The Mindset of a Millionaire Trader - Rande Howell

When you take a look at a person who is over trading, he has a belief that the good times are going to roll and that the dice is going to go down and he's going to make a bunch of money and everything's going to be happy. That belief may work in being a salesman. Okay, it may work in various areas and do very well, but in trading, trading gods just don't really care about that.

Sitting down today once again with Randy Howell. Randy, we spoke a few years back. I feel like it's been a while, but good to have you back on the podcast. Chat again with, with you about trading psychology.

Yeah, I'm, I'm looking forward to this. I haven't seen you for a long time and I see that your organization has grown and I'm, I'm just really proud of you.

Tell me a bit more about what's been going on since we last spoke. Maybe two or three years ago, I think it was like right at the end of COVID if I remember.

Well, well, right at the end of COVID I had a very life changing experience. I have now had a, I've had a heart transplant and I had, I was in full blown heart failure for a while and almost died. And now I'm coming up five years with heart transplant. I feel really great. But it really, I'll tell you, it, it really gets your attention. It really gets your attention.

Good that you're still here, of course, and good that you're in good health for now. It's pretty awesome.

Yeah, it's been great.

All right. So I feel like what comes up again and again are always the same issues with traders. It's like the discipline aspect, there's like the emotions, of course, the over trading. There's a lot of things you could talk about, but tell me about the, the people who kind of have the basics, like they have strategies, they, they know what plan they should follow. Why can't they follow a plan that they have in front of them when they trade?

You know something, Eddie? And the, the problem that you look at and say, you know, if I only do this, this and this, then I should be able to handle it. I should be able to use my willpower, I should be able to use that focus and never giving up to be able to mold my psychology and, and pull it in line. But the truth is, is that the problem that we really have, that nobody can see, we're blind to it, is that we have an animal brain sitting around in the back of our brain and it's conservatively, it's 6 to 8 million years old.

Life was different 6 to 8 billion years ago. And it just so happens that it was so concerned about survival that a lot of its responses to either opportunities or threats in the environment were automatic. They bypass thinking. And what we don't recognize is that this instinctual survival skill set that we bring from our ancient, ancient caveman ancestors, that is what's causing the massive amounts of problems. Because again, it doesn't think. It sits there observing, looking for threats or opportunity, and it seizes them without thinking. And so when you're a trader and you've got this strategy, it's all cognitive. It's, you know, you've got it down, and then you start saying, okay, now I'm going to put money into the game. I'm going to risk capital. What people don't recognize, the moment that you risk capital, you. You absolutely turn on all the. That ancient brain survival strategies, and your thinking brain, the one that makes us so different. Other animals.

Is not even included in the loop, okay? So when you sit there and all of a sudden you take. You look at a position, and it's getting closer and closer to your stop, and you're going, oh, my God. Oh, my God. I don't. I don't want to lose. I don't want to lose. The caveman brain, that ancient part of your brain is not thinking about the loss of capital. Caveman doesn't even know what capital is. If you gave him a chunk of cash, he would look at it and maybe use it for tinder to light a fire, but he would not know conceptually what that was at all. But what he does know is risk. What he knows is threat. What he knows is that that money becomes representative of his power to survive. And suddenly it's threatened and everything's bypassing the thinking brain, and he's acting instinctively. Unless you can slow that down, okay, and work with it, the chance of you actually getting outside of this thing of having really good knowledge and being able to just make tons of money with play money, with paper money, it's never going to go away because you are turning on something that you're blind to and you can't see it. And because you can't see it, it just smacks you in the face. That is the biggest problem that traders face, and they walk in and they don't see it.

It's interesting, too, how traders tend to repeat the same mistakes, like they might do something wrong once they know it's wrong, but then they go back to it again and they don't even realize that they do the same thing again and go back in that same cycle. Is it based on the way your brain works or why that happens?

Yeah, it's your survival brain. And again, this, this survival brain is not human brain. It's not the thinking brain. It is a mammalian brain. And what happens is when it, when it encounters a threat or opportunity like over trading, is that it activates, shuts off, shuts off the thinking mind completely and it fill, it finds a successful route. And when it does that, it wires it in, it becomes automatic pattern that also operates outside of thought. So that's what you've got with a trader. And people come in and think they're going to make all this money and they don't realize that what they're going to have to do a rebuild.

And it's just. Le Bon James is one of probably in basketball, it's probably one of the best examples of this is he has extensive training and uses his extensive training to produce the mind that is in the moment when he plays. And you know, out of that he's gotten past a lot of his instinct, response and he's been able to invent the way he responds to challenges very differently. And we all can do that. But it really takes, takes quite a bit of effort to be able to say, I'm going to retrain my mammalian brain, my caveman brain, so that it's accepting of risk now and change the conversation it has about the risk being a threat to life or an opportunity to live large and in charge by killing a woolly mammoth. But that's, that's what's happening.

Walk me through how does someone work on changing how their body brain works for trading? Because it's not like a switch you flip on and off. It's like there's a lot more work involved. But you've worked with guys who have been able to do it well. So tell me about what that implies and how do you actually make this work?

Well, the first thing is you have to really begin to understand emotions very differently than we typically think of emotions. You know, we think of emotions as I don't really like them, you know, and just push them away. And the truth is, Eddie, and we are emotion, we are emotion. The major thing is that what you have to do is you recognize that emotions are very different than what we thought they were. Emotions from a technical standpoint, from a neurobiological standpoint, are actually biological action potentials that coordinate activity between the organism that would be the trader and the environment that would be the markets. Okay. When there is a change in the markets, there automatically is an emotional response and the organism. So when you're watching your charts and you're seeing stuff happen, all those things represent triggerings for you to different emotional states and their biological action potentials. And generally they're about fight, flight. And so the thing is, when that trade goes against you, it's a change in status. And then what it triggers is this immediate response to want to either fight or flee. Okay? And out of that what happens is you're going to have to learn that how do I intervene into that process? If I'm getting that these emotions are adapting me to survive short term in an environment. And I'm realizing that in trading, basically it's instant karma. You know, it's really rapid, things are happening really fast, emotion responses happen really fast and the thinking brains offline. So what you're doing is say, how do I go about.

Changing the way I respond to uncertainty? Because ultimately what you're looking at in your P and L statement, you're, you're looking at your beliefs in action about your ability to maintain and work with uncertainty so that you're extracting more capital out of the markets than you put back in. And if you're, if you're, if it's not working your way, what you're saying is what are the beliefs at the bottom of that emotion are triggering and having me, and having me act the way I'm acting. You get that? And the very first stop is emotional regulation is, Emotional regulation is. And the way I view things is the tension you hold in your body. And it's the way you're breathing is. For instance, if you want to be angry, you're going to be holding your breath.

And that breath is fueling the emotion anger to trigger, to grow and to act, get your body to act in the world. At the same time, it may have a, it may have the response where the emotion triggers you to a fear where you see threat, okay? And you suddenly you're going to run. What you're saying is, what's the belief? I'm powerless, I can't handle this. Or I have to prove that I matter. I'm not really worthy of stuff. You have to get to those, that level of your belief system. And then you say, okay, what I'm going to have to do first, if I breathe diaphragmatically, like moving air into the belly, using your abdominal muscles to pull air down Expand a chest, hold and release. And in that process you're saying, okay, let the tension in my body drain, drain, drain. And what happens is you take the emotional arousal off, you start calming down. The breathing style that you're breathing is suited for states of calm and that fear and anger cannot coexist with the diaphragmatic breathing. You're actually managing a very ancient response to threatening and you're not allowing it to get to the, the action point of where you're doing something stupid like over trading or you know, you revenge trading and stuff like that. That's the first step. However, emotional regulation by itself is not going to solve the problem.

The next thing that the trader is going to have to learn is he's going to have to learn how to be mindful. He's going to have to learn how to recognize an incredibly important aspect that he and his thoughts are not one in the same. In fact, the traitor is not having thoughts, they're having him. And you begin to recognize, oh, these aren't my thoughts. Well whose are they? And it sounds kind of weird, but all of a sudden you discover is that thoughts do to neurobiology are actual electrical behaviors running in the brain at 225 miles an hour. And when you start breathing and you start talking to yourself, for instance, that speed goes down to 50 miles an hour. You got a lot more control. The door to the mind can open and you start saying, okay, if I am recognizing that I can step back out of thought and I can watch. Thought is not who I am. But as an aspect of, in neurobiology your brain is really a community of rival emotional programs that are duking it out to get control of the self. And the mind is the place for those that community is given voice. And if you've ever been trading and have self doubt, you've experienced a number of different voices. Oh my God, what if I'm wrong? What if I'm wrong? And at the same time you know how to do this, you know how to do, you know, you hear these, these battles going on inside your head and ignoring them and thinking I must be crazy if I'm having these thoughts running in my head. The thing is you're crazy not to recognize who's in charge of the leadership committee in the mind. And what I teach is that you start pulling back and you start saying okay, who are these, who are these special interest programs, emotional programs that are seizing control of my mind when I'm in challenging moments, when I've got money at Risk. And what you'll discover is that it's pretty simple. It's not, it's not a mystery. There's an aspect of your being that I call the inner critic. It's highly destructive. You would hear it by saying, you're never going to make it. You might as well give up or get in that trade. Get in that trade now. Don't let it get away. It's not in your plan. But you hear a voice telling you to do something and you realize, oh yeah, that, that, that, that voice is in my head all the time. I try to ignore it. Well, you've given it power. If you do that and you're saying, okay, now I have, as part of this cacophony running in my head, I have an inner critic voice that wants to destroy me. Do you also recognize that you have an adaptive voice that is, that's the one that feels the fear, feels the anger, feels the, the urgency to prove himself. And you're recognizing that's not a, that's not a part of the self, part of this community that you have in your head that you want trading, but yet that's who does most of, particularly a young trader. That's who's doing most of the trading. They're okay until there's risk and they trigger then to caveman brain and impulses take over.

But when you do that, you realize, oh my God. What I also recognize is that I need to learn how to know myself. I need to actually know what, what is actually causing me to be fearful. And you get to know the beliefs that are driving and Eddie and they're, they're, this is really simple, particularly with Alphas. They want to matter. They want power, they want to make things happen. They want to do all that stuff so that they matter.

Other people trade and what they're doing, they find out where their self worth is. And you know, there's a lot of guys who I've worked with a guy who was working with a high six figure account and every time he went over into seven figures, he would lose back down into the high six figures that had been going on for 10 years when I met him. And ultimately he grew up in a family where his father was a blue collar manufacturing guy in Detroit with the cars. And what happened is all the unions and the management were always fighting and he would slam his fist on the table and say, nobody's worth a million dollars.

And here's this kid sitting at the table being hypnotized by this becomes a traitor and Every time he hit seven figures, he would trigger this thing. Nobody's worth a million dollars. And he would lose back down, get into the area that was okay. He would trade there, and he would finally get back up to seven figures again. And that had been repeating. That's why you have to get to know yourself. And you're going, okay, well, how do I do that? And the next thing that you do is you find out that you are endowed with incredible powerful emotional programs of the discipline of a ruler, the courage of a warrior, the self soothing, the calming, the compassion of a caregiver, and the impartiality, that clarity of thought that is so coveted in trading of a Sage. And what I've done is I've taught people how to locate these emotional programs, to grow them so that they become much more powerful as an influencer inside the brain. But ultimately, you're learning to realize that of course there's going to be conflict in the mind. Your job is, what. What mind, what construction of mind am I going to bring into the moment of challenge? And Eddie. And that's the thing that you actually control. Your caveman brain wants to control outcome. In caveman terms, it would be called controlling environment. Okay. And trading, we would call that control of outcome. But the thing is, is you are possessed to want to control outcome. And we keep thinking by willpower, by strength, that we can control outcome. We keep seeing that it doesn't work, but our ancient brain keeps. Keeps us in that pattern. And the deal is, you finally come to a moment where you start retraining the brain to recognize the one thing you really do control.

It's the mind that you bring into the moment of challenge. And that's all the work of beginning to understand mine. To be able to say, these are the forces at work and that I can actually influence what mind shows up. That's what guys like LeBron James have figured out. They can influence the mind that shows up to perform not trying to win. They're trying to perform. They know that if they perform well, that they have a much greater edge.

In the ability to win. But they don't. They don't directly control winning. They control the quality, the construction of the mind they bring into the moments of challenge. Now, that's a lot of. That's a lot of talk about saying, this is what you have to do. But.

Etienne, this is what you have to do. You. You really have to. You've been through this.

Okay? You. And what happens is that it comes to a moment of where you have to Say I have to produce self mastery of the mind that trades and you have to construct that mind. And about two and a half percent of the people trade will do that.

If you were to look at two different traders who, let's say one traders tend to over trade or they tend to make bad mistakes and jump into trades too fast versus another trader who might be on the opposite day, they always kind of are afraid to jump in, they're always more cautious, they tend to hesitate more. Does that tell you anything about the way the conflict is in their brain? Or is it the same kind of, same issue but just different reaction in the end?

No, it really goes back to this primitive brain and the fundamental beliefs that you hold about life. And it comes down to what are your beliefs about your ability to engage uncertainty and prevail. And when you take a look at a person who is over trading, he has a belief that the good times are going to roll and that the dice is going to go down and he's going to make a bunch of money and everything's going to be happening. That belief may work in being a salesman, okay, it may work in various areas and do very well. But in trading, the trading gods just don't really care about that is, you know, ultimately you can do that. And if you, if you, if you jump into things, you're gambling. And it's kind of like if you play poker and if you've ever played. My dad flew in war two and when he left, when he left London in 1945, he was a pilot. So he has, on B17 he had a, he had a suitcase that had a half a million dollars in cash in it. Now that's $1945. Okay? He won all that by playing poker.

People didn't realize who they were playing poker with. He had a photographic memory and he could count cards. He had an advantage that he, he was not gambling. Okay, but if you played with him all night long, he was going to take your money because he had a process, he had a plan. And most people were just simply, they didn't know the cards, the possibility of the cards and stuff like that. My dad did. Okay. Now the same thing applies in trading is that if you have a prepared mind and you recognize that this is really about the management of probability, not survival in the moment. Caveman. But the management of probability is you come to a moment of going, these are the things that I, this the validity of a setup. And what happens is if this thing doesn't work, I want to get out with as small as loss, a loss as possible. That's probability thinking. And then you get in and if things work out, everything's cool. But the thing is, is that the trader, the expert trader, is in a place where he's not really winning or losing. Losing is only landing on the wrong side of probability, and winning is only landing on the right side of probability. Taking that view, winning doesn't mean. No, it just means this time I landed on the right side of probability, okay, that changes the fabric because then you become immune, or I wouldn't say immune, but you have, you've mastered the place of. Where I can allow. The only emotions allowed are discipline, our patience and our impartiality. When you're actually in a trade, working trades, you can't allow the other voices to show up. And, you know, out of that, you're going, okay, if I win, you know, I advise people when they win to go take a walk, okay? Simply to burn out the chemistry of winning so that when they come back, they've burned out that chemistry. And the euphoria, the feeling good of winning doesn't cloud their mind so that they're, they're making dumb, stupid mistakes where they think, oh, I've got it. And if you lose at the same time, it's something where you soothe yourself and you come to the moment, you come to, you come to ask, okay, was this a method mistake? And let's just say it wasn't, okay, no, that's. This, this is my plan. Was it a psychological mistake? No, I played it. I played it really just the way I wanted to. And then you go, oh, so this was just probability that it landed on the wrong side and of, of your opportunity. And you're going, yeah, that's what happened. Then you ask the final question, would I take this as her trade again? Because a really good trader, a professional trader is going to meet, needing to take 70% of their valid setups in order to work their edge. And so it's it. It. You have to be able to go, okay, that one didn't work. And it had nothing to do with my performance. It had nothing to do with my methodology. It had everything to do with. That was probability. And I took it. You know, I took a small loss. I got out. That's in many ways a victory. You did exactly what you needed to do in order to be able to move forward your edge into the world. That's a powerful trader.

Tell me about the people who tend to hesitate or not jump into trades.

Like the opposite, the ones that sit on the back side and say, oh my God, what if, what if, what if I'm wrong? What if I'm wrong? What if I'm wrong? What I want you to do is again, look at the belief at the very core of this. And that belief is you can hear it. What if I'm wrong? What if I'm wrong? I need to be right. I need to be right. And the thing is, is that in trading.

You'Re not going to be right a lot, okay? And you learn how to build a mind that says, okay, I wasn't right on that one. But the thing is that it was in, in my probability distribution. The guy who is hesitating, what happens is he's going, okay, you know, I need more confirmation. I need more confirmation. And what you're hearing is that there's only certain amount of confirmation, that if you get more confirmation it does little to your chances of winning or losing. And you're going, what is the level of confirmation that I need to be able to enter the trade and, and say, okay, I've done the right thing, it is a valid setup. I'm in. And what you're going to discover is that they're scared of making a mistake. And it happens. Particularly if you happen to have grown up in a high achieving family where making straight A's, making this, you know, achieving, achieving is a big deal, is the kid grows up scared of losing, scared of not performing. He carries that into trading and by sheer willpower is the way he's been operating. He gets into trading and willpower means nothing.

And suddenly he starts going, yeah, but how do I stop making a mistake? And the truth is, is that if you view it as a mistake, you've already lost. You know, this is probability where you can do everything right and you can still be wrong. It's just probability. And until you come to the belief, that's basically saying I am not confident. I do not feel as though I'm confident to be able to make sure I'm right. And I'm scared that I might be wrong. I'm scared of disapproval, I'm scared of judgment. And that is what has to be mastered. Otherwise you stay stuck in the, that over and analyzing and analyzing and analyzing till you're paralyzed and the trade gets away. But it was just probability. They want certainty. That's that wanting to control outcome by more and more and more. And in trading you have to let that go. That's what happens, happens all the time. And you know, it's one of These things where I wouldn't have a business if it weren't for that. And I have a thriving business. So I, and a lot of people will avoid that because they don't want to see that there's something wrong with them.

And unfortunately, if you're not willing to look at what's wrong with you, you cannot, you cannot reorganize that potential into higher functioning trading.

So trading, trading remains probably the most powerful self mastery avenue or journey that could ever be invented. Because you truly have to learn how to have a probability based mind that doesn't mind losing, can learn from losing, and doesn't equate losing with who they are. As a human being, losing is just simply either your competence or probability, but your, your inherent worth as a human being, it's not measured. Now I'll give you a good example on that. I, I have a good friend, Dolores, and I have a good friend that has made, oh, somewhere between 2 and $300 million in the last couple years. He's an options trader who is, you know, when you start getting up into two, $300 million over a couple years, you're talking about one of the better traders in the world. Okay. And so I was sitting there talking to him one time and I said, Mitch, how did you do this? How, how did you go to the point of where? And you watch him and he's just not concerned about anything. He's trading and he's trading size in a way that you go, my God, you know, and he said, you know something? A long time ago, I lost three quarters of a million dollars in one day. And he said that was the time when three quarters of a million dollars was an enormous amount of money to me. If he lost that now it'd be, but he said, you know, I, I lost it. And I was, I, I freaked out. I knew that, I knew that I needed to tell my wife, but I was scared to tell my wife because she might leave me or get angry. And so I hesitated. I hesitated. But you know, ultimately I realized that I had to tell my wife. And so I got all my courage up thinking all the horrible things that she was going to do to me. And I told her and she reached out, pulled me to her, hugged me, and we cried together for about 15, 20 minutes.

And he says, randy.

Out of that experience I learned something really valuable. I learned, come win or lose.

I'm still lovable.

And that allowed me to separate my performances from my being. My being was lovable.

I was good either way. And that Freed me from trying to prove myself.

And if there's anything that I believe a trader needs to learn is that very lesson now ended up, it really caused him to rethink money and what money represented to him and stuff like that. Now.

He'S got institutions, he's got, it's, he's helping others now basically doing, not just with trading, but in order, having an impact on how people come to view themselves at early ages and things like that. So you can see that his whole conversation about money also shifted and he began to see himself more as a steward of a gift. And the gift was really finding out that whether or not he won or lost, he was okay one way or the other.

And that.

And deeply happily married for 40 something years. And he no longer has a concern about winning or losing. He's really just totally into performing because he knows he's loved. So even to a trader, suddenly this thing about being lovable actually shows up. And that's one of the things that people trade for. If they, if they make a lot of money, then they'll be liked, they'll be loved. And the truth is, is that if you make a lot of money, you're just following your rules a lot.

Do you think female traders have the same desires, the same reason why they want to succeed in trading? Or is it a different thing that they think about like a different goal?

What I'll say is it's really interesting you say that because in the last year I have seen more female traders than I've seen in 15. They're just these estrogen functioning units are showing up and they generally do. They're not really out to make a bunch of money. They're out to create kind of like a nest, you know, as you might expect a female to do. And they want a safe place where things can happen and stuff like that. But they're not thinking about some, you know, look at me, look at me, look at me. And they, you know, out of that I would love to see more.

More females in trading because they don't have, they don't have to deal with the testosterone that males do. And testosterone will get you in trouble, okay? In trading it will get you in trouble. And so if you start looking at it is that you can start looking at it and recognizing that females can have an advantage. But what they have to do is, in my language, they can have a really difficult time finding their warrior.

And acting from that warrior, that courage.

Because, you know, you think about it from a cave person perspective is that their mission in life is to take a child, raise it up to where it actually becomes a contributing factor to the, to the clan.

That's the biology of it. And that's going to show up in a lot of ways. And they tend to think safety first, whereas a man would think more risk first. So there's a, there's an acceptance of risk and finding a new balance of what safety looks like. And I've got four of them in my, in my, I'm working with four females right now and every one of them, it's down in that zone. Once you cut everything away is that, yeah, okay, they have a womb, they have estrogen and they're going to approach it very differently and they're going to have to move the ticket of safety. It's kind of like they need a little testeron, you know, and men need a little more estrogen. So it's just, it's a balance that I believe that females though can, can become much better traders because they really don't have all that BS that men have about being men and about kind of stuff and all that, all that testosterone that has them risk taking that.

That they really shouldn't be taking.

I know we talked about probabilities a few minutes ago and I think a lot of people understand probabilities. I know how it works. I know, yes, you have some winners, some losers, but when they hit the losing streak, it's kind of hard to keep the same thing in mind and they kind of get discouraged or they start to act differently or trade differently. How do you stay on track during a losing streak?

First thing is there's a good re. To me, anytime you take a loss, you need to handle that loss right there and then. And there's a good chance you need to get exercise. You know, if you've had a string of losses and you can start seeing that it's really getting a hold of you. It's. The first thing is to burn the chemistry. Okay, that's, that's taking over because when you have that, oh my God, a loss that's going to happen again at the bottom of it is that when you feel, you know, that pit in your stomach, you're feeling, you're feeling the chemistry of an emotion in your body altering the way you perceive. And what I've also come to understand is that the most important thing that you can do in taking losses is to self soothe, to have compassion for yourself because it's in the compassion, the self directed compassion that you get out of that, that state of mind. And you start realizing that Eddie and I actually will use what is known as a transitional object. And it's a Cassalt technique that you, you separate, you push out the, this sad part and you talk to it. And I will often have people use a teddy bear or some sort of symbolic representation that they soothe. They actually soothe and stuff like that. I actually. Let me show you something. You see this?

This is something everybody who gets a heart transplant at Duke Medical center gets. And I tried to throw it away probably 10 times in the last five years. Okay. But I will go pick it up out of the trash and save it again. What happens is that when you cut your sternum, it really hurts to laugh, to cough, to sneeze. And what you learn is to take this thing, put it like this.

And hold it tight. You're actually self hugging, self loving, because you don't want that sternum to move, otherwise you're going to be in excruciating pain. And what happened is I started doing that and I started realizing that I.

I actually like the feeling of self hugging. Now, I don't, but I use this pillow as a symbol that allows me to calm down. Okay, I got it. I got a hug going. I can calm down. And once you calm down, you can reassert the mind. It says, okay, I know that's that. And I would use the language of that's orphan feeling sad. And that orphan needs to be picked up, needs to be hugged, needs to be shown that we're okay. We've got everything together, we're following our plan. These are acceptable losses. And if you, if you come to a moment of where you can't handle it, you need to take a break and say, this is as much money as I'm going to lose. I'm going to start with the new mind. But if you have really proficient at being able to manage the mind that you bring into the moment, you're in a place where you can say, I'm going to go through this routine that allows me to calm that part of myself down and reassert the mind that I need to work in probability.

I know we've got a lot in this interview here, but maybe some word of advice for the guys who are trying to get profitable for multiple years and they kind of are stuck in a cycle. What should they focus on? What should they try to aim to fix at this point?

Well, right there you have to start asking, how does the problem manifest? What's very common in stuff like this is sabotage, where they they have a period of days, weeks, months, even a year of where they're doing quite well. And the problem there with them, that group, and then they blow it up and give some back more, some more back. And ultimately what happens is that they're not managing the mind they bring into the moment. When you start winning, it's easy to recognize that you are, you are, you're, you're feeling a reward system, the biological reward system. You're feeling dopamine and you're feeling, look at me, I've got it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I finally turned, I've turned the corner. And to me, that is the most dangerous thing there is. You cannot afford to allow yourself to feel good when winning while you're trading. You can't do that. If you want to feel good.

Go out someplace else, away from your trade arrangement and feel good. But when you come back, you put your mind back where it needs to be. So ultimately what you're looking at is going, okay. What he did is he did not manage the sense of feeling good. And he, he ended up getting euphoric. And he let that, let him into, that led him into overconfidence where he thought that the good times are going to roll on forever. I've arrived.

And what happens is that's a setup for blowing things up because you're, you're never in control.

You can control the mind that you bring to performance, but you can't control outcome. That is the one that I see the most, and that's the one that actually has reason to keep on because he gets to these periods where he wins. But I promise you, what you will see in there is the, is the beginning to feel overconfident. That actually when I was in China, I was doing this tour and I was in this very huge fund management where they were both position traders and they, they, they were, they were regular day traders. And, and I was giving this speech and I made the statement that you can't allow yourself to feel good when trading. And one guy with really good English raised his hand and he says, but I like feeling good. And I said, you can feel good, just not when trading. And I went through how the way it influences this and it gets into the moment of where you start feeling euphoric, you get overconfident and move on. And he says, well, I like it. And I said, the problem is China has been on a bull market for the last 50 years. It's pretty easy to make a lot of money and think you're doing it, which Insulted the guy and he got up and he left. And about 20 other people got up and left too, okay. And I'm going, well, the ugly American, I'm here, okay? Two days later there was a correction in their stock market. 2% correction.

And any rate, this guy, I have to give him credit, he came up to me and said, Mr. Howell, I now understand what you mean is that I saw this coming, but I felt too good. And I did not, I did not come in back into cash. When I saw it coming, I refused to see because I felt like I could handle it. And so I had a really bad day. And I see very clearly that I set myself up for a blow up, for sabotage. And you're looking at it and you're going, okay, that's the way it works. So I'm assuming that the people that you're talking about right here are the ones who have, they have this moment of actually doing well and they get euphoric. It's a very common problem because people will believe that it. Randy, if you can only teach me, master this fear that I have, everything will be fine. And then they do that. Then they meet an even, even bigger demon on the road to success. Overconfidence. And it blows them up. That's the, that's the major thing that I see there. And there's some people that, for whatever reason, there comes a moment. I had one trader who finally came to understand that he had to give up control in order to become a successful trader. And what he said is, randy, I've become consistently profitable. The truth is, is I like control and I don't want to give it up. And what I've chosen is to leave trading because I've recognized that if I want to become a really good trader, I have to let go of control. And he understood himself well enough. He was not willing to do that. And I consider that to be a victory.

Tell me where people can find you and connect with you after this interview.

Well, it's pretty simple. If, if you were to go to YouTube and type in Randy Howell, that'll get you to my YouTube channel. And.

It'S, it's viewed a lot, okay? And there's 280, 290 videos there that has spanned over the last 17, 18 years. You can also go to my website, Trader State of Mind, and that'll take you to all the programming that we got. You see the video, there's videos there, there's articles there. There's also, when it comes down to it, if you're Just meeting me, go there and get my free book. Okay. It's a, it's kind of a starter to, for people to say, what in the world is this guy talking about? Because I'm coming from an emotional intelligence perspective and a neurobiological perspective. I'm not, I'm. And that is pretty different. Okay. And so I'd get the free book. And if you want to go further than that, you know, there's also my book Mindful Trading and there's all sorts of stuff to kick and your tires and things like that. And then you'll recognize that it comes down to two different courses, one a group course.

And also an individual course of working directly with me. And what people really need to understand is I teach a process. I already understand that you're trying to take a brain built for survival in a world already gone and you're trying to force it into magically becoming a probability based mind. And I've built a process that allows you to go step by step by step to being able to achieve the probability based mind. When you work with me, it's not like you're working and we're talking all day about what's going on with you, blah, blah, blah. No, you're actually working on different skill sets that help you to achieve the kind of, kind of mine that trading demands if you want to be consistently profitable. But those are the two, those are the two sites.

I've done your program, so I can only say good things about it. I'm sure people will benefit from it for sure. And hopefully they can reach out to you and see what you're doing out there and get the free book. Definitely a good one also.

It's a good start. And again, it's. I want people to, if nothing else, I want people to recognize what they're stepping into when they become traders. It's not about hard work though. You have to learn, I mean, you really have to learn a regimen, a methodology of doing stuff. And you have to build, you know, you have to have a system that actually works, but it's really about changing the way the brain engages uncertainty. Unless you're willing to do that, then there's no reason to trade. And if you're willing to do that, the promises of trading are, are real. That's actually one of the reasons I like about what you've done and the way you've moved your career is that desire to trade. You start out saying, you know, what is it going to take to become a successful trader and what you did is that when I knew you best is that you were in that journey and to me that is the that is one of the most powerful things that a young trader really needs to see they need to see they need to see a guy like you going through it not instantly becoming the most successful creator in the world but gradually learning the skill sets and putting it together to become consistently profitable to me that is a I would rather see more archetypes like that than this quick to fame and quick to money stuff but you are the you are a good example of what it takes to move from being a novice to being really competent in your domain and.

You'Ve worked at it but you've worked smart I appreciate that definitely I encourage people to and it's desire to trade I'm going he nailed it.

That'S the kind of attitude people need to take please.

Send people you they can check out your work and reach out to you and learn more from you Appreciate that.