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In this video:

Andrew Mitchem

Dr. Dave Bonanno

Talking about mindset in trading.

Andrew Mitchem

And that’s why, Dr. Dave here today is here. And how he’s going to help you and all of us listening and watching with the mental aspect of trading. So, Dr. Dave, maybe you can start about introducing yourself, what you do and how you help traders at that.

Dr David Bonanno helps traders.

Dr. Dave Bonanno

And the thing to know is that when you have adrenaline, it makes your logical brain go offline. So I maintain that adrenaline is every trader’s enemy, and it doesn’t mean that you’re in full fight or flight, or that you’re afraid or that you’re angry. It can affect us in a lot of ways that we’re not even really aware of.

And so if you like, read other mindset books or listen to other people who talk about the psychology of trading, they talk about changing your thoughts. But what I’m really all about is how to, engage with your subconscious in a way so that it doesn’t contaminate what you’re doing on a moment by moment basis.

Andrew Mitchem

Right. So I had this trader named Tony, and he was really successful in his career, and he wanted to gear up for retirement. And he he was a very logical guy and he could understand intellectually probabilities and all that. But when money was on the line, especially when he was trying to scale or even when he was trying to, take payouts from the prop firms, he would find himself just not quite making the right decisions.

So of course, he looked at his strategy and and his, you know, technical skills. But I think what he didn’t realize at the time was sometimes adrenaline would get in the way. And and so that could be like if he was putting pressure on himself to provide a financial security for him and his family, or if he couldn’t really accept losses all that well, and I’m not even talking about like, yeah, I’m not talking about like throwing a tantrum or anything, but like, his wife would notice that he wasn’t in a very good mood after he had a red day.

And so, yeah, we we needed to look at what was going on for him subconsciously. And, you know, we all could try to think like, well, you know, I’m pretty much in control of my emotions or I didn’t really notice, you know, what was happening for me in the moment. But we’re talking about subconscious stuff. And by definition that’s what we’re not aware of.

Andrew Mitchem

Dr. Dave Bonanno

And I’m sure you probably even know people who’ve done it. So anyway, that kind of allows us to interface with your emotional brain. So, like, we have two brain systems that are at play at the same time. It’s kind of like two TV shows that are superimposed on each other, and you can’t just ignore one of them and sometimes I yeah.

So sometimes our head and our heart is in sync. But a lot of times it isn’t. At least as much as we’d like to think that it is. So yeah, if we can actually like kind of interface with that part of our brain, that’s the part that makes our logical brain go offline. So we still do need that emotional part.

Like it’s sort of like, like, you know, when you’re dreaming, then you wake up and your logical brain think so that was crazy. But that’s really because the logical brain was out of the way. And it’s it’s coming on, you know, with your, emotions. So what I’m getting at is, that when you’re able to move your eyes, that’s what allows you to connect with your heart.

It’s great for journaling because instead of trying to go back and guess at what you were doing subconsciously, it really kind of helps you to get there. And that’s what we did for Tony.

Andrew Mitchem

Dr. Dave Bonanno

Yeah. So like if he if you look at advice from other trading coaches or mindset coaches, they’re like, okay, well you have to control your emotions and you have to use your willpower in order to kind of, push them aside and focus on what you need to. Yeah. And that that can work sometimes, but it doesn’t work all the time.

And if you’re telling somebody who’s full of adrenaline that they need to calm down, that’s kind of like telling somebody who’s full of alcohol that they need to be sober. Like it just. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s yeah, yeah, I know I’ve tried. But, Yeah. So I think instead of trying to use your willpower and then blaming yourself when you, when it doesn’t really work, and then people start to go into a cycle.

Right. Like they start to doubt themselves and they start to think, well, maybe I’m a weak person or whatever. And really, I think they’re just kind of setting themselves up for failure by expanding, their body and their mind to react in ways that it’s not set up for it. Because once again, like when you’re in fight or flight, you’re but your brain is designed to go offline, like, you know, if you’re if you’re in the forest and you see a bear or something, you’re not supposed to be going through all the, pros and cons of the opposite, like you need to be running away or fighting.

It would. Yeah. That’s right. Yeah. So that’s just how we’re built. So. So when we’re training and there’s like, you know, people can follow their rules, fine. If there’s not too much pressure. But when you’re scaling up or when you’re trying to, make this one being trained, you know, that’s going to really help you out. Or if you’re trying to get like a good feeling, like if you’re if you’re a little bit maybe addicted to training, you’re doing it to feel good, then it’s going to backfire.

And then the harder you try, the more you’re feeding energy into that negative cycle.

Traders issues with over trading and thinking money!

Andrew Mitchem

Then you start looking at charts and lines and dots and arrows and indicators and you think, wow, this is awesome. I’m good. Look at this. Crosses this. I’m going to buy here, make a fortune. And then you soon realize it doesn’t work. And you then or the other issue I noticed that a lot of people have is they overtrain so much, you know, they want to go down to the very short timeframe charts because they believe the more they trade, their more they’re going to make.

And they’re and you used the word just now about being addicted, whether it was alcohol or addicted to things. And I find that so many people have that, that they’re trigger happy. You know, they go to click, click, click, click, click trace and and of course, inevitably it will end up, losing for them. And then their whole mindset starts, that whole self-doubt and, and all they get to that stage where they’ll go.

I’ve had so many losing track. This one’s band win and they do something stupid on it all. They they see the best set up that they’ve had all day, and they don’t take it because they’re scared, because they’ve lost so many other traits. There’s all these mix of emotions going on and it results in not being a good trader.

Dr. Dave Bonanno

But if you’re like, for example, an athlete who wants to be in the very top of your game, of course you have to work on the physical, but you have to work on the mental as well. That’s right. And so, yeah, if you want to be a trader who’s in the top 5%, who makes money, there’s just no way around it. I mean, nobody’s so good technically that they’re going to be able to cover their emotional mistakes, right? I mean, it’s just like you can’t. So. Yeah.

I think, you know, one thing that’s really interesting to me is how the research shows that happy people in general have a less accurate picture of the world than people who are depressed.

And the reason I bring that up is because I think we all like to believe that we know what we’re doing and when when somebody is in a situation like you’re talking about, when they get trigger happy, their logical brain is compromised and it’s making it’s making rationales for why they should do it again. Right. Like, oh, well, this it’s it’s got to work out this time.

Or like, you know, the gambler’s fallacy or you know, like, like maybe I this time I’m thinking about it correctly or not, or, you know, all the types of things that people tell themselves. And it’s, you know, I think one thing that really happens is when you feel bad about something and, you know, like, it can happen to all of us.

Like you could make the perfect decision, but the market just doesn’t go your way. You’ll never know exactly why that was, but because we want to feel in charge, we take on that responsibility and think, well, I did something wrong. And then you can either show restraint and hold back or I think, like most of us, maybe even us men, we want to do something.

We want to fix it. Right? So like, it feels so much more powerful to actually be active than to use restraint and just wait for your perfect setup. So I mean, I see this all the time, and yeah, it can be such a slippery slope that when you, if you get, angry or frustrated or anxious or afraid, you’re adding adrenaline to the whole equation, which is going to make you do worse, which is going to just increase your adrenaline as well.

And this doesn’t have to happen in just the course of one session. Like I recently talked to a guy who lost $700,000 over the course of three months, and he he just wasn’t fully aware of what was going on for him subconsciously. Yeah. So it’s just that it’s a really hard thing to do. I mean, you know, you could go to therapy and talk about your subconscious all day, but you’re still doing that consciously and it doesn’t really work.

But, what I do is I try to be really quick and effective and use these eye movements, and then we just clear things up right away. So like, that’s kind of what happened with Tony as well. So. So I would imagine, Andrew, that you must get frustrated. I would think sometimes when you’re giving people solid advice that they should follow, they know they should follow it, and then they come back to you and they’re like, I just I just didn’t I just couldn’t, right?

Like, what do people even say?

Don’t reinvent the wheel.

Andrew Mitchem

Because they’re out there seeing the flash, Lamborghinis and Ferraris and all the rest of it, and they think that’s how it has to be. I actually say to people, the the honest truth is good trading is boring. And I mean that in a really good and honest way, and that you need to be doing the same thing on a daily basis.

And as we’re finding out from our chat, you know, to remove the emotions as much as possible, stick to the principle of what you’re saying. One thing that I am massive on from a practical trading point of view. Well, two things. One, we keep our risk very low and controlled on every single trade. I think that helps massively.

You don’t get those huge fluctuations of emotions of those those big wins or those big losses. So I hope, right. It doesn’t matter what the market we’re trading, whether it’s a forex or non forex or it doesn’t matter the time frame or directional stop loss. Every trade has the same low and equal risk. So on the next.

Dr. Dave Bonanno

Andrew Mitchem

And that’s there almost need to find that that moment for themselves and figure it out for themselves, just like I told you. But I can’t say I told you so, because that doesn’t help right now. But, you know, you can feed all this information to people, and, and some people will still go off and break those rules and do their thing, but the good ones are.

Geez, circle back and come back and go, like I, I went off and found some other course and some other strategy. I realized that was rubbish. I realized what I got from you a year ago is really good. And now I’m back doing it and I want to start again. That happens quite a bit. The other thing that I think that helps with the way that we trade is not only is our risk allowing control portray, but our reward is high on our trades.

So our profitable trade so that we we kind of step, we have little losses, bigger step, little losses, bigger step. And we we, you know everybody shows this perfect equity. We don’t have that. We have a little low controlled losses. Big two, three four times the risk on a profitable trade.

You don’t need a 90% win rate.

And the slight issue that some people have with that is that some people want to see that 90% win rate.

Andrew Mitchem

So they made 90. But that one losing trade lost 100 pips. So you know, a very basic example. But they they were basically the guy asking a 90% win. Right. Aren’t I good. But I’m losing money.

Dr. Dave Bonanno

Andrew Mitchem

Dr. Dave Bonanno

Yeah. Just want to make mistakes and hopefully they’ll they’ll make enough mistakes while they’re young and and the, the stakes are still low before they go out to the world. Yeah. Then do stupid shit.

Andrew Mitchem

Dr. Dave Bonanno

Andrew Mitchem

I’m almost starting to say to people now, don’t spend so much time on demo. Sure, use the demo to understand how a new trading platform, the software works. But I’m finding now that people that go on to a small live account are feeling those emotions like more realistic that you can never get on a demo, how would you kind of approach that?

Dr. Dave Bonanno

So when things are the way they’re supposed to be, it’s kind of like you’re really focused on the charts, you’re really focused on what you’re doing. And then it’s like, oh my God, it’s the session’s almost over. You need to be using your intuition. But if and if you’re overthinking too much, you know, that’s certainly not going to work.

But if you’re if you’re also like distracted by your emotions or by, you know, thinking about, oh, what is this going to mean if like if, if, if you win this trade, you know, like I don’t know how much of a sports fan you are, but I can’t stand, sports interviews because they’ll be like, you know, what were you thinking at this point when it happened?

And the guys like, I don’t know, I’ll just see the ball hit the ball. I mean, you know, like, that’s really all there is. Yeah.

Andrew Mitchem

Dr. Dave Bonanno

And if you’re if you’re caught up in the extrinsic, it’s actually not only going to add to your adrenaline, but it replaces the intrinsic motivation. So if I could just give you a quick, quick example, like they had children read over the summer, they tracked how much they did. Then the next summer they paid them to read.

So of course you’d think they’d read so much more. But what happened was it became a job for them and that that just took all the fun out of it. So yeah, if you’re too focused on why and why you’re doing this other than just because I like it, I get into a flow state, then I think that’s just, you know, going to mess you up eventually.

You have to love the concept of trading.

Andrew Mitchem

I say It’s Monday. I’ve got this right. Yeah, I’d love it because, you know, up until cryptos came around, we could not trade at the weekends. You know, you just. The forex market shuts at New York 5 p.m. on a Friday and open on the Sunday at 5 p.m.. And, yes, I just say to people I love Mondays. I absolutely can’t wait for Monday morning to come and start trading it. And you’re exactly right.

Because unfortunately, again, and it kind of comes back to that social media issue again, is that so many people who are not trading, they discover trading and they see it as their kind of like their ticket out of their life’s financial problems. And and I get that conversation on a phone or an email, you know, with people, non clients, you know, far too often.

And, and I say to them look it’s not your, your golden ticket out of financial problems. It’s not going to replace your job like in a six months. Don’t think of it like that. You have to want to have that enjoyment of looking at the charts or reading the news, whichever type of trader you are, and actually doing it.

And like challenging yourself, to do well and to figure out what’s happening in the world and all these different facts, you’ve got to actually really get excited by that. If you like that, then you will keep doing it and you’ll be disciplined, and then the money will follow. But don’t just jump straight into it. Expecting to become a multi-millionaire with the thousand dollar account, right?

Dr. Dave Bonanno

Right. Because you can’t be up and down with with your emotions and how you feel. And you really have to get into like just the the nuts and bolts of this is the setup and this is my thought process or, you know, the, my intuition and, that’s that’s something I had to learn as a therapist. Like I don’t or as a coach, really, I don’t coach so that I could make people money.

I coach because when I get a new client, I’m curious, like, oh, right, what what set of it have problems or issues are coming in to my door and what can we do about it? I don’t wake up like, oh, I’m going to save this person. It’s just more like and then, you know, if the outcome doesn’t go my way, I don’t have to get too upset about it.

I mean, of course I care, but yeah, if you’re if you’re a trader and you could ground yourself and remind yourself why you’re doing this and and then also, I think this is a really fine point that people sometimes don’t understand. If you’re trading to feel good, then that’s going to mess you up to like you need to trade because you like it on a deep level and you want to make money.

You don’t do it because you know, your wife left you and your dog died, and I just want to get a hit of dopamine. Like, that’s not going to work out, right?

Andrew Mitchem

It was in the early days of a couple of trading forums, and you used to go on to these forums because, you know, trading is a lonely business, you know, otherwise, you know, no one understands what you’re doing. Even today and back then don’t forget, that was the dial up internet days. And and the. Yeah, right.

Traditional forum sites don’t work.

Andrew Mitchem

And I realized that when I started the coaching, I didn’t want that situation happening because it frustrated me when I was learning. So one of the things I’m really proud of is our community that we have on our forum site and webinars that we hold everybody, no matter what stage of the like, the journey they’re on. They’re all out there trading the one system, but they’re all out there helping each other.

And I find that having that back up, to follow someone, to watch someone to ask someone is such an underestimated part of a trade, a success.

Dr. Dave Bonanno

But, Yeah. Isn’t that such a great feeling is to be able to help each other? And I trust that your people are good at sharing their losses. Right? Because I think, you know, whatever you focus on, you magnify. And if you want clicks, like if you’re an influencer, you want clicks, you’re going to be selling the dream.

And it’s really like, I’m sorry to be crude, but it’s kind of like you can go on social media and you just see these people masturbating and and you think like, well, why can’t I do that? And they seem relatable. They’re real people. It’s not like they’re on TV and they’re celebrities. Like it’s real people. And then they only say, you can do what I did if you buy my stuff.

But, I hope that in your community, in your forums, like, people are real with each other, right?

Be real with your trading.

Andrew Mitchem

And you know all we’re going back to is that same thing is that our losses were controlled. But the the setup that we took at the time looked very good. Otherwise we wouldn’t have taken it. And the market, something happened. It didn’t go in our favor. Okay. That’s a shame. We don’t like that. But it’s the way it is.

But our loss is controlled and, you know. But then the profitable trades that we have made up for that loss plus more. And so I’m a firm believer and we show everything. And that’s the beauty of posting trades like on a daily basis for people right around the world to look at and follow. And also it teaches them the, the I suppose the discipline of these people who have done this for years and years still have losing trades.

And that’s fine to have providing we, you know, you look back and and get you full. You shouldn’t have taken that because of A, B and C, and that’s a lesson. But you know, hopefully we don’t do that very often. But the market sometimes will do what the market wants to do. You can have an A grade setup and it doesn’t work.

But and that’s part of the lesson the discipline, the journey.

Dr. Dave Bonanno

But it’s every single time you’re really just inferring the probability of what happened. And you don’t have that real solid ground to, to feel comfortable on. Right. Like you’re just always kind of guessing to some degree. And you have to be okay with that. And I think it is really, really helpful to have other people remind you of that because, yeah, we could tell ourselves all day, oh, I’m going to have losses.

And you know, I’m not perfect person or whatever, but if you actually have somebody else remind you of that, like, dude, you’re you’re still damn good. You’re still like, you know, the shot good person. Then I think that’s yeah, crucial. It is you. So that’s really cool.

Contacting Dr Dave.

Andrew Mitchem

Dr. Dave Bonanno

As a matter of fact, that’s one thing I like about working with traders as opposed to PTSD, because they say if they say, you know, you are who you associate with. I was like, oh my God, I’ve been associating with the most damaged people in society for decades. But so yeah, I love working with traders. You can you can look me up at WB ww dot max discipline.com or we’ll have links.

I just published a book on Amazon called The Consistently Calm Trader. And people have been having really good feedback for you there. And, if you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to just give one more tip to your audience, which is the best way to handle losses is not to get upset or try harder, or even to try to ignore how you feel about it.

If you can actually be sad. And I know nobody wants to feel sad, but if the market doesn’t go your way today and you can just actually literally feel that like sad about it for even like ten minutes, then you’re you’re not adding any type of adrenaline to the equation and you’re accepting reality as opposed to, well, it shouldn’t happen this way or I should have done this.

That’s not reality. If you’re talking about what should have happened and then because you can accept reality, you can move on and, and really come to a, later with a clean slate. Does that make sense?

Andrew Mitchem

Dr. Dave Bonanno

Andrew Mitchem

Dr. Dave Bonanno

Andrew Mitchem

How on earth can you expect to approach the next trade or the next day with any clarity?

Dr. Dave Bonanno

And, you know, if you ask somebody how they doing and if they if they don’t say awesome, then you’re like, oh my God. Well what’s wrong? Like what’s wrong with you? You know, like, I mean, I of course, you know, I like about us here in the States that we, we strive we, we have really high expectations. But I think it can really backfire for a lot of people.

And then, yeah, if you’re on social media and you’re seeing all these people with their lambos and their, you know, their houses and stuff, I mean, it’s just going to get you down. So, yeah, if you could be sad, you could accept where you are. What has happened, and then you can get right back on the horse and, go where you need to go.

Andrew Mitchem

Dr. Dave Bonanno

Andrew Mitchem

Episode Title: #626: The Psychology Hack Every Trader Needs