How to Hack Your TRADING Using Psychology

What's up everyone? So this is a video that I'm recording real quick. As you can see, it's not particularly super high production value, but what matters is the content. And this is a topic that I couldn't get into during the mastermind call yesterday, but it was brought up really, really briefly. So this concept has to do with your personality as a trader, or as a person rather. So the personality traits that you were born with naturally as a part of your genetics has a very large role in How you perform as a trader. And when you first hear of this concept, you might think, "Oh, you know, what do you mean personality traits? How's that supposed to affect my trading?" And yet the great Sun Tzu had a very interesting quote: "Know yourself, know your enemy. One hundred battles, one hundred victories." Almost always, ninety-nine percent of the time, we're always directing our attention outwards. We're putting all of our attention into learning the newest market maker trading concept, liquidity concept, you know, time frame, algorithmic trading, you know, blah blah blah, right? Always trying to learn. more about our enemy, but we almost never direct our attention inwards to knowing ourselves, knowing our strengths, knowing our weaknesses, and knowing what tendencies that we tend to fall into. And we wonder why we fail. So this, I can speak from experience, understanding how my personality type, right, just the tendencies that I have as part of my genetics, just changed my trading completely. And it allowed me to avoid a lot of the mistakes. that I used to be making without even knowing that I was making them because of my personality type. And hopefully with this audio video thing, I can lead you guys to the same conclusion as well and hopefully unlock more of your inner trader. So for context, I am what is known as an ENTP on the Myers-Briggs. I don't know what TI stands for, but it's this MBTI, right? The Myers-Briggs is a very widely used personality test and it's generally very accurate at determining Or rather describing the type of person that you are and describing your strengths, your weaknesses, and your tendencies as a person. So let me explain how this is going to affect your trading. So most people, like, let me just break down one letter of my MBTI personality type, an ENTP, right? It stands for extrovert, intuition, thinker, and perceptive. Let's focus on the first word. As an extrovert, right, the moment I tell you, oh, I am an extrovert, the first thing you probably think, and usually the last thing you also probably think, is, oh, I enjoy being around people. I can't stop talking and I like partying and getting shit wasted drunk. When in reality it's— and usually people end there, right? Oh, that's all to the MBTI personality type. Oh great, how useful is this? But in reality, when you look one level deeper, that's really not the case. Because I am— I really don't consider myself an extrovert on a social basis, right? Sure, I'm really good at socializing with people. I tend to be able to talk to people really easily. But do I enjoy being around people? Not really. I really don't. Like, Some of my favorite hobbies is smoking a cigar alone while reading or doing nothing, just watching the sunset with some music, some nice piano. It's not an extrovert type activity that you would think of right off the get-go. I love to stay at home, work, just do anything like alone. I like to be alone. I recharge. I feel the greatest. Nobody to bother me. And I definitely feel my social battery drain when I'm around people for too long. But I am an extrovert on the personality trait. When you look deeper into it, extrovert simply means that I enjoy stimulus, right? We extroverts, We love stimulus. We want lots of stimulus, and this matters more in trading, more than you think. To the people that have already, you know, figured out how this affects your trading, great. I'll let you know what are the advantages and what's the— in fact, 2 weaknesses that I can think of, right? I know over here I only list one, but there is another weakness, and that is the fact that, like, because we want the stimulus now, right, we tend to want the result instantly. So getting used to low timeframe trading can sometimes be a struggle, and I'll explain why later. One of the most common problems that extrovert types tend to fall into is overtrading. Now let me know if you relate to this, but ever since I found trading, it has been probably the most stimulating drug or stimulating activity that I've ever experienced in my life. There is nothing that quite compares to the feeling when you have thousands of dollars on the line and you're watching those numbers go up and down and you're wondering if you're going to lose a ton of money or if you're going to make a ton of money. If you lose a ton of money, you You feel very strongly, right? The stimulus is very strong. You tend to feel bad, right? It's still a feeling. And when we win a ton of money, whoa, that that is the greatest feeling in the world. And I'd say nothing compares to it. I could make like five, ten, twenty grand in a day from the business, and I wouldn't feel the same compared to if I made like a thousand bucks from trading. If you relate to this, you're probably an extrovert. Maybe, yeah, maybe. I don't know. The only way you will know is if you do the MBTI test because of. This stimulus that we get from trading, we tend to get addicted to taking trades. Like, at least I am, right? I'll be honest, I am an action junkie. I love taking trades just because I like being in trades. I like the feeling of being in a trade and, you know, being excited. True story, when I look back at my journal from the past, there is one thing that stands out to me. So in my system, if I were to follow it strictly, I have only 3 trading windows, like 3 hours in the day that I would be even looking at the chart or looking for an entry. The first time is during the London open kill zone between 2 to 3 AM. New York. The second is during the New York open kill zone, sometime between 6:45 AM to about 7:45 AM New York. And the third is around 9 AM to about 10 AM New York-ish, right? Usually it's closer to like 8:45 to like 9:45-ish, but you know, it's roughly around those times. That means that if I were to be following my system, right, because everyone talks about, oh, you should be disciplined, you should be patient, you know, you should follow your system, and yet why do so many people struggle with it? Now I'll get into that later and how to not struggle with it. Basically, when I look back, like, basically I'm only supposed to be trading at those times, and yet in between those times when there was nothing else to do and I was just staring at the chart all day, I would see things that weren't on a chart, right? I would see setups that would form that I thought were good setups, but I shouldn't be taking them because I'm supposed to be following my system. And when I look back at it, some of those have been the worst trades that I've taken, right? They just tend to get stopped out even though they look good for a moment. You get stopped out. But again, that is a part of my tendency, right? That is a part of my personality. I like to take trades because it's exciting, right? Win or lose, it doesn't matter. It's exciting. What is the fix, right? And that's proper alternatives. And I couldn't think of a better, you know, term to describe this but proper alternatives. Get into how you can do this as well. But before we get into that though, let me ask you a question. Why do you think it's so hard for smokers to quit? Is it because they don't know smoking is unhealthy? Probably not. They must hear it all the time until the point that they're sick of it. Is it because nicotine is addictive? Not really. That's just what the mainstream media wants you to believe. For reference, I smoke between 5 to 10 cigars every week, and I've been doing so over the course of probably the last year, maybe year and a half. And here's a fun fact: one single cigar, one singular cigar, has tobacco equivalent to a pack of cigarettes. I am ingesting as much nicotine As a pack of cigarettes once to twice. That is a lot of nicotine, and yet I am not addicted. I pretty much only smoke when I choose to. There is never a need for me to smoke. There is never a, like, a withdrawal symptom if I don't smoke for like 2, 3 days. I choose to smoke it, and I enjoy myself when I smoke it, but without the cigar, I'm perfectly fine as well. And I regularly go 3 to 4 days of the week without smoking. Like, nicotine isn't the problem. The problem why cigarette smokers find it so hard to quit is because smoking Is a habit that they associate with certain activities. Let me explain, right? These are 3 of the most common, you know, smoker, you know, tendencies, or like habits, or like actions. When a smoker finishes a meal, right, that is a cue. That is a cue to have a smoke. When they take a shit, right, there's this concept, there's this notion in the smoker community that having a cigarette with a shit, it makes the shit one of the best shits that you could possibly take. I have never smoked a cigarette before. I can't speak on how that feels. But if there are anybody here that is a smoker, maybe you could, you know, shed more light into this scenario. True words, I've never touched a cigarette in my life. I only smoke cigars. I have not vaped as well. Cigars are the only thing I smoke exclusively. But anyways, when I wake up, right, that is a cue to make coffee, but that is also a cue to have a smoke with the coffee, right? The problem is that we associate, right? When you associate something with a habit, and again, I'll get into how this is going to apply to you later, but you need to understand this first. When you associate a habit It's not nicotine. It's not that it's like, you know, they want to quit. Like, trust me, a lot of smokers do want to quit, but they find it hard because when people tell smokers to quit, it's more of a cold turkey approach, right? Oh, just quit smoking. Like, just don't smoke. How hard can it be? It is tougher than you think. For those of you who have tried to quit social media and you don't replace it with something, you know how hard it is to relapse, right? For those of you who have tried NoFap and you don't replace the action of masturbating with something else that is healthier, perhaps going to the gym, perhaps hanging out with friends, or doing something productive, you know how easy it is to relapse. When— to the people that have gone on a diet, like let's say you stop eating carbs and you don't replace that with something delicious that you enjoy that isn't a carb that sticks to your diet, you know how easy it is to relapse. So it's the habit that's the problem, right? Whenever you want to quit a bad habit, which in our trading there is a lot of bad habits, overtrading is one of them, That is the one that I'm focusing on in this video. But I'm sure based on your personality type, there are a lot of bad habits that you're falling into. Maybe it could be overthinking, right? Maybe instead of— like, for me, I don't find it hard to, you know, not get into the trade. I find it harder to stay away from a trade. I'm confident, right? Because I'm an intuitive person, see big picture, and, you know, I can get in easily, right? As long as it's a logical trade, I'm in. For the opposite type of my personality, they might overthink too much, right? Too much. Too analytical, too systems-based, too process-based, and if they like they can't they're not free-flowing, right? If like one little aspect of the trade is not within their system, they might struggle to take it. If that sounds like you, again, taking a personality test will shed a lot more light into that. I can't speak for that because I'm not that personality type, but I'm sure taking a personality test will shed a lot of light into that. If you want to quit those bad habits, right, something to fill in the void, right? If you take out a bad habit, you need something. Else to fill it in. And that something else needs to have a couple of criteria. Number one, you need to enjoy it. Number two, it needs to fit your personality type. So as an extrovert, I, I love video games, okay? I'm just going to be honest, because video games are very high in stimulus. When I play video games, it fits my personality type, and it's also something that I enjoy, right? I'm just going to be honest. What I did in the past to alleviate the problem of overtrading was to play video games, you know, in the afternoon between the period of 3:00 a.m. New York to about 7:00 a.m. New York, right? I would play video games And you can imagine how well the conversation went with my girlfriend at the time when I told her that, hey babe, I'm playing video games for work, right? It's for work purposes. It's, I'm not playing video games 'cause, you know, it's for work. Yeah, you guys can imagine like that conversation went amazing. Alternatively, I also scheduled my workouts, right? As an extrovert type, you might relate with me, but I can't sit still, right? We can't sit still. We need to move. Physical exercise is also a type of stimulus that we enjoy, right? As long as it's high stimulus, We enjoy it. There's a reason why a lot of extrovert types might struggle with meditation. Trust me, when I tried meditation coach, I went for those like yoga, you know, retreat type of things. You know, I just can't get into meditation. I can understand the benefits. I understand the science behind it. It doesn't really work for me, right? For me, exercise is a much better form of meditation. Cigars are a much better form of meditation for me because it feels like there is more stimulus and it feels more like I'm doing something. Like if you're an extrovert, right? Maybe you schedule a workout during, in between, you know, the trading window that you're supposed to be trading when there's nothing else to do. You schedule a workout there, right? When you're working out hard, or in my case when I'm working out hard, or if I'm playing basketball in between the trading window, then I'm not thinking about overtrading. I'm not thinking about trading, right? I'll schedule the workout in between the session, and then once I'm done with my workout, come back, take a shower, I'm on the chart, and boom, right? It's the perfect time to start trading basically, right? You don't just quit smoking. You always replace it with something that you enjoy and that fits your personality type. For me, there are 3. Maybe you can draw inspiration from it. So I already talked about the first one. It is exercise. So right there, I schedule my workouts between 5:00 AM and look at the charts when I'm back. I play video games, right? Third thing that I do is I do run a business. So The Art Of Crypto is a trading education company. When I'm working on the business in the afternoons, I have other things to do than staring at a chart all day. I have meetings. Sometimes I have, you know, lists to write, videos to record. I'm not looking at a chart, right? During this entire 16-20 minute video, I'm not looking at the charts, right? And the more that you can exhaust yourself, right, the better you can be, right? In fact, that leads me on to another point, right? This is just going to be a little bit of a tangent. To those of you who have had puppies, what happens when you don't take the puppy out for a walk or when you don't take it out to play? It wreaks havoc. on your house, on the wires, and it just runs around and just messes everything up during the night, and it can't sleep. And so in a way, there is a saying that a good puppy is a tired puppy. Same thing applies to, you know, us extroverts. I don't want to say that we're puppies or we're dogs, but a good extrovert is a tired extrovert, right? When we're exhausted, that's good. That's good for trading, especially when trading. We don't want to be like, like seeking stimulus a lot. That's how we fall into the trap of, you know, watching YouTube videos 3:00 a.m. at night and not being able to sleep because we want to feel like we're doing something. Whatever you can do to exhaust yourself, to apply stimulus to yourself, and while being something that you enjoy and is actually healthy, great. That's going to help you make huge leaps in your trading. One last thing is that it might be tough at the start, right? For example, once you replace, let's say, an afternoon smoke with, you know, a walk and perhaps a chewing gum, Or when you replace the shit smoke with TikTok doom scrolling while you're on the toilet, or maybe replace the cigarette and coffee with a croissant and coffee, for example. It might be tough at the start because the stimulus that you're getting from these activities is obviously lower than the dopamine that you would be getting from having a cigarette. But they say that you start forming a habit after 21 continuous days of repeating the action. And once you are doing the habit for around 90 days, you start ingraining the habit. This comes from a book called the Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg, which is a highly recommended read. And another book that you can consider reading, and one that I highly recommend, it's just something that will improve your life greatly, is this book called Atomic Habits by James Clear. But basically, over time, right, it might be hard at the start, but once you get used to associating certain activities to certain cues, well, congratulations, you have officially quit smoking. Once you start associating walking after a meal, like if the cue is once you finish a meal And then the action is walking. Great, now you're not thinking about a cigarette anymore. Again, this just ties back to the fact that everyone and their mother talks about being more disciplined, being more patient, following the system. But let's be real, if it was that easy, everyone would be doing it. And the reason why it's so hard to stick to these good habits is because we have no tangible— like, we just don't have any systems or any kind of environmental modifications that make it easy for us to do that. Because our current environment, right, again, our current environment, both mental and physical, means inside and outside, makes it hard to be disciplined, to be patient, to follow the system. How hard do you think it would be to stay disciplined if you had nothing better to do other than staring at the charts between 3:00 AM New York to 7:00 AM New York? That's right, you would take a trade. I mean to say, understanding your personality type might sound like another woo-woo thing that doesn't really affect you as a trader, but it's really a hidden weapon that most people aren't aware of that allows them to harness a level Another level of their inner trader. So here are your action steps to use this to your advantage. Number one, head over to sixteenpersonalities.com. Figure out your MBTI type. So that is, you know, ENTP, whatever type you are. It will also tell you what are your strengths, what are your weaknesses, and what are your tendencies that will allow you to understand yourself as a person. Once you have the MBTI data, you know, we're going to go deeper. Next, I want you to go to this website called tests.marketsike.com. You can also Google trader personality test. I want you to take this test, right? It's a pretty in-depth test, but after you're done with this one, it will give you insight to the strengths and weaknesses that you have as a trader specifically. So first you understand yourself as a person, and then once you understand your strengths, weaknesses, and tendencies of you as a person, now you understand the strengths, weaknesses, tendencies of you as a trader. And once you understand your strengths and your weaknesses, now you can start leaning into your strengths, right? It will make recommendations based on, for example, if you are, you know, a type like me, I would be highly suited for 2 types of trading in specific, like specifically short-term trading, like some trades that take between, you know, 1 to, yeah, like a week, like a few days to a week, maybe 2 weeks. And the other type would be just intraday, you know, scalping, because I want my stimulus quick. It's either I get my stimulus and a lot of stimulus quick, or I just place a trade, I go do something else and just let the trade play out. You know, these are things that you will understand once you take the Trader Personality Test. It'll tell you what type of trader you are most suited for and what type of trade that you are least suited for. And you can use this to your advantage because now the 3rd step to modify your environment, right? There's a saying that, oh, you know, you should be more disciplined, right? But willpower is overrated. Modifying the environment to engineer certain actions or to make them easier to do is what the millionaires do, right? We don't— for example, I've been pretty lean and muscular for the better part of the last 5 years. And is it because that I use willpower every day to stay disciplined, to not eat snacks, to not have sugar or whatever? Like, Well, number one, I don't really have any of those terrible snacks with seed oils and a bunch of sugar and, you know, ton of trans fats or whatever in my house. That's one thing. But number two, I always, at every single moment, I have lots of raw honey, I have raw milk, I have, you know, fruits and stuff that I enjoy that are, that gives me dopamine, that satisfies my hunger when I do feel hunger in my house, that are healthier alternatives to, you know, the bad stuff. I've Engineered my environment to make it easy for me to achieve certain results, right? And that is what you need to do as well. Come up with suitable alternatives to modify environment. And these alternatives, again, have to be something that, you know, you enjoy and also matches your personality type, right? If you're an introvert, obviously the alternative can't be going out and talking to people, right? That's, that's very counterintuitive. It's gonna be hard for you to stick to that. Once you have that, now you have a system to truly achieve success as a trader. Yeah. Lastly, feel free to send me a message at any time to ask about this. I'll be happy to help, especially if you are closer to an ENTJ type. Because I'm ENTP, I don't really understand the other personality types. But if you're somebody like me, then I can definitely make you some personalized recommendations. Uh, I'd say that, yeah, you know, honestly, yeah, that's it. Let me know if you have any questions and let me know if this has been helpful. Cheers.