk (Kardec Trader channel) featuring Rande Howell giving a motivational/educational address to struggling traders. Howell argues trading is qualitatively different from other life domains and requires a fundamental psychological shift from outcome-control to probability-based thinking. He emphasizes that applied trading skill can take 2–5 years to acquire, that retraining emotional/biological responses can take roughly 5–10 years, and that only a small minority of traders succeed (he cites ~2–5% success; ~95–98% failure). Howell links these struggles to evolutionary wiring (mentions 50 million years and also references six–seven million years on the African savanna), describes common emotional patterns (hesitation, early exits, chasing), and promotes a specialized training program (Trader State of Mind) plus website resources (free ebook, articles, videos, book).
Questions this video answers
September 30, 2015.
Two to five years.
Five to 10 years.
He cites about 2–5% of traders are successful and about 95–98% fail.
He references '50 million years' for emotional wiring and 'six to seven million years' for time on the African savanna.
Chapters
What I hear often when traders contact me is.
Is there any hope for me as a trader and can you help me? Let's start from the beginning. Let's start with the first question. Is there any hope for me as a trader? You know, people get into this business and think that it's going to be like what they have experienced before. And what they don't recognize is that trading is enormously different than anything they've ever done in the rest of their lives. And the rest of their lives as they understand it. They've been able to work hard, they've been able to make things happen, and they have produced success. It's kind of like what we all hear is what should make success. And if you haven't been trying to make things happen and taking action and producing stuff, you've also either you've been the perfectionist, you've tried saying, you know, if I don't make mistakes, if I'm perfect, then I'm going to win. I'm going to do that. I can take those and I can move those into trading.
And learn how to trade, learn the knowledge of trading, and then I'm going to be there. I'm going to be a winner. Then you get into trading and most young traders are arrogant. They think, I'm just going to go to. I'm going to learn all this knowledge and I'm going to assimilate this stuff. And I don't need this trader psychology stuff. It's not all that important. Then you trade and you get the knowledge down that takes two to five years.
It's not something you just set out and do and then you go, well, I should be successful now.
And you're not. That knowledge you have cannot be applied. So the knowledge and applied knowledge are completely different. And suddenly you start working this whole different equation is what's wrong with me? What's wrong? You know.
Are the gods trading against me? What's going on? Ultimately, it comes down to this. Are you willing to become a trader? Are you willing to become the person who can trade? Well, if you are, you're going to have to let go of the old of thinking that you're going to control outcome, thinking that you're going to be able to outfox the God of the markets. You're going to have to do that. You're going to have to recognize that you're no longer in certainty at all. Everything you knew about producing certainty of outcome is gone. What you're left with and what you work with with trading.
Is that you become a probability based thinker. You're no longer even thinking in the concepts of like, am I winning or losing this trade? What you're really doing is you're thinking, well you know something, if I'm performing well, I'm producing a set of probabilities.
That I may or may not win or lose. But the truth is that winning or losing is governed by my performance.
And that's the hardest paradigm shift that traders have to do. And they don't get it because their entire emotions, their entire autonomic nervous system is trained over 50 million years to be very different. You literally are going to have to learn how to retrain how your brain reacts to uncertainty, how your brain reacts to the unknown. Okay? Six, seven million years ago when we were on the African savannas, it was very important for us to control short term outcome. We can control that by avoiding any tree. Because we looked at the tree, we looked at the bush and we thought a saber toothed cat was behind that. When in fact only 1 in 10,000 did a saber toothed cat actually live behind that bush waiting to stalk you. However, it was powerful in our evolution and it came in and got developed as a trait that biological wiring is the same wiring that you bring into trading today. You bring in with this powerful self preservation need.
And you'll see it in hesitation. Hesitation is simple, is that if you don't get in the trade, you can't get clobbered, you can't get eaten by the cat. Okay?
Getting out early is like, oh my God, you know, if I take what I've got right now, it's not going to be taken from me. You get it. And then you get the alpha type of guy who is saying, you know something, I'm going to make things happen. And you see him chasing the trade, that's 50 million years too.
Ultimately that's our emotional reactivity at play. And the key is that you are not controlling your emotions in trading. What you're really going to do is you're going to recognize first and foremost is that emotions are having you. And as long as you stay ignorant, which most traders do, that's why they lose. That's why 2 to 5% of traders are successful. That's why 95 to 98% of traders fail, is they still live in a concept and a precept that you know, if I can only conquer the unknown, if I can only not be wrong, then I don't get eaten by the saber toothed cat. Wrong. Okay, is there is enormous Difference. Emotions are designed for that. They're designed for the short term preservation.
Of you as capital. It's you as breeding stock. However, in trading, the mind that has to be built is different. The trading that has to be built. The mind that has to be built is really about probability, recognizing you're going to lose and you don't get eaten by the cat. However, what happens is you do lose, but what happens is you're playing probability.
Big difference is in probability. You know you're going to be losing, you know you're going to be winning. And you also know that you can't control whether or not you win or lose. It's all a set of probabilities. That's the mind that has to be built. You really have to totally redesign your emotional nature. And the question is, are you willing to do it? If you're willing to do that, yes, there is hope. There's big hope. And can you be helped? Yes, if you're motivated in saying, you know, what I have to do is I have to go back in and take the emotions that have evolved over the last 50 million years and I have to come to the moment where I don't have freedom of them. No, they have me. No, they have me. I have to learn how to manage them effectively so that I move from emotions that allow a mind to seize opportunity, to live in the moment, controlling opportunity to emotions that allow me to calm down and recognize that it's not really about winning or losing. It's really about how I perform in the moment that I'm there, that the uncertainty is there, my mind is there, my biology is there. And the truth is I can't control whether or not I win or lose. What I control.
Is how I perform. If you are motivated to do that, then yes, you can be helped. If you think you're going to control outcome, no, there's really no help. You need to find another way of making income because you're not going to be a successful trader. However, if you recognize that I have to retrain the brain and it's not going to happen like some snap and I just have some specialized piece of knowledge. No, you have to retrain the neural plasticity of the brain and it doesn't happen overnight. You work with it. And it just so happens if you're willing to do that.
Traitor State of Mind has a very specialized training program, both in a group way and in an individual way, that allows you to go in and retrain that brain. Retrain it from the saber toothed tiger the need for survival in the moment to retrain it to the probability space mind that allows you to be calm, patient, disciplined and waiting for the setups to come to you.
Win or lose. However, if your methodology has an edge.
The probability then lies on your side and the probability based mind is comfortable with that. Until you get comfortable with that, you can't be a traitor. Okay, that's. That's the hardcore and generally it takes five to 10 years to learn that lesson. And my question is, do you want to learn now or do you want to wait for the five or 10 years? Do you want to drop all the capital or leave all the capital on the table that you've left? Or do you want to start developing the mind to be able to handle probability? It's always your choice. But the truth is the psychological development that has to happen and psychology of trading, it's a no joke.
You can continue losing or you can learn how to win. In trading, it's up to you.
The skills are there, they can be taught. It just depends on whether or not you're ready.
To change the way you think, the way you perceive the beliefs you have about uncertainty, the beliefs you have about the unknown, and whether or not you're willing to engage them in a disciplined, impartial mind. That's the key. If you're interested and if you really want to make it and you're really willing to change.
Visit our website, Check out the stuff, get the free ebook.
Read the articles, see all the videos, get my book. Let's start. Let's start changing the mind and then let's start looking at what's the educational program I need to do.
