Trading Rule #1 – Ignore The Grind Culture Doomsayers

This is lesson 1 because you should apply it right now so it doesn’t derail you.

10 years ago in trading, everyone was saying how easy trading would be. “Just give us $1,000 and I’ll tell you the setup”, they say. Then people like Jigsaw, John Grady and others bucked that trend with a dose of reality. That’s now gone round the X echo chamber, and it’s been picked up and amplified to almost comedic levels.

So, the “trend” is to tell people how HARD trading is. Stuff like:

• “It’s the hardest thing you’ll ever do”
  • Hardest thing I ever did was call my mom to tell her my dad had died
• “Trading will break you down completely before you succeed”
  • You’ll have challenges, things won’t go your way – but you won’t be waterboarded and I’ve not heard of anyone getting trading PTSD. Anxiety and stress for sure.
• “Becoming a profitable trader is like becoming an Olympic Athlete” 
  • An athlete YES, but an amateur athlete with a few trophies on the shelf. But the winner of the Ryder Cup? Or my favorite high-octane sport – Darts Champion?

Rule 1 applies here – DO NOT LET THIS IN. Every time you read it, chuckle, laugh it off. Do not let it embed. We’ll talk about embedding now as it’s the cornerstone of teaching and you need to be really careful what you allow into your head. Also – whatever you do – do not repeat this to others because as crazy as this sounds now – that will embed the belief in your own head even more.

We’ll deal with Education in another lesson, but let me be blunt. Most trading education is written by people that can’t trade (but they know the lingo and setups they learnt from the internet). Most of the remaining education is written by people that cannot teach.

We’ll cover education and training later. They are not the same thing. Not that your typical trading educator would know that. 

In my corporate days, I took an internal training course in a new programming language I’d have to teach. On day 4 of the course, they agreed I should teach on day 5 as I’d “had a play” and apparently done some things with it they hadn’t figured out. DUMB MOVE. I was a regional director in Asia but our HQ asked me to develop course material for the group. No good deed goes unpunished. I was responsible for training programmers throughout Asia. To do that, I had to take classes in the creation and delivery of training courses. 

I never started a course with “guys – this programming language is amazing, it’s really fast – but none of you will understand, it’ll psychologically crush you and you’ll never write a working program”.    

Like any skill that is worth learning, it’s tough – but it’s made tougher by 2 things:

• Constantly being told you wont make it or it will break you
• Educational material written by people that do not understand the psychology of embedding information in someone’s head and making sure it’s an encouraging, engaging, positive experience. 

My kids play musical instruments – not because I wanted a noisy house – but because I wanted them to learn the process of developing a skill. It’s paying off too.

They say people that play competitive sports have an advantage in trading over those that don’t, but it applies to musicians too, and non sport competitions. People that haven’t been through this process tend to avoid it and look for instant solutions. They don’t bring “how to get good at something hard” to the table. So we’ll show you in later lessons. If you are a married straight man, I’d suggest trying to win an argument with your wife once a day. That should give you an idea.

We are going to go over how you learn and how to navigate the flaws in trading education courses. We’ll also be helping those that haven’t been through the process above. 

But for now – know that the more you believe it’s going to be like scaling Everest – the more it will be.

FREE BONUS: Take a look into the decision-making process of professional traders with this video training series that helps you make smarter trading decisions.