PSICOLOGIA DO TRADER - Mark Douglas ( Palestra Completa 01 )

Hello my name is Mark Douglas and I'm the author of the disciplined trader and trading in the zone I've been a training coach since 1982 and over the years I've worked with some of the industry's biggest hedge fund and money managers as well as some of the exchanges largest floor traders I know that all of you want to experience consistent results from your trading in other words you want to be able to generate an income You can rely on however one of the major obstacles in trying to accomplish this objective is in the area of

trade execution to produce a consistent income a trader has to be able to execute their trades without making any errors or mistakes in other words trading without hesitation reservation or internal conflict basically all of the errors we are susceptible to our result of a lack of confidence or more specifically trading with fear what most people don't Realize is that trading without fear is actually a to learn training skill a skill that has to be cultivated and is the primary difference that separates the professional from the typical trader in this series of DVDs I'm going to

provide you with the kind of insight understanding and specific mental techniques you'll need to learn to trade without fear so that like the professional you can move in and out of your trades with the kind of confidence And ease that will allow you to take full advantage of your wive's trade or any other trading methodology [Music] hello yeah good morning and also to how many people came from the west coast or in that in the West Coast time zone yeah is like the the wise trade people pick me up at 6:30 in the morning which

was 4:30 in the morning for me so so when I say that you know and I say this we're here for you and to ignore the cameras Ignore the environment I really mean that but at the same time I want you guys to help me a little bit okay it might take me a little bit you know might take me a little bit to get going because I'm not used to doing presentations that you know 6:30 in the morning my time or 7 o'clock in the morning my time but anyway what we're gonna do is

we're gonna we're gonna go through the process of learning how to think like a professional trader why Would we want to learn how to think like a professional anybody got any ideas what's that make some money but you don't have to think like a professional to make money do you what does it even imply what does it imply to to think like a professional trader I mean let me ask you this I'm gonna you guys have I don't know what your what your trading experience has been in terms of the number of years you've been

at it or you kind of give me an idea of the Demographics here of the audience I mean how many people have been trading for more than two or three years most everybody then then less than less than two years kind of new people no okay so we've got about half and half what would it mean to guys to say well let's think like a professional trainer what's that not thinking like an amateur okay that's good but what what are the implications of the difference between a professional and amatuer consistency there you go you See

you read my Houston workshop right yeah consistency exactly in other words what what that would imply is that is that if I'm a proponent if I'm a professional trader in other words if I've aspired to be a professional it one of the implications would be that that I can make consistent money because if I'm trading in the mode of a professional I could be a hedge fund manager you know a professional hedge or working for trading companies or just Having a full time job as a trader where my income my sole income is derived as

a trader and to be in that kind of a position or to be in a position where other people are going to give you their money or or give you their assets to be able to you know make money for them it would certainly imply that you can make consistent money that there is a way for you to let's say create an equity curve that looks you know something like this is that right are You going to give your money to somebody with an equity curve that looks like that I'm not saying that people don't

do it and I'm not saying that it doesn't happen but I'm saying that if I've aspired to be a professional trader it means I must have learned something that's different than the people who can't do this there must be something about about the way that I approach training that allows me to do that and believe me there is there's a lot well Then yeah cool basically and I don't know if how many people in the room have have either read trading in the zone or the discipline trader we've got a few people so so probably

there so there's actually most the people in the group I I'm familiar maybe even with me or my background at all true or not yes or no see no right okay so I'm gonna just give you a little bit and I'll give you more later on but I started trading back in 1978 and the first trade that I made I the first trade I made was in potato futures at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange which they don't even trade potato futures anymore why pick potato futures I have no idea I think that's probably what my broker

said I should be trading maybe he said that there was there was an opportunity in potato futures but anyway I made money and of course you know and just like most people who make money Their first trader their second trade it's it's about as easy as one could imagine and therefore you think yourself oh my God why didn't I learn about this a long time ago it sounded I mean that sounds kind of familiar right in terms of a thought process and I went from trading potatoes to trading gold to trading silver and my I'd

say my trading experience back then was probably typical even to what it is today with most people although you have to keep in Mind that the technology that we had back then wasn't anything anything like what you have available to you right now today it still boggles my mind when I think about the way we had to trade 25 years ago or almost 30 years ago compared to what's available right now I mean I've never I've always been attracted more to trading commodities than stocks I was a matter of fact I've never even traded stocks

I've always traded commodities and options and and It's just and I've never really never really had the desire to train on the floor of the exchange although I lived in Chicago for 20 years it just it never really appealed to me I don't know how many people are familiar with the floor or the or the or the trading pits but I just thought it was an extremely harsh environment and and not something that you know not something that just like I said it appealed to me but the kind of Trading platforms that you guys have

available to you today really truly approximate what it would be like to have a seat at the Chicago Board of Trade or Chicago Mercantile Exchange and and to trade at that level you have instantaneous execution and and it's like you can and you like you can change your mind and not feel humiliated or or or like you know there's something wrong with you you put in an order you can cancel it back you know before before The advent of electronic training platforms we used to have to call a broker now you think about the time

you made a decision to put on a trade you think about the time that it takes one to dial the phone for someone to pick the phone up you know how many times it has to ring and then he gets on the other end of the line you know you got your broker and then you give your broker your order and then you've got to deal with the fact that does your broker Really approve of your order in other words my Buddha ebuddy prove is that we'll see I'm you know I want to buy you

know I want to buy three gold contracts it's a well you know some of my biggest biggest customers they just went short gold no you know not what are you gonna do with that information okay or I've got you know X number of guys that are that are on the other side of that trade I said well yeah if you want it you know you want to take the other side of their Trade I mean that's fine fine with me I'll put the order in so it's like you know so he could put the order

in and then you know you've got to wait for it you got a way for a fill I can't tell you how many times that I put orders in the market where there were limit orders because they didn't want to do a market order because I didn't want to get the slippage of a market order so you do a limit order in and on a limit order the market has to trade to garrard be Guaranteed to fill the market has to trade through your price does it not how many times has the market traded to

your price okay just write to your price on a buy order and reversed and you didn't get filled that's very possible the problem when you're doing it with a with a with a broker over the phone is that is that that order goes into the pit it goes to an executing executing broker in the pit itself so you've got a runner And and and and and the order got to go back to the runner back to the phonebank back to the broker and the broker calls you with a fill you're talking several minutes now what

if you're in a situation in a fast market where the market actually hit your price you may have gotten filled but you really don't know you don't want to put a stop in the market because you don't even know if you're in or not and the markets screaming let's say even in your favor And you'd like to take profits but you still haven't gotten your fill back yet you don't even know if you're in the market this is the kind of stuff we had to deal with all the time all the time it was a

completely different world not only that the only information that we had available to us was open high low and close that was it open high low and close bars if we used to have to get those unless we talked to our broker and pestered them you know X number of times A day you know if you get it through the Wall Street Journal we used to have to keep her own daily charts intraday stuff was just like non-existent so so anyway I you know that's I I started trading like that I went through oh I

don't even remember what my first trading account was I think was around $20,000 you know I lost all of that and then you know saved up some money and opened up another one for around 15 you know lost all of that and then we went to another Broker and I'm thinking this guy doesn't know what he's doing and I'll find somebody who does and and then this is this is what really really this is probably the reason I'm even standing here today was this particular trade because because this particular trade just it had a profound

impact on me in terms of in terms of how it changed my life and what I was willing to do to find out what this was all about to find out really what does It take to be a consistently successful trader what does it take to really be able to earn an income as a trader I was I was long silver this would have been back and right around 1980 or 1981 in 1980 I think I was long silver at around 975 an ounce and there was two 5000 ounce contracts at the Comex in other

words I was long 10,000 ounces of silver at 975 an ounce and right after I got into the market the market dropped about 20 cents On me to about 955 so I was down $2,000 and my broker said well okay you know here's what we're gonna do instead of getting out well well we'll put you into a spread and so what we'll do is we'll your long 10,000 ounces of silver in New York will go short 10,000 ounces of silver in Chicago because you could trade Chicago silver at the Chicago Board of Trade everybody with

me on this don't want to make sure that you guys are all with you know even though I know Many of your stock traders it's the concept is the same okay so I'm long 10,000 at 975 he puts me short 10,000 at 9:55 in Chicago so I've got this spread going on and then he said well when the market goes back in your favor we'll just take the short leg of the spread off now keep in mind back then you guys are you guys are what do you typically pay for commissions even in commodities or

even I don't know what you pay for stocks but but typically the average Commission is about four to five dollars a round turn right that's what we would expect to pay no what are you paying less more round turn Wow really well you're in the Dow mit you're in the Dow Mini what do you pay for the Dow domini a lemon okay well anyway then 11 okay well back then back in the 80s we were how much you think we were paying back then come on give me guests come on get what yeah 125 about

how 125 around turn per Contract so in other words me to put this trade on cost me 250 bucks okay when he put this one on right here it cost me another 250 bucks and then he said of course that when the market goes back into my favor he'll take the short leg of the spread off and you know I should be all right so that's exactly what the market did the market went back up to you know right around the 975 area he took the short leg of the spread off and then the market

immediately dropped Back down another 20 cents and put the shirts the short leg of the spread back on again so that's another 250 bucks okay plus he just locked in when he took this off first of all he locked in a $2,000 loss by putting this trade on when the rocket went back up to 975 and he took this off he locked in another $2,000 loss and then when it went back down again he put it put it back on and locked in another $2,000 loss now I'm down six thousand seven hundred and Fifty dollars

okay and then of course it happened two or three more times now from from from the markets perspective all I'm in all the markets the silver markets just in a trading range that's all it is I say it's just in a trading range but but I don't really I didn't know how to read chart math chart patterns at the time it didn't really understand what was going on I was just listening to him and so what he was doing is just taking advantage of the Fact that it's going back and forth between support and resistance

and and generating commissions for himself okay that's that was it that's that's basically he was just he was just turning my account but that's that's not the story okay that's that's happened to a lot of people of course it happens less now because we're all responsible for the trades that we put on all we have to do is click the mouse button and it's not that much money but here's Here's the story is that as these losses are as these losses are mounting okay and I can't I can't sleep and and and getting real stressed

out you know I I wake up one morning I thought you know what this is it I just can't take this anymore I just I just can't take it and so you know when I got to work I called them and I said you know what just get out of the whole damn thing I just can't do this so just liquidate the position does Anybody remember the Hunt Brothers silver debacle oh it didn't does anybody if I say the word limit up does anybody understand what I mean by that okay the exchanges will impose artificial

price limits of how much a commodity or even a stock for that matter can fluctuate in any given day before they stop trading so we don't have the cut we don't have these kinds of moves too much anymore but back in the 80s limit moves were really quite common they really were in Other words what would happen is this is that is that if the market if the market went up let's say I think in silver was 50 cents I don't remember exactly what it was but if the market went up by 50 cents they

would actually stop trading meaning if the market was bid up to let's say in this case ten dollars and 25 cents trading would stop in essence what that what this means is that is that is that at ten twenty five there were no people There wasn't anybody in the world it wasn't like heat but this was important for later on there wasn't one person in the world who was willing to sell silver at ten twenty five if it was a limit move not one person and so what happens is that the market the price will

go up seeking to find who will actually sell so what and but what they but what the exchanges didn't want his exchanges didn't want there to be this huge fluctuation all in one day there Might have been sellers at 10:26 or there might have been sellers at eleven dollars but you don't know that because the exchange says we're gonna stop trading at 10:25 you guys with me on this okay so what happened is that I don't think it happened more than maybe a half an hour 45 minutes after I got out the mark was trading

right around 975 an ounce where silver went limit up and went limit up was 30 days in a row to $49 an ounce 249 dollars an ounce I was looking now now kita now thinking I'll think about this ok now think about being in this kind of a winning trade now when we're in a winning trade the market almost never go straight up and never go straight down there are rare occasions of course like in this case when it does so that were when we're in a winning trade we have to constantly be making decisions

about where we're going to take profits and how much heat we can Take with the market coming back against our position to say well is this the time to take profits or am I gonna let it come back a little bit further we're gonna come back a little bit further against me because well this is the nor is this normal retracement or is this more significant okay is this a little bit of a profit taking retrace or the more significant should I get out now do we have more left is it are we gonna make

new highs you got to be making all These kinds of decisions and it's very difficult as we all know right see in this case I didn't have to be making any decisions because the market went limit up 30 days in a row boom boom it was like waking I was out I just got out like a half an hour before it happened oh my god was I couldn't even get back in because there wasn't anybody willing to take the other side of the buy orders on a limit move you can't get back in so I

sat back in and watched in a complete Agony I mean and I mean intense intense agony no I'm not a nice throw up but you know it's like yeah maybe I almost did I don't know go ahead you said you had five contracts no to to just let you just take one off the table that the other one run for another day first of all Jerry you're you're assuming that I knew that this was gonna happen no I'm assuming that getting out all at once takes you off takes you out of the play completely Jerry

have you ever been in a Situation where we really lost a ton of money and you just can't deal with it anymore yeah I know I have situation where I've been down a lot of money I didn't lose because that's on paper no well commodities not with stocks you're right stocks it's technically on paper with when you're when you're in commodity is the money is out of your account it's gone it's gone at the end of the day Okay it's not this is not paper money this is real money are you with me on that

I am understanding you okay so so so I wasn't looking at at I wasn't looking at at you know and like I said paper losses the money was out of my account so I had had enough I couldn't I couldn't take it anymore so when you when you think about it in that context when you just made up your mind that I just can't deal with this anymore it doesn't even occur to you to get out in Stages why would I get out in stages when I when I've already gone through a week and a

half of this back and forth and you know and it's virtually wiped out my account because by then I probably would have had to put more money even for me to take just one contract I'll leave one on I probably would have had to put more money in the account and I'm not there's what any point in doing that are you with me on this I get i don't trade commodities i Trade other things in what the concepts the same except it doesn't come out of my it's as you said it's a paper trail yeah

you already all know you won't stock you own an asset i mean and if you want to hold on to that asset until it goes down to zero that's fine okay your money is not flowing in a sense money's flowing out of your account but not in the same way it is whether it a commodity yeah okay i have to pay that money right now you're just losing the Value of an asset i actually have to pay that money and it comes out every single day go ahead go in to hand the microphone back to

that gentleman another thing that can be of interest here is at least from way I gathered you was talking a while ago you really weren't controlling this your broker was doing the correct so even if you had wanted to get out in stages your broker was doing it saying hey here's what I'm doing to you yeah Pretty much yeah it's like I didn't really I wasn't really in control of the situation because I didn't know what I was doing all I know was that I was within let's say a half an hour 45 minutes of

a monster trade a monster trade yeah like I said I sat back in watched in agony as a market went up to 49 dollars an ounce I'm thinking myself I was like that close to $400,000 on just two contracts $400,000 and so like I said when I first started telling you This this really had a profound impact on me it really did and I thought that myself and at the time I was managing a commercial casualty insurance agency in the suburbs of Detroit not really you know I thought that's what I wanted to do I

didn't really know what I want her to do but you know I aspired to to management I was very successful and you know for at the time you know even back then in you know the late 70s early 80s what was making a six-figure income and I was only in my early 30s so you know it was I really had a lot of things going for me but in you know after this experience I thought to myself you know I got to figure out what's going on here and I certainly wasn't going to be able

to do it in Michigan so I thought you know what I'm going to Chicago and that's what I did I went to Chicago the first I just thought you know well if I'm gonna get into the business Who am I gonna get into the business with Well back then there was Merrill Lynch there's Dean Witter Smith Barney you know hon I thought were you gonna who are you gonna pick you pick Merrill Lynch right okay so I went over the Chicago Board of Trade they have an office right there and right on the second floor

of the Chicago Board of Trade and they just so happened they had three openings for trainee brokers and they had over a thousand people applying for it so how am I gonna how am I gonna Be one of those three people I thought well you know what I went back you know I went back home I went to you know one of the one of the bigger Merrill Lynch offices in the Detroit area and I went through the whole employment plan appointment process to fill new your eyes myself with what it is that they required

to get a job and and and this is what I think got me that job at the Board of Trade is that they had an aptitude test and there's a multi-page Application but on the back of the application they had a they had a square like this on you know and and they wanted spontaneously while you're in the you know while you're feeling this application out taneous Li what they wanted you to do was to write like a little mini essay about some philosophical question before I went to the Board of Trade and actually filled

out that application I spent two weeks agonizing over every Word we just to make sure every word of that two or three paragraphs that I wrote down was completely perfect so then when I took the Hat I wrote down exactly what I'd worked on and and I can imagine why they hired me because if he thought that I wrote that spontaneously in the moment but hey this guy we got to have this guy here we got to have this guy okay so I did I got the job now think about this now when I was

working for the agency the casualty gauges Commercial casualty insurance I was as a matter of fact I just signed a contract not more than like three or four months before I actually went to them went to work in Chicago over a three-year period for $360,000 and what Merrill Lynch was offering me was $20,000 on a draw okay in other words it was it was a you know they're gonna give you 20,000 but it's a draw me and I got to pay a back based on commissions now though if you can imagine there wasn't one person

in my Life not one person who thought that I wasn't absolutely stark raving out of my mind to give that up to go to Chicago to do this so you know wasn't like I had a lot of support you know and I wasn't like I wasn't catching a lot of grief from everybody that I knew about what it was that it that I was doing so you can imagine my horror you might use a good word for it I mean because when I got to Chicago I'm thinking why am I even doing This I'm doing

this because I'm going to Chicago because because that's where the traders are that's that's where the people are who know who know what they're doing correct and then to get there to find out that that is not the case that is not the case at all that the brother were 40 almost 50 brokers in the office and none of them knew how to trade not only did they not know how to trade I mean they'd Merrill Lynch made absolutely no bones about the fact that We were not traders they spent no money no time and

completely discouraged us from even learning how to trade we were sales we were taught how to talk about training we were taught how to talk about investments we were taught how to you know it's called dialing for dollars to get on the phone and get people to open up accounts and and the and and even though this was unspoken I'd say the the underlying philosophy behind the Business was especially in the commodities business I'm not talking about the equities I'm not saying that that on the equity side of the business that there was that it

wasn't more reputable but but this was about as your reputable as it could be because the underlying philosophy that we operated from was all commodity traders are terminal meaning like they have a terminal illness it's only a matter of time before they did want to say all Commodity traders are terminal and it is our job as a broker to make them as comfortable as possible until they expire in other words to extract as much money out of their account as you could until they're gone and and and and even to this day even to this

day it just blows me away to think that when I went I went to a 30-day training class in Manhattan and there were brokers from all over the world probably about an 80 or 90 of us and and the guy and and the Person that was the head of Merrill Lynch commodities at the time his name was John con Heaney and when he came in to address our class and to this day I don't know why he did this but he like you said hi he started out and he started out with these words the

average Merrill Lynch customer loses all their money in six months and that was the truth at commodities not equities commodities and that was the truth that was about what it was it's it took About six months for people to lose their account and and and you just I get it just go to the next one so here I'm I left this six-figure income to go to Chicago to learn about this business in this industry and here I'm in a situation and it's like it was I guess it was appalling absolutely appalling so I thought well

okay I'll make friends with people on the floor they must know what they're doing the floor traders the floor traders know what they're doing Well I found out that wasn't necessarily the case either now it doesn't mean that the floor traders didn't know how to make money but what this is and I'm not going to get into this because we don't have time but even though what you do is called trading and what they do they call trading the way in the mindset that you have to have to make money couldn't be further apart even

though they're both called trading the typical local what I mean the person who traded for Their own account in the pit or in the floor of the exchange the way they made money almost they didn't they didn't weren't trying to make Direction related decisions in other words it wasn't the kind of trading where they actually they would find themselves in winning trades that were going in their favor but that's not the reason why they put the trade on and like I said I'm not going to get into the specifics of dynamics of it because it

take me too long to Explain it just isn't necessary for right now all I'm saying is that is that it just it's it's a completely as a matter of fact before I left Chicago and move to UM to Arizona I the Chicago Mercantile Exchange asked me and I and I worked out it for all for awhile for about six months before I left asked me to put together a program to help floor traders make the transition from the floor to screen based trading because it's very it's it's a huge psychological Leap it really is it's

a huge transition that that that has to be made so what I'm saying is that not knowing that before I got to Chicago it was like here I'm in a situation where where I really didn't know anybody who really knew how to trade or at least knew how to trade in the sense of creating that consistency that we're looking for it doesn't mean that people couldn't make money people are making money all the time It's just that you know what's the point of making money if you're you're susceptible to giving it all back in other

words if this is your equity curve and then all of a sudden you're you're you're experiencing these huge losses and huge draw downs not only is this certainly damaging financially but it's also damaging emotionally and it can be very difficult to recover from these are what I call the boom and Buster's okay you basically had traders That fall into three categories if I was equity curve is concerned you've got your consistent winners the people who have the traders you've got your consistent winners now that doesn't know it doesn't mean that there aren't draw downs here

okay but what do you think these draw downs would be a reflection of for the consistent winners consistent winners take losing trades all the time but their draw downs are a reflection of What anybody got any ideas yeah money manage money management skills capital preservation okay these are okay these are two good answers but not the answer I'm looking for their draw downs are simply a reflection of the normal losses that any trading methodology will incur there are there is such a thing as normal losses you don't have to write this down because I'm just

we're just starting to scratch the sorry are going to go into This and far more detail later on so I mean if you guys want to write it down that's fine but it really isn't necessary okay normal losses that any trading methodology will incur then you've got people who who have who learned something about how to trade who acquire a good methodology where it is possible based on that methodology to experience consistent a consistent income but your equity curve might look more like this Most people who are experienced the boom-and-bust cycles use the bus cycles

would say that something happened in the market to cause this what you're going to find out today is that it is not the case even though it may seem like it it is not the case these are virtually always the result of trading errors what I call trading errors which are going to go into in detail later on one of the Oh just just a I just for the gentleman the people a few people back here that don't Have any idea of my background I'm gonna go a little bit further in it and and just

I'm just gonna jump ahead for a second I ended up ended up being a trading coach and and working with I was trading coach for probably about 17 years I don't really do it do it much anymore I just pretty much focus on my own trading but but while I was especially in the you know throughout the the eighties and and most of the 90s I worked with a lot of floor traders and One fly would talk about boom and bust there there was one of the floor traders I worked with was probably one of

the five biggest bond traders at the Chicago Board of Trade and when I met him was in like around May of 1992 and from January of 92 until the time that I met him in May of 1992 he had her on this is no key this is a guy that just traded for himself he didn't trade for a firm he just traded his own account on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade in the Bond pit he had 12 million dollars rolled in and out of his account he had a particularly bad day and

he ran into somebody who attended one of my workshops and say hey you should go see this guy he called me we had a few appointments didn't really go anywhere and the next thing about a month later I get a frantic call from his wife who I hadn't even met didn't even know who she was got a frantic call from his wife that said you know they're gonna lose Her house if you know if if I don't do something with him he had had a particularly had another bad real bad day so anyway I started

working with him in July of 1992 and from July of 1992 until the end of the year he ended up the year with with almost 6.6 million dollars now that may not seem like a lot considering he had these swings but he'd never finished he'd never finished a year with more than I think around 700 650 or 700 Thousand dollars so he had just under six million dollars and so then he went on vacation he happened to take a book with him called the coming collapse of the bond market this would have been in like

December over late December of 1992 early January of 93 and came back now if anybody remembers the bond market back then it rallied to rally to spectacular Heights but in the meantime he'd read this to come and collapse of the bond market so he was going into the market Every day short okay and and pissing away the six million dollars until he got to the point where he had about two of it left and it took him about I don't know until maybe mid-february and and he was so exasperated that he said hey you know

what I'm willing to do anything okay now keeping my I'm willing to do anything and he wasn't it wasn't lip service it was real it was genuine it was sincere and I said if you're willing to do anything then here's what you have To do what I've been working with him what I notice is that he was able to stay focused really for not more than about an hour a day now this guy loved trading I mean he just loved being in the pit he just loved every part of it he just he just had

the hardest time tearing himself away but if you really wanted to make consistent money then I felt that an hour a day was about it because after an hour a day he started losing his focus would start to diminish And then he'd also start to get reckless he was the kind of guy in this in this here again in this even kind of this is very difficult for people to comprehend but it was the absolute truth he he was the kind of guy where when I was working with him during that period you know in

in in second half of 1992 where he would have a he'd have a half million dollar day winnings he'd make a half a million dollars but when he called after he was Out of the pit to have his consultation you know he'd be real angry with himself because he up till about five minutes before the clothes he was up a half million dollars and then he then he piss away about 175 of it so we're only end up with $325,000 for the day now this is just like a normal guy like like us here in

this room with three hundred and twenty five thousand dollars and this was not an abnormal day but he's real angry with himself because he pissed Away that hundred seventy five and then the next day you know he'd do about the same thing he'd make four hundred and and and piss away maybe two at the close and then the next day he'd make you know 350 and then piss away another 150 he's got spectacular winds up until Friday but this accumulated angry anger that that he was building up throughout the week Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday by

fight time Friday rolled around you know he'd lose a million and a half Bucks and then start to cycle all over again so this so now it's like saying you know what especially as a floor trader as a floor trader you really have to be focused when you're trading at the level that he traded at were you trading hundreds of sometimes thousands of contracts if anybody knows anything about the bond market we know that that that one incremental price change in a bond contract is thirty one dollars and 25 cents Okay you guys with me

on this so this would be a tick so in other words if the bonds went went one one tick up and you're long one contract you'd make $31.25 if it went down one tick and you were long one contract you just lost $31.25 he would trade a thousand contracts at a time that means one incremental tick price change was $31,000 31200 fifty bucks now if anybody's ever watched the bonds move you know that it Can move 5 10 15 ticks like that not only that there can be what's called price of vacuums everybody are familiar

with a price vacuum you know what I mean by price vacuum it means that if the bond is if the bonds are at let's say 106 106 10 because probably not familiar with bond prices 106 10 that was the last posted price that something can happen and your long something can happen where there are there are no more offers and the next posted price is 106 Even that means the market went down 10 ticks without there being any trades between 10 and even no trades at all which means if you're long you just lost in

that instant 30 1000 dollars and 25 cents on a thousand contracts this is quite common so you really have to be focused it would be like when you're trading at this level I would I would make an analogy it's almost like there's a couple of analogies one it's like if you're in an NBA playoff if the finals It's the last game 7 games it's all it's 7 game NBA Finals one minute left the score is tied the coach is going to send somebody in who's really focused if the coach thinks you're distracted and you're not

on your game you think you're going to get in that game this is the way you to be in these kind of circumstances in the pit that's the kind of mindset that you had to maintain because even if you got you just even if you were if you were distracted and Turned away there could be bids and offers that would have gotten you out of your trade that all of a sudden dry up meaning when guys are bidding an offering in the pit they're using hand signals and there's and they're telling you they want to

buy or they want to sell and how many and there's there's hundreds of guys all around screaming now these bids and offers can dry up because when you have make Eye contact any point you say okay we've got a trade and then you write your trade down in a trading card or now and electronic handheld handheld device but otherwise you make a trade and then you could be out of your trade and take your profits when these kind of things happen these price vacuums you know your you could be in bad shape and just be

a matter of just just a momentary you look away the guy that you were gonna use to get out of your trade is gone now he put His hands down oh I'm in I'm in trouble well what I found is that is that he could maintain his an ideal mindset for about an hour a day and so that's why I said if you're really sincere you if you're really you really want to do you can really do anything you can only train an hour a day and he agreed to it and he said what hour

a day I said doesn't it really won't matter and it really didn't he was convinced initially that what hour he went in would make a Big difference it really didn't make any difference at all he was so good as a matter of fact there were other bond traders that I work with that said that watching him trade would have been the equivalent of like watching Michael Jordan play basketball he was that good and so he did he went in just one hour a day and because he knew that he only had that one hour he

was really focused and he was averaging a hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars for that One day or for that on an average for that one hour per day okay but that would be an example he would be an example of an extreme boom and Buster there kind of gonna kind of have that concept down the brain about boom and Buster's okay and then what you have is you have the consistent losers people whose equity curve looks like that now just to get back to my situation when I when I like I said when I went

to Chicago I'm thinking okay you know I Mean I've got quite a bit of money I sold my interest in the agency but at the same time I had a pretty expensive lifestyle you can quite imagine I had a house in Michigan that I had a girlfriend a very high-maintenance girlfriend and and and who to her to her two daughters were living in and I had a very expensive apartment in Chicago in a Porsche and I just I had the life okay and and you know I was going back and forth every weekend to visit

them so I'm Really my situation was I really I couldn't maintain that kind of lifestyle with the money that I had without making without being successful as a trader and that was a whole IDN e way I thought you know okay I'll I'll make whatever shortfall that you know I end up with as a trader and interestingly enough I had to have my trading account with another brokerage firm secretly I couldn't train through Merrill Lynch and there wasn't anybody else in the office who traded Their own money I was the only unless they were doing

a secret lien didn't tell me I was the only person in the office who was actually trading their own money who actually traded period other than putting on trades for their customers so what ended up happening is that and although part of this is that is that I also had this I just I don't know I can't really tell you why I knew this just that I did I just it just made sense to me and it just never occurred To me that trading was anything other than about psychology I mean the first trading book

I ever bought was was they actually the very first book on trading the only the first book that was devoted it's a specifically trading psychology which was Jake Bernstein's investors quotient that came out in 1980 and there were that many trading books of a leavin available back then and that was the first trading book that I didn't buy a book on technical analysis I bought a Book on trading psychology so I was I was not only in immersed in the concepts of trading psychology virtually right from the very beginning I was also keeping very extensive

journals of my thinking process what was going on what I was observing from other brokers in the you know in the Merrill Lynch office as well as what I was observing from interacting with my customers and I noticed we were all kind of all kind of you know Conforming to the same patterns the same problems but just say that because I did have you know I did have this kind of foundation you know to understand that that it was basically psychological in nature because one of the things we're going to talk about you and I

get into the skills section of this of the presentation is that when you look at trading skills it's like what kind of skills are we talking about we're talking about thinking like a Professional we're applying that the skills are all mental in nature and they are because when you really get right down to it you really start to think about it what physical skills are necessary to trade but we're not talking about a golf swing or a tennis racket or any other kind of you know any other kind of physical endeavor that that we're that

we're familiar with what kind of skills we what does it take physically to put on a trade the Mouse-click that's it your ability to move the mouse and click it on the buyer cell button it's that simple and as a result of it being that simple it's easy to think that oh my god trading is so easy it isn't as you will probably know whether you've been added a long time or even a little bit of time there are some very sophisticated psychological skills that you have to acquire to get this kind of an equity

curve and and virtually all these skills Are founded in learning how to trade without fear that's basically what this whole workshops about is learning how to trade without fear because that's what's going to screw you up on virtually everything everything that you can do wrong as a traitor is going to be the result of what you're afraid of and the effects that fear has on your perception of market information so so with my situation it's like here I'm given all This up to go to Chicago to learn how to trade to find out that the

only people who really knew how to trade back then were were people that I didn't have access to meaning there were there were you know there were some big names in the industry who never really took the time or expended the effort to find out exactly what it is that allowed them to create a consistently rousing equity curve what they would say is well yeah you got to go with the flow the trend is Your friend cut your losses let your profits run you know as all these all these neat little phrases but it's like

who and I hell knew what that meant and how to do it yeah it sounds great cut your losses let your profits run huh you know even cutting your losses it can be extremely difficult to learn letting your profits run can be 10 times more difficult than learning how to cut your profit cut cut your losses act is one of the most difficult things to to Acquire in terms of a skill is learning how to let your profits run so it was like all this was kind of building up and my lifestyle was was draining

it was draining my money away and one of the things that one of the things that that I would say characterized me back then if I was probably obsessive about anything it was my credit that's like my credit was my as far as I was concerned it was like the most important thing in life is to have flawless flawless credit Not just I mean flawless and here I'm in a situation where I am truly running out of money and my trading losses I didn't really it wasn't really like I was losing a lot of money

trading because I really stopped the hemorrhaging I wasn't trading in a way where I was actually losing money but I wasn't making any money and it's like there was always this little voice in the back of my brain you know come to the forefront of My consciousness and say you know mark this ain't adding up there's something wrong here there's something there's something wrong it's like it's not it's not adding up and then I kind of shove it back there and you know I'm like yeah it's gonna be all right I'll figure it out I'll

figure it out it's gonna be all right eventually got to the point where I I was literally out of money and the only choice I had was to file bankruptcy Fortunately I was in a situation where I had two residences one in Chicago and one in Michigan and so I had a choice of where I filed and of course I filed in Michigan because if Merrill Lynch would have found out they probably would have fired me as a matter of fact nobody knew what had happened ie nobody knew in Chicago buddy that I knew in

Chicago knew what had happened so I filed in Michigan and I'm thinking and literally because of my attitudes about credit I'm Thinking if I've got to do this I'm going to fall beneath the cracks of society and never really believe that I honestly God really did I just didn't see how it's possible to live after having have to after having to do something like that and of course you know what I found is that in when I ended up I mean what I say in the discipline trader and I don't really go into a lot

of detail on the discipline trader about this but just just to say That what I ended up with was relaying I had an apartment I had my bed in my TV and and and and when I when I filed I was still current on everything I wasn't even late one day and any my bills as a matter of fact they even I even called you know called the the finance company to come and pick the car up but I was even late a payment I said you know what I can't do it anymore you're probably

gonna want it back anyway so you know it was like come and Pick it up and of course they did and and the guys went there's a funny story about that I remember told anybody this but you guys want to hear funny story about that when the guy came to pick it up and so I'm thinking you know because we were in front of the apartment building and and I'm thinking well if he's gonna pick this up you know then I ought to get some sort of receipt that it was in perfect condition you know

because I don't know what the hell Is gonna do to it I'm you know yeah you mean I don't know so it's like any guy wouldn't give me a receipt saying that and so I wouldn't give him the keys and so you know so he called his boss and and I and I heard I heard his boss on the other end Alliance screaming at him get those keys you know it's like yeah he said something else I'm not gonna say huh for this brother for this you know for this particular presentation but yeah I was

like you know they just you Know someone someone's willing to give you the car or they don't even have to go repossess it that's like you know hey give him the receipt but in any case what I realized I mean do you think about this it's like it's like when you define yourself based on your possessions you know just like anybody that loses anything you know you've got you've got an internal representation and you've got an external representation and now there was there Was a discrepancy between what was outside I mean what was inside of

me in terms of the way that I defined myself and you know so that has to be reconciled and what I realized you know in a didn't even really take that long I don't remember how long it took but it was like one I still had my job at Merrill Lynch and so as a result I mean it's like I'm starting thinking okay well things are gonna be alright I was in my worst fear I mean that was my Worst fear I mean with it with a fear would creep up into the forefront of my

mind I was like you know that was my worst fear now I'm in it and I'm realizing that you know I think I'm gonna be alright I'm healthy I can still think I'm gonna I'm gonna be alright and when I came to this realization that I'm going to be alright this is when things change for me as a traitor and and this is and this is the interesting part about my situation that that most people Don't have the benefit of experiencing there are two things one I had this foundation of knowing that it was all

psychological anyway so I had all these things that I'd that I'd been working on up to that point and to when you tap out as a traitor I mean when you really tap out you don't get to trade anymore cuz you don't have any money right but I was in situation where I still got the trade even though I was working with other People's money I still got to trade every day and so as a result of experiencing my worst fears coming to the realization that I'm going to be alright and then at the same

time being being in a position where I'm able to interact with the market it was like because I didn't have anything more to lose I didn't it was like it was like this the market completely changed for me it was like I had these blinders on that all of A sudden just came off because the market was different because I wasn't afraid anymore I was seeing the same patterns over and over and over again beforehand but I was seeing the same patterns differently I was seeing the same patterns from a let's say relatively carefree state

of mind and that relatively carefree state of mind allowed me to like to say flow in and out of my trades with an ease and effortlessness That I would not have been able to imagine beforehand and then what happened is that I started making consistent money for my customers and there's even well there's there's one one really there's a matter of what one really good good story where I mean there are a lot of good stories that I can tell you about my customers at Merrill Lynch but in one case I inherited this guy who

was at the time was a head of the state of Illinois Mainframe computers and he was from India and he had put together his own trading program and he was using the you know state computers to do it and so and he had an account technically an account with Merrill Lynch but it wasn't funded because he lost all his money but he but he still had he still maintained the account and so I inherited him as a customer and he would call me every day and he was just like and all he would say to

me was like I pick up the phone He wouldn't say hi how are you you say give me data you know like give me the high low and close yeah and you know so we interacted like this for a long time well he came up with zone day trading system that that that eventually well because he and I started working on it together he had the he had the internal program for it but he didn't have any money management parameters for it so after about two or three months of Working with him on it we

came up some really good money management parameters and then all my customers started trading it and and we were making consistent money day after day even to the point where Merrill Lynch was starting to take notice you know that that you know here I'll hold this whole customer because his customer bases is making money and and he got to the point where where he's thinking okay all these people are now deriving this benefit From my work I should be able to do it too and he talked his wife into letting him put five thousand dollars

into his account to fund his account now I don't know what happened to him why I mean I you know there was not like we had personal discussion so I don't know why he didn't have any money in his account the guy was a maniac it's like he got he put the money he put the money in his account and two days later was all gone it was like he called me up and say okay Do this I said well wait a second the system says to do this no no no no no they don't

care what the system says this is what's gonna happen he didn't follow any of his own rules now here we had a track record we had a legitimate track record bonafide real money day after day he gets a few bucks in his account and it's like he thinks he knows where the markets going like I said he was gone in two days and that was it it was all over with because at That point he you know he was done I didn't get the system because it wasn't in his computer mainframe computer at the state

of Illinois and and had no more contact with them and shortly after that ended up getting fired from Merrill Lynch anyway because there was a like one of these management consultants that came in from New York and she was going around the office talking all the different brokers because of one or whatever what however was that they were Trying to find out and she got to me and at that by that time I was already writing the discipline trader and so and I just like I started very exciting to say hell yeah this is what

I found out this is what I've learned and her eyes lit up saying this is exactly this is exactly what we're looking for and she was just we talked for probably bout an hour hour and a half and you you've all excited and then she and then said I you know I Got to go tell you I don't say his name did the office manager okay if she walked away from me walked over the office manager ten minutes later ten minutes later he came over said pack up your stuff and get out right then and

there right then and there on the spot pack up your stuff and get out so that's how I ended up ended up actually being a trading coach because by then just you know floor trade because I'd made friends with Floor traders you know I was making friends to find out how they trade that sort of thing well they started coming to me for advice even while I was at Merrill Lynch and and because it's a pretty small community you know the word gets around especially when when you you know people are really genuinely helped with

with the kind of advice that you're getting that you're giving them and I'd you know and I'd help several for traders turn their training around and So what had happened is I started getting hired by clearing firms what I mean by clearing firms is that to trade on the floor of an exchange you have to you have to clear your trades through a financial institution and so you know it's like you're it's these are traders just like you they have their own account but but what they have to do is they have to clear their

trades through like I said one of the one of the major clearing firms at the exchange well what Had happened what would happen is this that it isn't like this now but back in the back in the early 80s or the mid 80s clearing firms were in some ways like like almost like family operations where where the people who owned the clearing firms they knew all the all the floor traders they were friends with them they partied together you know Christmases and holidays and that sort of thing and so if one of the floor traders

would go debit if we know what I mean by go debit In other words you know you have to trade it have to have a positive a positive balance in your account well the problem with floor trading is that not again not today but back then when you trade it on the lor you had had to record your trades on a trading card so in other words if you and I are entering into a trade where I'm going along and you're going short what I would do is is that we would we would take our

badge like the acronym of Our badge and and our Clearing House number recorded on this card and how many contracts we traded let's say your short 10 and I'm long 10 and when the price that we trade in a map well those cards didn't have to be turned in until the end of the day and then they'd all get reconciled meaning that between all the different trades and all the traders from all the different clearing firms this will all go into a central clearing operation to Find out which trades were you know to find out

whose long and whose sort how much money is coming out of whose account and whether or not they're will call what are called out trades meaning that you thought you thought I said 10 and and I thought we were doing it for 100 okay so now we've got a discrepancy in 90 trades these were called out trades it had to be reconciled before the open of the next day which is a whole nother world we're not in Gilmer Now you're not gonna get into it all but all I'm saying is that all I'm saying is

that is that it would not be unusual for guys to over trade during the day in the clearing firm wouldn't even find out about it until the end of the day for example one of it one of the guys I worked with at Merrill Lynch eventually he was a mathematics professor it's a really nice guy should not have been a trader at all had absolutely I mean anyway more than Peas at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and he was a one lot trader meaning you know just traded one contract one in and out one contract and

and and and eventually the forces inside of him building up where he's frustrated with the fact that he's you know I can't make a living at it and he's just eating and eating it out where one day he snapped and this and this one lot trader almost took down the clearing firm in other words he's got like several thousand snps on several thousand Contracts where other guys are into those trades and and the markets going against them so he almost took down a clearing firm just just by himself so what would happen is that is

that because guys would go debit meaning they end up is Dave lost me they're down twenty five thousand or fifty or a hundred dollars the guy that owns a clearing for him doesn't want to say hey you can't trade until you pay this off they'd want To let me go back into the pit to work it to work it down well after you know you've got four or five of these troublesome or 15 of these troublesome traders that are constantly running debits you start to get a little worried and so what they did is start

they have they hired me to work with these guys most of the information most of the insight let's say that that you'll find in the disciplined trader and trading in the zone came from me Working with these floor traders on a daily basis and it was I'm laughing because obviously it was quite a it was quite trip working with these guys because they are not like they are not like you and me that's that's that's really about the best I can the best way I can describe without going into a lot of detail they're not

like you and me so anyway you know this is kind of a maybe a long drawn-out introduction to the fact that what we're talking about here Is that you guys have a really wonderful trading methodology where there is an enormous amount of potential for you to be able to make a consistent income from being able to take full advantage of the potential that this trading methodology offers you but I would say that there's probably it wouldn't be unfair for me to say it wouldn't be unfair for me to say that there's probably what I'm going

to call the profit gap the gap between the Potential and your bottom line results this is the potential this is your bottom line results most people think that when they realize that this gap exists that somehow learning more about the markets is what's going to fill it and what you're here today to learn is that that is categorically not the case you have to learn more about yourself and how you interact with your trading platform and the market to be able to fill this gap there are psychological Skills involved then why is talking about psychological

skills well let's do anybody think of an example of a psychological skill this this this is difficult I don't think you know I'm not saying that you should have the answer but well can you think of an analogy and you know it may be in other parts of the way we express ourselves that you can think of what would be an example of a psychological skill anger management okay that good anybody else okay What about a situation and I was just anybody watch Wilton here lately just it was on I'm not a big tennis fan

but I just happen to be watching it and because I knew that this I was doing this this workshop here this is something it really sticks on my mind what's the difference between between let's say oh here it doesn't even a better example what's the difference between a bass a pro basketball player who can stand at the free-throw line and Hit 20 in a row even 30 in a row where the thing about the variables are fixed the line and the basket and the distances they're all fixed and they've got the motor skills to be

able to hit like I said 10 15 20 in a row but they get into a situation where there's 1 second left and the score is tied and this basket is going to win the game any chokes that's a cycle the guy that doesn't choke it has a psychological skill that the other one doesn't Trading without fear is a psychological skill it is a skill that the professionals have acquired and if they have evolved beyond the typical mindset or the kind of mindset that the typical trader operates out of so when we're talking about trading

or thinking like a pro that's exactly what I'm saying I'm saying that you will evolve beyond the typical mindset so that you can take full advantage Fuller bed this represents if this line represents Potential that you can take the potential of your methodology that you can take full advantage of your methodology because it has to do with your state of mind