Bill Provenzano, a seasoned trader who started his journey in 1987 on the vibrant floors of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (The Merck) shares an inspiring tale of synergizing his Christian faith with his trading and business ventures. Drawing wisdom from biblical principles, delve into the profound connection between meditation, renewing of the mind, and stewardship.

This episode's takeaways:

A holistic approach to trading guided by faith

The transformative influence of mentorship in trading

Unveiling the potential of faith-based enhancement in trading performance

About Bill Provenzano

Bill Provenzano began his journey into trading as a Runner on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, also known as “The Merc”, in 1987. He was just 19 years old. Within three years he became a member of the exchange and traded his account as an Independent Floor Trader in the Eurodollar futures pit. 

Bill’s trading success grew over his nearly 20 years at the Merc. When computerized trading took away the need for floor traders, Bill left the trading floor and went on to build two successful non-trading-related companies. But he continued trading commodity futures electronically and coaching other traders.  

Bill has a very unique perspective in that he is unapologetic in his belief that his Christian faith plays a vital role in his professional performance. In his book, Trading With Faith; 12 Biblically Inspired Principles for Trading Success, he shares the biblical principles he leaned on during his trading career that he believes were instrumental to his success as a trader. Bill and his wife of 25 years enjoy traveling and just celebrated the birth of their first grandchild. 

Contact Agnieszka Wood | Ahead Coach: 

• Website: aheadcoach.com
• Twitter: @Ahead_Coach
• YouTube: @aheadcoach
• Facebook: Agnieszka Wood
• Instagram: ahead.coach
• LinkedIn: Agnieszka Wood

Contact Bill Provenzano:

• Website: www.tradingcoachbillpro.com
• Get Bill’s new  book here https://a.co/d/ec8c44N

Transcript:

[00:00:00.410] - Agnieszka

Welcome to the Confidence in Trading podcast. I'm Agnieszka Wood. In today's show, I have the pleasure of speaking to Bill Provenzano, who began his trading journey in 1987 as a runner on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, or the Merck. He was just 19 years old. After several promotions, Bill realized his goal of becoming a trader and grew his success on the trading floor for nearly 20 years. In a moment, Bill will tell you himself what happened after and what he's up to right now. Bill and I share a passion, and not just for trading, but also for helping other traders on the way to their success. However, Bill has a very unique perspective on what plays an important role in trading performance, an approach that I have never heard of before. And that is what triggered me to invite Bill on my show to talk about it. Welcome to episode number eleven. Can prayer improve your trading? Hi, Bill, welcome and thank you so much for making time to be my guest today.

[00:01:14.420] - Bill

Thank you so much, Agnieszka. I consider it a pleasure being on your show, your podcast, and I'm an admirer of the work you do in this space.

[00:01:22.330] - Agnieszka

Thank you so much. I appreciate it. I am so excited about hearing your unique perspective. There are so many different ways to success, but the one you are talking about, and you will share with us in a minute, that is something that I have personally never heard anyone talk about. But before we get into that, could you tell us a little bit about your trading journey? How was it to leave the trading floor after so many years? And did you continue trading after you left?

[00:01:54.970] - Bill

The answer is, it was a shock and yes and no. So I'll just jump back real quickly if I could, back into the late 1980s when I was first introduced to trading. I was just out of high school. I was in my first year at the local junior college. I fully anticipated going into law school. My father was an attorney, and within my father's law office was another attorney who had a brother who was a trader, and he traded S&P Futures. And my father, one day we met every week and my folks were divorced. But every Saturday, myself and my two brothers got together with my dad. We would work for my dad. We cleaned his office, which I'll talk about, which kind of opened up another world for me later. So we used to clean his office on Saturday mornings, and then we would all go out to breakfast. And as for breakfast, one day, my dad was like, look, there's a guy in our office. His brother, the gentleman's name was Ronnie. The attorney in his office. Ronnie has a brother named Danny. And I don't know what Danny does exactly, but it's something about trading and S&Ps. And I don't know, I think you guys should meet him. Okay? So my brother and I made an appointment to go down to Chicago Mercantile Exchange and meet, meet with Danny. And I never even heard of the Chicago mercantile exchange. I never heard of trading, I never heard of S&Ps, none of it made any sense to me. But we went down to the Merck, and as you're walking up 30 south whacker, that's where I worked for almost 20 years. As you're walking towards the building, there's all these people out in the front with all these jackets, these colorful jackets on, and 80% of them, 90% were smoking, and my brothers and I were not smokers. So we walked through them like, what's all this? What are these guys doing? So you walk in the front doors there at the merck of 30 south whacker, and then you go to the far right, because that's where the visitors gallery was. That's where we needed to meet Danny. We're going to meet him in the visitors gallery. So you take the elevator up to the fourth floor, the doors open, and you turn right. And as you turn right, the trading floors are no more. But back then, you turn right and you just see this wall of glass, and you just hear this sort of dull roar. And as you start walking towards this wall of glass, you see all these colors, these wallboards filled with numbers and words. And then as you're getting closer and closer so to paint the picture even better, the visitors gallery bisected the trading floor. So as you got to the glass of the visitors gallery, if you look down one level, that's where all the trading pits were. And then you can look up another, like one story, and that's where all the wallboards were. We walked up to the glass, and I'm looking at it, there are moments in your life where the trajectory of your life changes. I looked down at that and I said to my brothers, I said, I don't know what they're doing, but I want in. I need to be a part of this. And I'm not someone there are some people who, when they're told no, it's like that feeds them to do that. That's really not my approach is more like if I look at somebody who's doing something and doing it well, the exclusion of that is a professional basketball player, professional athletes. I know I'm never going to be one of those. But if I see somebody and somebody doing something well, I look at them and I say, look. Not in an overconfident kind of way. Look, but look. And I said this to my brothers at the time. I said, look, we're three intelligent guys. No one works harder than us. And we've got some level of street smarts, we've got a good level of book smarts. We're hard workers. There's no way that we can't do what they're doing. And I don't know what they're doing, but it looks like I want to do it too.

[00:05:57.730] - Agnieszka

But I want a jacket like that.

[00:06:00.050] - Bill

But I want one of those jackets. So I'm the youngest of three brothers. My oldest brother got a job on the floor as a runner at the beginning of the summer. I was able to get a job at the end of that summer. And this was the summer of, I think it was I was 19. So that would have been the summer of 87, late summer of 87, and I got a job as a runner.

[00:06:24.240] - Agnieszka

I'm actually not sure what does the runner do?

[00:06:26.430] - Bill

So back in the day so now imagine when you've got your mouse in your hand and you click an order to buy or sell that's transmitted electronically. Back then. It was you pick up the phone, you call your floor broker on the trading floor, there's just walls and walls of phone banks. And so depending on the company, you're clear trades through, let's say you cleared your trades, know, back in the day was Revco or all the different. So let's say you cleared your trades through Revco. You would call the Revco desk and you would me buy me five S&Ps. The clerk would write that down on an order slip, buy five S&P. Then the price, whether it's a market order, limit order, whatever it might be, hand it to the runner. The runner takes the order and delivers it to the trading pit.

[00:07:11.270] - Agnieszka

Got ya.

[00:07:11.530] - Bill

You just in me describing all that. You can see why electronic trading is way more efficient because all of that requires so much labor and time that you can do on a click of a mouse right now. So I started working as a runner, and it wasn't long before I realized, look, I had a mentor later on in life who described it to me like this way. He said when he started work at this one particular job, he looked around, he said he said, who's the highest paid person at this place? This was a mentor of mine was telling me the story. He got a job at I forget where. He said, but he got a job. And he asked the guy that was hiring, who's the highest paid person in here? And the guy pointed to this guy over here. He says, okay, how do I get his job? So when you're working on the trading floor as a know, you're making peanuts, and it doesn't take you long to realize that the traders, the guys in the pit doing the yelling and the screaming, the writing of the cards, they're the ones making the money. And that's what I wanted to do. And then as you're there, like I said, I started at the Merck. So right down the street was Chicago Board of Trade. Chicago Board of Trade traded. They had the treasury bron. Futures was their big contract. They had a lot of the agricultural stuff, the grains at the Merck, we had the meat, so to speak. So we had the live cattle and that, but then we had the currency futures, we had the eurodollar futures, which were short term interest rate futures and the S P futures. But all that to say, as you spend time within this business, whether it's as a runner, whether you just get introduced to trading through your Uncle Jim, whatever it might be, you start getting introduced to different products, and you will just start to just naturally gravitate towards a particular product that you like to trade. For some people, they like to trade stocks or they like to trade penny stocks. Some people like trade tech stocks, some people like to trade options only. So it's in that immersion within the business. As you come in within the business, you will just naturally find sort of where you migrate towards within that business as a runner.

[00:09:21.820] - Agnieszka

How did you know? Because you were pretty much bringing the orders like you didn't actively trade it. So just like imagine the new trader just steps into the market, also doesn't know what am I gravitating towards?

[00:09:34.700] - Bill

Yeah, and let's think of it in the same way as someone who just gets introduced to trading today. They just sit down and then in the same way, they're just going to start scratching the surface and learning more. Well, as a runner, I started in the meats, so I was delivering the orders to the live cattle, live hogs, pork belly pits. The only way I can say it is that segment of the market didn't speak to me, so to speak. I was gravitating more towards the interest rate future markets, which were the euro dollars. Euro dollars is sort of a misnomer. Euro dollars are the 30 day interest rate market. And so think of it as very short term interest rates. You got the 30 year bond and then the ten year bond, the five year note and the year dollars. So that's the interest rate spectrum.

[00:10:22.330] - Agnieszka

Right.

[00:10:22.890] - Bill

So I just started gravitating towards the year dollars. Well, most because I had a couple of friends that were trading in there. I had a really good friend who I've met day one on the trading floor as a runner. I met him, he was two years ahead of me, sort of on the totem pole, and he was already a desk manager and working his way, knowing that he was going to go into trading as soon as he can. Just sort of because you need some capital. And that's the other thing I want to talk about and I know this conversation can go off in so many different tangents.

[00:10:53.750] - Agnieszka

I see it. And you know what was really beautiful about this? It is all still so vivid in your memory and as you say while you're talking, you're like literally and of course people who are listening on the podcast. You cannot see it, but you really have it, like, in front of you still. It's just still so alive. It's so beautiful.

[00:11:12.730] - Bill

Yeah. All that to say, there are two points I wanted to get to. That the story I just told, sort of spoke to. I didn't start trading until 1991. Three full years, right? Three years of immersion in the business. I mean, immersion in the business, learning all different aspects of it, all different nuances of it, before I ever placed a trade. You know, and I know the Internet has decimated the boundaries to get into this business called we call trading. And the people that are migrating into it without any they're going into a deep forest without a guide. And I don't fault them. They just don't know what they don't know. And that's okay. But it's important to find a guide to say, hey, look, I've been there, I've done that. Let me just kind of grab you by the hand and kind of walk you through this to help you not only understand that you need a plan if you're going to trade, but you better have some foundational things in place, too, and that are going to be more because this is a mind game. Trading can mess with your mind in a bad way, and if you don't have some foundational, mind and heart issues resolved and solidified as your base, your foundation, you're going to build your trading business on a faulty platform. That was number one. I wanted to speak to the fact that it used to take years before you would place a trade, and that time period, and it used to take a whole lot of capital before I could ever place a trade on the trading floor. Not only did it take years, I had to take a two week course at the Merck. I had to go in front of the board of governors that has seven person board of governors and be asked all sorts of questions. Once that was approved, I had to be on the trading floor with sort of a guide, a trader who would take you by the hand and walk and take you by the hand is the wrong word, but would be with you for two days and make sure that you've got a sense of what's going on there. And on top of that, you had to put up a back then you had to put up $50,000 with the Merck as a guarantee, like, hey, if you blow out your account, you would have your clearing firm who would process your trades. And then the Chicago Mercantile Exchange is the ultimate processor of the trades. So you had to put up money in your trading account with the company. But then the Merck, they wanted a $50,000 deposit. So in case you blue throat. So there were safeguards. There were so many safeguards and so many gauntlets. You had to go through before you placed a trade. All of those acted as barriers to entry that they're just gone. Those barriers to entry are completely gone.

[00:14:25.380] - Agnieszka

So you started trading, and you were successful right after all the things you ... Was it, like, immediate?

[00:14:33.890] - Bill

No, not at all. Not at all. That speaks to grit and sort of the learning curve that you got to go through. The first two years of trading, where I actually traded first initially was someplace called the Mid America Exchange, which was housed within the Chicago Board of. So my success at the the mantra back then was, if you can break even your first year, first year, you're doing great. And that's what I did my first year, I broke even. Second year, I made a little more money, and then that's when I went over to the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, and I started trading euro dollars. And back then, you either had to own or lease a membership known as a seat. So I don't know if that term is even still familiar nowadays. So in order to trade, there was a limited number of seats at the Merck, and every exchange had seats. And so to trade in whatever pit you wanted to trade in, depending on which pit you wanted to trade in, there were three different types of memberships, three different levels of seats. So I signed a six month lease to trade in euro dollars. And after the first month, I called the guy. I said, look, I'm done. I'm just not making enough money. I wasn't losing money, but I wasn't making money, and it wasn't clicking. And so this guy was I remember I just remember this guy. His name richard. He said, Bill, just I'm telling you, Bill, just stick it out. There's something I see something in you. Just stick it out. I think you can do it. So ultimately, I did give him back a seat, but here's, for me, I consider it providence, capital P. Providence. I had signed the seat back to him. Let's say we signed through the end of the month. I said, okay, on the 30th of the month, I'm giving the seat back to you. Well, in that last week of the month, I had a really great week. I thought, okay, there's something here, but now I got to give this guy a seat back. So I had to scramble to find another seat, and that was sort of the turning point that week. I can kind of look back as, okay, something happened here that week where maybe I just kind of caught onto something. And my success wasn't meteoric from there, but I had a good first year. The second year, I doubled my first year. My third year, I doubled my second year. And by year four, five, six, the numbers grew, and there were some within all of that. Going into late 90s, there was a real interest rate contraction. The market short term interest rate market really contracted, and the market was just super slow for a period of time. But all of that to say, overall, there were really good years throughout until we felt the electronic trading was sweeping the landscape. Come 2004, 2005, it's an incredible story.

[00:17:55.080] - Agnieszka

And I think you're so passionate about it, so it's really great to hear all the details. So you finally achieved a success, and I think that pivotal point from what you're saying, I recognize something that I see also with other traders, that the moment that the pressure is off, traders tend to perform better. So maybe that moment where you said, okay, I'm going to quit this, that's when the pressure was off, and that's where you had this great week.

[00:18:28.130] - Bill

That's a great observation. That really is. That really is a great observation. And I think another thing to turn that screw a little more, it also helps for those who are just getting into this realm, have other sources of revenue. I had finished college. I was working a couple of jobs. In the evenings, I was living at home, helping my we had my grandmother was living with us, so my mom needed help with that. So it worked out well where I was able to live at home, help out with the bills at the house. I didn't need the trading income at that time. Right. I was 21, 22 years old, living at home. So it's not like I didn't have a lot of overhead. So any pressure you have any 22 year olds? And I hope 22 year olds today feel that same pressure. The pressure like, okay, I need to get active and start my life and get this thing going, whatever this is for them. I certainly felt that need with trading because I had a huge passion for it. I really felt I could be good at it. But there wasn't a crushing need to make money right away. It was more of a desire, of course, who doesn't want to whatever endeavor you're in, presumably you're endeavoring to not just make money, but to perform well.

[00:19:49.630] - Agnieszka

So what happened after? So then you left the trading floor, and what was the next step?

[00:19:56.380] - Bill

Yeah. Between 2004 or five, six, seven, I was on and off the trading floor. But I started to see these floods of people coming into this space because I would see all of these Infomercials TV commercials for trading platforms. Because I'm contemplating the shift between going from trading on the trading floor to trading on a computer screen. So as I'm contemplating that shift, I had taken some time, done some deep analysis. If I don't trade anymore, what are some things I want to do? And I listed three things that I wanted to do. Let me talk about a second. But as I was on my way to do those three things, the different three different career paths that I thought would be career number two, I started to see all of these infomercials and all that for different trading. Platforms like trade this platform and you know the commercials I'm talking about where the guy or gals on the golf course or sitting on the beach all the free time for your family. Those commercials, I was incensed when I saw those commercials. That was 2004, 2006, seven, eight, something like that.

[00:21:09.740] - Agnieszka

Okay. At that time, I had no idea about the market. I have not seen any commercial, and I was in the Netherlands at the time. So keep going.

[00:21:20.170] - Bill

Yeah, this is about the time know those people that were in software development or whatnot knew, okay, well, here's a new market for us to exploit. And I'm not saying exploit in a negative way. I'm saying what new opportunities, right? Yeah, of course. This thing called trading is going from this open out crisis system where people are yelling and screaming to an electronic platform, and there's going to be a wide market of people who are going to want to learn about and how to do it. I started to explore, okay, do I want to buy a trading system? Do I want to develop my own trading system, whatever it might be. So I started going to some conventions and different day long seminars on different things that had the reality is the most part is a lot of them were sales pitches, right? You sit and you watch. This is how our trading platform works. Look how well it did at picking the highs and the lows. Well, great, we can all do that. And when they start the conference with, hey, everybody, hold your questions off to the very end, that's when you know, like, okay, well, maybe there's a problem with their coming. As someone who's been in the business for, at that time, 1617 years, like, okay, I can see the value in their product, but I can also see how they're pitching it to a room full of people that are. And sure enough, the presentation would end and 810 twelve people go to the back of the room and plunk down $3,000 on the credit card. And I saw this happening time and time again. So I wrote an article, and the article was posted in a Christian magazine with national distribution. And the article was just a cautionary tale. And it was, in essence, like, look, okay, this new world of trading is going to look a lot differently than it did before. The barriers to entry are going to disappear. Anybody that has a laptop or Internet access is going to be able to, in a matter of probably 30 minutes, fill out some application, connect their checking account to it. This is when I really became incensed. I went to A, and I won't mention the name of the company because they're actually very well known in the trading education space where I went to A one day seminar where they talked about this was more about trading education, and they were advising people to trade their IRA money. Like, okay, take your money out of your IRA and put it into your trading account. As soon as I saw that, somebody's got to say something here. I'm 30 some years old, and how am I the adult in the room? So, like I said, I wrote this article, and it was a faith based Christian magazine. It dealt with the financial like a financial magazine for the Christian realm. And it was published in there, and it was a very long article. I've done a lot of writing over the course of my over my life, and it got published. It was such a long article, it had to take two two issues for it to be fully published. And at the end, I said, if you have any questions, contact me at this email address. Almost 200 people contacted me, and they contact me with questions from everything like, hey, I'm exploring trading to I sold my business, and I lost all my money trading. So I saw this. I'm like, what do I do with this? So I just started gathering these emails, and some people included their phone numbers. I started calling them like, okay, tell me your story. And one guy I called one phone call, very vividly. The guy says, I sold my company for just over $300,000, and money's gone. I started trading it. The money's gone. And I thought, oh, wow. And then I heard the story again, and then I heard another story again, and I can tell you, I know personally this isn't theoretical. I personally know traders from the trading floor who had net worth of between five and $10 million who are now broke. And I don't mean like, okay, they are dead broke because they could not give up the ghost of the success they had on the trading floor. They thought it'd be instant on the computer screen, and they could not make that transition. And I'm not being hyperbolic here. So I wrote this cautionary tale, like I said, and just so many people contacted me, and I thought, okay, what do I do with this?

[00:25:53.970] - Agnieszka

So what did you do with this? Did you started coaching them?

[00:25:57.670] - Bill

Yeah. So the people that contacted me again, we were all coming from the same position of faith, right? It was a Christian magazine. So these people were positions of faith. We share the same ideology. And so I just sort of did a rear view mirror look of the principles and guidelines I had used throughout the course of my trading career that I believe were sort of guide rails and the tailwind to my success, right? Guide rails that kept me within the right lane and the wind at my back, so to speak. And I did this in a very short period of time, and I put together what I thought was going to be just a long essay. It turned out to be almost a 60 or 70,000 word book that at the time I called it The Ten Biblical Principles for Trading Success. It talked about the ten principles that I felt were, like I said, the guidelines, the guardrails for my success, as well as the tailwind at my back. And then I also wrote about the trading traps, the things that you don't know about, right? The things that you haven't encountered yet, the things you don't know that you dont know.

[00:27:07.550] - Agnieszka

Is that the book that was just published a few weeks ago?

[00:27:12.170] - Bill

That was the precursor to that. So I wrote that book, and just real quickly here then I contacted all the people that had contacted me. I said, look, I wrote this book. I'm not going to publish it, but I'll give you the work that I created. And if you want to do, we'll just do like a two week informal course where I'll just sort of walk you through the book and we'll meet 3 hours a night for two weeks in a row. And I'd be happy to just sort of do that for you folks because I think it's important that we do so 2030 people or so in different segments, not all at once. So I just sort of started coaching these folks, and some of the coaching continued beyond that. And so just to sort of put a period to this, once that was done, I put that on the shelf, an electronic shelf, so to speak, because it's an electronic format, because I wanted to explore those three businesses that I had sort of identified early on or when I was leaving the trading floor. I wanted to explore those businesses. And once two of those three businesses, I own multiple rental properties and I own a commercial and residential cleaning company. Why I wanted to it's just getting to know thyself. I just knew that I wanted to own rental real estate, property, and I knew I wanted to own a cleaning company. And so I started these two businesses. I've grown them over the course of the last 1012 years or something like that. And now they're at the point where and I knew about a year ago, I thought throughout the course of the last ten years or so, I knew that book was it was always there. It was calling me. I'm like, I know the time will be right. And about a year ago, it was like, okay, now's the time to get that book back off the shelf, dust it off, reedit it. That's what I did. So I revamped it a bit. And now it's called The Twelve Biblically Inspired Principles for Trading Success. Because I added a couple more. Well, it's called trading with faith. The Twelve Biblically Inspired Principles of Trading Success. I'm reaching back out to folks that are looking to be coached from just like a. Married couple would probably reach out to if their faith and they want to approach counseling from a faith based perspective. I've seen that people within the trading realm want to have somebody that speaks their language, so to speak.

[00:29:47.920] - Agnieszka

Okay, so let's talk about it a little bit more. But before we do, I want to ask you, so while you were developing those two businesses, right, that's quite a lot on your plate. You were still trading right, for yourself. How did you combine those two?

[00:30:03.490] - Bill

What I was doing was I was searching for a trading methodology that fit within my new paradigm. Right. So I knew the products that I wanted to trade, commodity futures. Right. That's just sort of my background. So I knew I wanted to trade commodity futures. And specifically, I'm talking about S P futures, Nasdaq futures, gold futures, currency futures, and the know the grain futures. So I knew that was the product that I wanted to trade. But I needed to find a new methodology that was in sync with the fact that I've got two businesses to run. So it took time, and I was taking more time. Just daily looking at the charts, looking for trying to identify my new high probability trades. Right. What are the triggers I'm going to be looking for? The chart generated triggers that I'm going to look for that are going to be my high probability trades. And so each evening and I've been doing this for ten plus years, I would just look at the same 1520 charts and just keep making notes identifying the high probability trades that I'm seeing emerging. And I just kept keeping a catalog of these things, or growing and growing catalog of these things. And then about a year ago, I started actively trading again. But the methodology which I trade now is I'm only placing between two and five trades a month. I'm not looking to actively scalp the market. I'm not necessarily looking for intraday trades, even though sometimes they might happen. So that's an important thing for people to hear. Find the methodology that works within your current paradigm. Right. Most people have a nine to five, and they're not going to just walk away. I would advise them, don't walk away from your nine to five, but find a method trading methodology that fits within your paradigm and nurture it, develop it, study it, and just come to know it better than anything else.

[00:32:14.510] - Agnieszka

Yeah. Because at some point, once you do that and this way kind of organically integrated into your life, it is so much easier to make the transition. When you notice that you start making money, the transition is much more organic and easier. There is no push, no stress, no mass. I have to make it. It just all disturbs. And I think it is with everything in life like that, the more organic, you let the things happen. Maybe not even I take the word organic out because the more you let things happen by itself and don't push too much, things are kind of being taken care of, if that makes sense. At least that's how I experience in my life and it just makes sort of effortless action.

[00:33:10.510] - Bill

Yeah, and that makes total sense. And that can happen best in an environment where you don't need to make money trading. Where you want to make money trading. Right, right. If you put yourself in a position of need, what you just described becomes a whole lot more difficult to unfold.

[00:33:27.050] - Agnieszka

I totally understand. I've been there because I was one of the people who have done exactly what you were describing and I cut myself off of the income that I had and decided to be a day trader. So I did go, I have chosen the difficult path.

[00:33:44.390] - Bill

Yeah. Well, the difficult path seems to be the one that has the most lessons on it.

[00:33:48.990] - Agnieszka

That's true, that's true.

[00:33:50.240] - Bill

There's something good in all of that.

[00:33:52.280] - Agnieszka

Yeah. And so I discovered later on that was the path, it wasn't the path of the least resistance that I used to choose in my life, but the other way around. I have changed it. And I must say my life became much easier now and I actually achieve much more with that and move forward much quicker. So that's very interesting. So what I am really keen to hear from you because you're talking about the biblical principles and how your faith helped you to achieve success. Can you tell me more about it? Because I actually grew up as a Catholic, so I am very interested in how did you even made that connection. 

[00:34:34.500] - Bill

Ye so, just to touch on what you said. So it was the Apostle Paul that said the fruit of the spirit. You mentioned multiple fruits, but three of them are peace, patience and self control. You couldn't name three more important characteristics for success in trading and success in relationships, success in all areas of life. And so I didn't believe that my faith should come off the shelf one Sunday a month or one Sunday a week for a couple of hours and then be put back on the shelf. There was a gentleman named Larry Burkett who wrote a book years ago, and I'm talking about late 80s, early 1990s, a book called Business by the Book and the book capital B, the Bible. So he was the first one that I discovered sort of made this connection of, look, our faith, our Christian faith, it's not just for the pastors and the priests. We as people in the business world, we have the mandate of stewardship of our time, talent and treasure. And we also have, like I talked about, I remember I said you've got the guardrails and the wind at your back. So the Apostle Paul wrote, be transformed by the renewing of your mind. So going back to when I was just starting college, I started this thing, a morning routine, and I became more disciplined as I grew older, but a morning routine that included just time in prayer and Bible reading. And as I entered into trading and I came across Larry Briquette's book, Business by the Book, I thought I sort of realized, yes, this is what I'm looking for. It's not exactly what I'm looking for, but it's this recognition that my Christian faith, it's not just for Sunday mornings. It can come with me to work, and it can have within it these guidelines. Like I said, I'm going to read some of the verses that were really important to me. And they're just the kernel that we can expound upon. But be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Take every thought captive. That's from the Bible, the Old Testament, and even the New Testament time and again refers to meditation. One of the very first Bible verses I memorized was Psalm one, one through three. And it talks about the prosperous man or woman is the one and prosperous. I'm not the prosperity preacher, right? Prosperity is peace. Prosperity is financial. Prosperity is internal peace. Prosperity is not just for the material realm. It's for all your relational realm. And people get when you get that out of skewed, it creates all sorts of problems. But the prosperous man is the one who meditates on the word of God. And Psalm one, it talks about that very explicitly. Some other verses that I think were really interesting that I held onto was when I was in beginning of my business. If you look at going back to an Old Testament verse, Leviticus, it talks about when you enter into a new land. Remember, this is an agrarian society back then. Right. These are people that grew crops and raised livestock, and that was their currency. Right. That was their business. Right. And spices, that was the currency of the day. And one of these verses that I read that I really held onto that sort of gave me hope was when you enter the land and plant any kind of fruit tree, regard its fruit as forbidden for three years, you are to consider forbidden. It must not be eaten. So for three years, plant your vineyards, plant your trees, and for three years, don't touch the fruit of your trees. Let it grow. Well, what a great, like full of metaphors, right? Yeah. What a great lesson for any business. Right. Even when I started my cleaning company and my rental property business, especially in trading, because in trading, anybody who's watched Shark Tank knows the term scale. You want to scale your business. The way you scale in trading is to add more size to your positions. Well, the only way you can add more size to your positions is if you have more money in your account.

[00:38:57.020] - Agnieszka

That's right.

[00:38:57.680] - Bill

And in order to do that, it's hands off. Leave your hands off that money and if you can let it grow for three years, great. And I would even say give it five years, because the first couple of years is going to be education. The market is going to extract tuition. Right? The market needs its tuition. Yeah.

[00:39:21.940] - Agnieszka

And that's what's often forgotten, right, the tuition. It's like, whatever new career or whatever new thing you learn, you have to pay for it. And that's a lot of time. It's forgotten that just becoming a trader is a very costly education. I'm not talking about paying the actual education, but the on the job training because of the losses, which are basically investment in your business. But that is something that a lot of time is forgotten. Definitely.

[00:39:54.590] - Bill

I am unapologetic in my belief, especially today, because as I look back on my trading career, there were no trading coaches. I started seeing the emergence of three trading coaches back right around the late 1990s, and I can there was Brett Dr. Brett I can't think of his last name. There was a gal, and then there was Doug Hirschhorn. Those that are in the trading realm might know who Doug Hirschhorn is. Doug Hirschhorn was a floor trader. He played Division One baseball, I believe, and he was one of the first people entering this trading coaching space. Now, late 1990s, I'm already having a fantastic career. As I sit here, I can look back and say, I can tell you my single biggest regret as a trader was not hiring a trading coach. And I'm telling you that's someone who was making seven figures a year on several years is saying that because I knew that I could perform even better. I knew that I was good and getting better. And as I look back when I first met Doug Hershhorn again, this idea of a trading coach was completely new to me. And I had met he goes by Doctor. I had met him, and he was just beginning his career as a coach. And at the time, he was $5,000. He was $5,000 to hire as a coach. I thought, wow, that seems like a kind of a steep price tag. And I didn't disregard him as Tiger Woods has a swing coach. His swing coach doesn't play professional golf. The fact that he wasn't a professional trader didn't matter to me. Yeah, I wanted someone who could pull a better performance out of me and why I didn't pull the trigger and hire him at the time, because now he's 25,000, 30,000 minimum. But looking back on my career, that is my single biggest regret, is that I didn't hire a trading coach even when I was having very good success. So I say that because we were talking about tuition a little while ago. The market is going to extract tuition from you. It will. The question is, can you minimize the tuition you pay while maximizing the benefit that you learn? And I am unapologetic that a trading coach, one that you connect with. Just like if you're going to a counselor, just like if you're hiring a coach for yourself, a golf coach, or your children's athletics, find one that you jive well with. Like I said, in my world, those that we speak the same language, so to speak, we're coming from the same position of faith, that we're not afraid to incorporate the tenets of our faith within that. In the course of writing that first book, I was doing, just digging, digging, doing research, I came across a gentleman named Dr. Derek de la Pena, and he wrote a book called Sports Psychology and the Scriptures. And it was the first book I finally came across, like, whoa, there is somebody else out there who's speaking the same language now. He was speaking to athletes. And I've long held the position that there are so many ways to equate traders with athletes. Specifically, the best corollary I have is a trader is like a batter at the plate. There are so many corollaries to that batter standing at the plate right there's, pitches coming at you. Each one of those pitches represents a trading opportunity. Each swing represents an initiation of contact with the market. There are so many corollaries to the two that I was so excited. So I got that book. I tracked this guy down, Dr. Derek Phil Pena. And he and I have had conversations ever since. So I'm like, finally there's somebody who's speaking the language that I'm trying to talk about. And this field of incorporating your faith, there are so many studies being done right now in the context of how does prayer, one's faith, their belief system? People forgive me for the way I'm about to say this because I'm going to use the wrong word. How can that be used to better your trading performance? I think of it better as how do we steward the talents and treasures we've been given to maximize the opportunities we have before us? Like I said, we are stewards of our time, talent and treasure. And that's whether you are an accountant, a trader, or a plumber, you have time and you have talents and you have treasure. You are a steward of those things. I would want someone who recognizes that as part of the belief system to work with. There's all sorts of studies being done that incorporate faith and performance.

[00:45:20.870] - Agnieszka

Yeah, I think whether it's trading or any other performance, that has to do with a high degree of mental performance, as in sport, like, let's say golf, for example. Yes, you have to train your muscle memory and a certain swing, and that is the physical part. But the mental part is so much bigger because we know that if we don't keep our thoughts in rain, then they can take off, gain momentum, and take us places where we don't want to be. And I think whether it's prayer or meditation, as you say, because there are different ways to quiet your mind. And I personally meditate, which I find incredibly effective just in taking a distance, to take a distance from things and give it a minute. Whether it's trading, whether you are conversing with someone, whether you're making any decision in life that gives so much more peace inside, where you can actually take a moment right, where you don't feel pushed like, oh, I have. To make a decision where you don't feel rushed to take a trade because you know that it's enough opportunities out there and you always have to act in your best interest and that moment and that quiet mind really helps you to do that. That is how I at least experienced that. And from the article you have sent me, that's kind of confirmed by the research, right? That when you are meditating or praying that your focus or the signals in your brain actually go to more the rational area, the frontal front of your brain, which helps you make more rational decisions and not stay in your emotional zone. Right. I think there was this phrase used, it helps you to stay in the zone. And isn't that what every trader wants?

[00:47:38.050] - Bill

I'm so glad you brought that up, because that article I sent you, the observation that you just made was one of the biggest surprises that I came across. I fully anticipated. So if you're listening and you're able to if you touch the back of your head, that's the back of your head is the fight or flight, the emotional area, that's where when emotions are high. If you were to attach electrodes to your head right now and you were to be in a highly emotional state, that's the area of your head that would light up. I was shocked to read, and I thought in prayer that that would be the area that would light up. Well, it turns out no, it's actually the frontal lobe. So if you touch, like, just above your eyes where your temples are, that's where you make executive decisions. That's where you make rational decisions. That's where you follow checklists. That's where things get accomplished in a very perfunctory way. Prayer lights up that part of the brain which totally shocked me. One of the things that I talked about with students a while back and that I want to talk about now with folks that I come across is the goal of trading without emotions, I think is a misnomer. I view emotions as a God given gift, right? When you close out a good trade, you want to enjoy it, you want to relish in it. And if you trade without emotion or temperature, I think that's a misnomer. I think a better way to say it is when you trade, you want to light up the part of your brain that is in the executive function and not in the emotional state. So if you're in an emotional state, and you're trading. The best way to move that activity, brain activity, to the front of your brain, is through some sort of checklist. Atul gawande wrote a book called the checklist manifesto. It's a great book. It's a very entertaining read. Talks about the power of checklists. So I created a checklist based on the acronym simplify. Simplify your trading. I wrote an article about it. It got posted in a whole bunch of online forms years ago, simplified. So as you're emotional, as you find yourself, let me set a scenario. So here's the scenario. You've got a trade set up coming on your screen, and it's a high probability trade, one that's worked well for you in the past, but the last two or three have gone south. Now you're seeing it unfold again. You're like, back of the brain is lit up. Do I really want to engage with this if I've lost the last two or three? The best way to overcome that, to light up a different part of your brain, is to engage with the market in a checklist kind of way. So I created the simplified checklist. So s you're scanning your charts. I you're identifying your high probability trade. M you're mapping out that trade. What's my entry point? What's my exit point? What's my risk reward ratio? What's my stop loss? What's my objective? First objective, et cetera. P is pull the trigger. And I've got a whole conversation around how to pull the trigger even within that state. L is let it breathe. Whenever I say, that the phrase let it breathe. When I was in the trading pit, you didn't have many friends in the trading pit. I'll just say that right now, right? You can be friends outside of the trading pit. When you got in the trading pit, you weren't friends. But there was one guy, he and I still get together a few times a year for coffee if I had kind of a big position on. And he saw I was kind of excited and I was bidding or offering heavy in the market, he would just turn to me, bill, let it breathe. Let it breathe. He's like, just calm down. Let this trade do its thing. So I always get a chuckle out of the l portion of let it breathe. So you pulled the trigger. You've got the trade on. Let it breathe. Let it do what it's going to do. It might go up a little bit. It might go down a little bit, but just let it breathe. I is isolate your feelings. Write down what am I feeling? How am I feeling right now? And the eye, the isolated feelings, the activity around that is based more about getting your hand off the trigger and more about just letting the trade breathe. Right. Isolating your feelings by you're writing about it. You're journaling about it, and you may never read that again, and that's okay. But it's more about keeping your hand off that darn trigger so you can let the trade breathe. F is focus on your rules. Just let the rules unfold and then close out the trade in whatever way it is. And then why is you take some time for you. In the pre conversation here, we talked about the idea of rest. Sometimes you need to take rest within the course of a day. Sometimes you need to take rest at the end of the day. Sometimes you need to take extended rest in the middle of a week or a month or year. So by engaging with a checklist, something that's structured and focusing on a checklist and people feel free to take my simplified checklist. As you focus on a checklist, you take the activity away from the back of your brain and now you've moved it to the front of your brain where it just becomes perfunctory. I just need to walk down this path and engage with the market in a ways I've already described. And I think this is something that people can put to use right away.

[00:52:52.840] - Agnieszka

That's awesome.

[00:52:58.970] - Bill

Within that is another acronym that we can talk about at another time. But that's a good takeaway.

[00:53:06.130] - Agnieszka

Thank you so much for sharing that. So for anyone who is interested into looking into it and also hear about the twelve principles right. Get the checklist. And there is much more in the book where do people can find it?

[00:53:25.010] - Bill

So my website is tradingcoachbillpro.com.

[00:53:28.610] - Agnieszka

All right, we will put the link also in the description.

[00:53:31.530] - Bill

Oh yeah, or you can email me at [email protected]. That's [email protected]. Yeah, reach out to me. I always enjoy talking with people. There are so many things that you can tell. I'm passionate about trading, passionate about the trading world, passionate about I've got no shortage of passion for this business and for helping people in it. Like I said, I am unapologetic that folks in this business. Like I said, my biggest regret was when I was already making a lot of money when training coaches first came out that I didn't hire one. Especially nowadays for people that are just getting in it, find somebody that you connect with. I don't care if it's not me. Find somebody you connect with. One of the things I really love about your program is the idea of accountability that you provide as an aspect of your coaching. There are so many studies now about accountability and how that propels your success in this business or any other. So anyway, all that to say, thank you so much for having me.

[00:54:32.870] - Agnieszka

Thank you. Absolutely. So people can get your book basically through your website, right?

[00:54:38.200] - Bill

Right.

[00:54:38.810] - Agnieszka

It's "Trading With Faith: 12 Biblically Inspired Principles for Trading Success". I'll put the link in the description and well, that brings us to the end of this episode. Thank you Bill, so much for such an interesting conversation.

[00:54:57.480] - Bill

Thank you.

[00:54:58.340] - Agnieszka

I really hope that for everyone who listens, you see that you can strengthen your trading performance and achieve success in many different ways just to understand that what really matters is not which way exactly you choose, but that you strongly believe in it. And I think you have seen so much passion from Bill in what he believes in. And I think that is really so important, because the belief and I'm not talking about the faith, but whatever you believe in, whether it is your faith or whether it is some other principles in life, your beliefs is what guides your action. And if you want to achieve success in trading or otherwise in life, anywhere, make sure that your beliefs align with what you want. Thank you so much Bill, for joining us today. I really truly enjoyed this.

[00:56:01.090] - Bill

Thank you.

[00:56:01.490] - Agnieszka

Lots of good food for thought that's for sure.

[00:56:06.610] - Bill

it's an area know people haven't really explored. But I'm grateful that you took the time to speak with me today. I'm really grateful,

[00:56:16.880] - Agnieszka

Absolutely! I really enjoy having you here and thank you so much for your time coming here and telling your story. Thank you for listening to the Confidence in Trading podcast. If you enjoy my show, please review it and rate it on Apple podcasts and be sure to subscribe so you can come back for a real-life conversation in the next episode. Until then, this is Agnieszka Wood from Ahead Coach. And don't forget, you too can realize your dream without looting yourself and your confidence in the process.

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