The AlphaMind Podcast

Our guest today is Marsten Parker. Marsten is one of the featured traders in Jack Schwager’s Unknown Market Wizards, the 5th book in the iconic Market Wizards series.

Marsten is the only truly systematic trader featured in Unknown Market Wizards. Marsten started off as a software engineer before he developed his interest in trading after his company IPO’s and he found himself with a considerable shareholding. After leaving his company, and ignited by a new interest in markets, Marsten started trading fulltime in 1998. He soon moved from discretionary trading to systematic trading and developed his own 100% mechanical/quantitative strategies. 

Marsten's track record and consistency have been exceptional and over 22 years his average annual return has been in excess of 20%, with only 2 losing years.

In addition to trading, Marsten has developed his own Multi-Strategy Portfolio-Level Backtesting Software called RealTest. This software is unique in being able to test out multiple strategies at the same time 

A key feature of Marsten’s success has been his curiosity and willingness to experiment and try new things, constantly looking to build upon and improve previous iterations and to constantly test out his ideas and assumptions. Marsten terms this his ‘Spirit of Experimentation’ a term which perhaps describes one of the key aspects of Marsten’s mindset and overall philosophy, which has been a key pillar of his success.

One of the Real Surprises of this interview was, as you will hear, Marsten’s admission that he doesn’t even like trading that much, his real passion is designing and testing computer software. Trading if anything is the vehicle which allows him to pursue that passion. And perhaps somewhere within there maybe the secret to his success in that it ensures he does not get too attached and hung-up on the day to day outcomes of his trading. 

Despite his admission by Marsten, he has achieved outstanding performance and consistency as a trader and also software designer. In addition, Marsten is also a classically trained violinist, who had his interest in software design and the series of events which followed not occurred, we may have heard of him achieving success in a very different field.

We hope you enjoy the conversation.

You can find out more about Marsten and his RealTest product at:

https://mhptrading.com

You can follow Marsten on Twitter: @mars10p

AlphaMind: Powering Performance in Global Markets
AlphaMind brings powerful change, growth and development to people and businesses within global markets.

Driven by a deep understanding of how markets work, and how people and businesses function within them, we partner with clients to create personal performance improvements that elevate returns across their trading activities.

Go to the AlphaMind website to know more.

This is the podcast interview we have been waiting to do all year. We have been huge fans of the Market Wizards series of books since the first one landed with a splash in 1989. That was a time when trading had first exploded beyond the confines of the old-fashioned stock and commodity exchanges. There were new futures floors, new instruments, and rapid expansion of trading activities buoyed by the growth of futures and derivatives contracts and juiced up by the early computerised trading systems.

Through a series of interviews for the book Jack Schwager introduced the world to trading legends, until then relatively unknown outside their small corner of the world. Traders such as Michael Marcus, who busted time after time after time, before finally growing $30,000 into $80,000,000 over a 10-year period. We learned of the wisdom of Ed Seykota, the feats of Paul Tudor-jones, and the skills of Richard Dennis. Jack introduced us to the Trading Turtles, and to many quotes which even now people repeat over and over again as inspirations. 

Schwager followed up the original book with 3 more outstanding versions, the New Market Wizards, Stock Market Wizards, and Hedge Fund Wizards, and now he has done it again, taking us in one sense back to the beginning and in another sense into the 2020s, with Unknown Market Wizards.

We were delighted to have a chance to talk with chat, and for once Jack the interviewer, become Jack the interviewee. You can hear the fantastic insights Jack shares with us in his own words from years of talking to and working with the best around.

It was a pleasure for us to this interview, and we are sure you will get something from it, whether you are new to the scene, or like us, have been around the markets for decades. 

You can find out more about Jack Schwager at his website https://jackschwager.com/

Jack is also a partner of Fundseeder, a financial data and analytics company which provides a free trader platform that provides performance analytics, data tracking, and monetization opportunities for promising traders. You can find out more about Fundseeder at https://fundseeder.com

AlphaMind: Powering Performance in Global Markets
AlphaMind brings powerful change, growth and development to people and businesses within global markets.

Driven by a deep understanding of how markets work, and how people and businesses function within them, we partner with clients to create personal performance improvements that elevate returns across their trading activities.

Go to the AlphaMind website to know more.

There are a host of different factors which lead to great trading and investing performance, but at the end of the day, we live and die by the quality of the decisions, we make. It is ‘Where the Money Is!’.

Our ability to make good quality decisions in financial markets is heavily compromised by our inability to be truly objective in the face of the extreme complexity, uncertainty and randomness. What we think is the best decision in the moment, doesn’t necessarily yield the best outcome.

The world of Poker provides some great examples of how to make decisions in situations characterised by complexity, uncertainty and randomness. Our guest this week, Annie Duke, is a former professional poker player and world champion. Annie authored the brilliant ‘Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts’, and has a new book out called ‘How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices’.

Annie believes that we can all become better at making good decisions, and that this ability can increase our odds of success in the financial markets. In this interview we explore these themes with Annie, some of the topics touched upon include: 

•      Identifying and dismantling our hidden biases.

•      Extract the highest quality feedback from the markets. 

•      Accurately identifying the influence of luck in the outcome of your decisions.

•      When to decide fast, when to decide slow, and when to decide in advance.

•      How to make decisions that more effectively help you to realize your goals and improve your performance. 

•      How to better manage your emotions and reduce their undue influence in your decision-making process. 

We are pretty sure you will find Annie’s reflections extremely valuable. You can find out more about Annie at https://www.annieduke.com/

AlphaMind: Powering Performance in Global Markets
AlphaMind brings powerful change, growth and development to people and businesses within global markets.

Driven by a deep understanding of how markets work, and how people and businesses function within them, we partner with clients to create personal performance improvements that elevate returns across their trading activities.

Go to the AlphaMind website to know more.

This week we are delighted to have Dr Tara Swart on the Podcast. Tara is a qualified psychiatrist and neuroscientist. who left the world of medicine to set-up her own Neuroscience based leadership coaching consultancy and became a coach, working with leaders and increasingly with top traders in Hedge Funds. Tara also lectrues in Neuroscience at MIT, is an in demand speaker, and author of ‘The Source: Open Your Mind, Change Your Life ‘, which has been has described very favourably as ‘The Secret based on Science’. The Source has become a UK best seller, and is now being translated into 36 different languages. 

Tara’s work with Hedge Funds has seen her described as the ‘Wendy Rhodes of London’. For those of you unfamiliar with Wendy Rhodes, she was the Psychology Coach in the Primetime hit show ‘Billions’. 

In this episode we had a great discussion about Tara's book ‘The Source’, and expanded this out to explore how traders can develop an ‘AlphaMind’ by developing their ‘Brain Agility’. Brain agility facilitates the mastering of your emotions, developing greater resilience, being aware of the brain-body connection, accessing your intuitive abilities, making good logical decisions, staying motivated and thinking creatively. 

This conversation is laced with references to neuroscience, psychology, emotions and references to our cognitive abilities allied to how people think about and make decisions in risk, trading and investment situations.  

Tara talks extensively about how to think better, how to hone your thinking, how to develop brain flexibility and how to manage and create your optimal physical environment through better quality sleep, nutrition, health and daily life management for optimal brain function. The podcast also explores other areas including how to cope with fear and anxiety related to trading.

You can find out more about Tara on her website https://www.taraswart.com/.

You can also read the Spear Magazine Article which Tara refers to later in the interview at this link: https://www.spearswms.com/stop-work-killing/

Another great article worth a read mentioned by Tara was Ghosts in the Executive Suite : https://syncreticsgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/Ghosts-in-the-Executive-Suite-2-26-16.pdf

Tara is married to Robin Bieber, one of the world’s leading technical analysts and a guest a few podcasts earlier. 

AlphaMind: Powering Performance in Global Markets
AlphaMind brings powerful change, growth and development to people and businesses within global markets.

Driven by a deep understanding of how markets work, and how people and businesses function within them, we partner with clients to create personal performance improvements that elevate returns across their trading activities.

Go to the AlphaMind website to know more.

This weeks guest was 'us'.

In this episode Ralf and Moritz of the Tradeciety interviewed AlphaMind Podcast hosts Steve and Mark about their work helping traders to become more effective by tackling the psychological, mental and behavioural aspects of trading. 
 
This interview covered a wide range of themes including: 

• Developing Resilience. 
• The importance of ‘Letting Go’ and overcoming unhelpful attachments. 
• Overcoming the inevitable downward spiral.
• Self-compassion in trading as an antidote to the times when we are overly harsh on ourselves.
• How we unbalance and undermine our ability fo be objective.
• Confidence levels.
• Aspects of ego: How too much ego can undermine, as does a devalued ego. 
• Grounding yourself. 
• Working beyond comfort zones.
• The importance of exploring your risk process.
• Opening yourself up for self-examination.
• Developing Risk Capability.
• Over-reliance on analysis. 
• How our deep held unconscious beliefs and values impact our self belief. 
• The importance of understanding how the markets work.
• Doing forensic preparation and planning, and how this can and does pay-off.
• Taking breaks to reset, refresh, and recalibrate. 
• How your cognitive abilities are impacted by your physical behaviours.
• Being at your cognitive best.  
• The importance of having an edge. 
• Ensuring you are trading when and where you have an edge.
• Avoiding times when you have an edge. 
• The importance of risk management.

You can find out more about Tradeciety at https://www.tradeciety.com/
And view a video version of this episode on Tradeciety's youtube channel at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HR5H4d_c5Q

AlphaMind: Powering Performance in Global Markets
AlphaMind brings powerful change, growth and development to people and businesses within global markets.

Driven by a deep understanding of how markets work, and how people and businesses function within them, we partner with clients to create personal performance improvements that elevate returns across their trading activities.

Go to the AlphaMind website to know more.

'The Psychology of Money' is a new book written by former Motley Fool and Wall Street Journal finance columnist Morgan Housel. The book has been called "one of the best and most original finance books in years." by the Wall Street Journal.

You can tell the quality of a book by the people who have reviewed it. When you have an investing legend like Howard Marks comment on the book, you know it is going be worth investing your time to read it. This is what Marks had to say about the book. 

‘Housel's observations often hit the daily double: they say things that haven't been said before, and they make sense.’

The Psychology of Money is one of those books that I feel people will talk about for years. We were delighted to have a chance to read the Psychology of Money pre-publication and were fortunate to have the opportunity to interview Morgan and ask him about some of themes which ran thought his book. 

In this interview Morgan tells us about the book and what inspired him to write it. We also discussed some of the great anecdotes in the book and some of the stories behind them. 

We hope you enjoy this episode and will feel inspired to go and read, and quite possibly re-read, 'The Psychology of Money'.

AlphaMind: Powering Performance in Global Markets
AlphaMind brings powerful change, growth and development to people and businesses within global markets.

Driven by a deep understanding of how markets work, and how people and businesses function within them, we partner with clients to create personal performance improvements that elevate returns across their trading activities.

Go to the AlphaMind website to know more.

Robin Bieber has been working in the Oil markets for the past 40 years. He has been a trader, broker and analysts, and is now considered one of the leading technical analysts in the trading industry. 

There are few better qualified people who possess the depth of knowledge and insight about how to use and apply Technical Analysis than Robin. Robin joined the markets in 1982 after nine years in the British Army. Robin first worked at E.D. and F. Mann followed by spells at Tiger Petroleum, and Amerex Petroleum, before Robin founded Bieber Oil Ltd, which was acquired by PVM in 1993. He now runs Rb Oil Ltd, a consultancy company

In this fascinating discussion Robin and hosts Mark and Steven move quickly move beyond the usual talk about Technical Analysis to discuss how best to use and apply analysis in a way which brings real value to a trader’s approach and practice.  

We think you will get a lot out of this chat between Steven, Mark and our outstanding guest Robin.

You can find out more about Robin and his work at https://www.rboil.co.uk/

AlphaMind: Powering Performance in Global Markets
AlphaMind brings powerful change, growth and development to people and businesses within global markets.

Driven by a deep understanding of how markets work, and how people and businesses function within them, we partner with clients to create personal performance improvements that elevate returns across their trading activities.

Go to the AlphaMind website to know more.

Every Trader would love to be bullet proof. To be bulletproof is to be able to survive the mental shots taken at us each and every day in the financial markets. When these shots hit us, they disrupt our thinking, corrupt our decision-making and inflict major damage on our trading and investment performance.
 
In this episode Trader Performance Coach Steve Ward talks about his latest book, ‘Bulletproof Trader: Evidence-based strategies for overcoming setbacks and sustaining high performance in the markets'. He tells us about the book and also what it means to become ‘Bullet Proof’ as a trader. 

Steve also tells us about his journey of transition from Sports Psychologist to leading Trader Performance Coach and author of some of the best-selling books on trading mindset. Including one the most popular books of recent years High Performance Trading. 

Steven has worked in the field of High Performance over many decades, he worked with Olympic Athletes, High Stakes Poker Players, Leaders in Business and with Traders and Investors in the Financial Markets.  Steve realised the similarities between high performance sports and the trading world, and developed a performance practice which has helped many traders make lasting improvements. 

Steven wrote his first book, High Performance Trading, a few years ago. It became an instant hit amongst traders and has seen his reputation in this world soar. Bulletproof Trader is the next instalment in a series of books Steve has written on themes related to mindset, performance and psychology in the similar world of trading and sports betting. 

You can learn more about Steve at https://performanceedgeconsulting.com

AlphaMind: Powering Performance in Global Markets
AlphaMind brings powerful change, growth and development to people and businesses within global markets.

Driven by a deep understanding of how markets work, and how people and businesses function within them, we partner with clients to create personal performance improvements that elevate returns across their trading activities.

Go to the AlphaMind website to know more.

Our guest this is week is John Locke, an option trader at SMB Capital. John has achieved great success as a trader since starting about 15 years ago having previously worked as a ‘Success Coach’.

As well as working as a trader himself, John coaches’ traders through this company ‘Locke in Your Success’. 

John took the principles he applied to clients in his coaching and applied them to himself. John worked on his own personal and human development more so than focusing on developing his trading strategy, and the other external parts of the trading process. John was effectively developing his ‘Metagame’ as a trader. Thisappears to have been a significant factor in John becoming profitable from his trading far quicker than most other new traders. 

This episode is full of value. – The first 25 minutes of the interview explore aspects of options trading, and this will be useful for all traders whether they are options traders or not. The second part of the podcast, from about half an hour into the podcast focuses on the mindset needed for success and how our emotions can derail us from optimal behaviour and following good process. 

AlphaMind: Powering Performance in Global Markets
AlphaMind brings powerful change, growth and development to people and businesses within global markets.

Driven by a deep understanding of how markets work, and how people and businesses function within them, we partner with clients to create personal performance improvements that elevate returns across their trading activities.

Go to the AlphaMind website to know more.

Geoff Trickey is one of the world’s leading experts on Risk Personality. Geoff says that ‘personality writes your biography’ and believes that knowing and understanding your risk personality, can provide an enormous edge in how you work and the quality of the decisions and choices you make.

A few years ago Geoff and his team created a new tool for assessing risk personality called the Risk Type Compass. I have used the Risk Type Compass extensively in my coaching work with traders and investment professionals. It has been extremely useful in helping people understanding themselves better and in supporting them to cultivate greater self-awareness around how they deal with risk and uncertainty. Ultimately, it has helped me as a coach help them to sharpen their risk edge and improve their decision-making abilities.

For traders and investment professionals, knowing your risk personality enables you to calibrate how you work, so you are working most congruently with you risk personality. 

Working congruent to personality enables you to go to places when taking risk where your  character and personality provide an edge, and enables you to stay away from situations where they have no edge. It becomes the foundation for greater degrees of self-trust and improved levels of confidence. 

I have written a short article which can be viewed on 'LinkedIn' at this link here. The article  talks about risk personality and why being aware of it is so vital for success in financial markets, as well as other areas of life and work.

The Risk Type Compass (Exclusive for listeners of the AlphaMind Podcast - Take the test free)

Psychological Consultancy have very kindly offered to allow listeners of the AlphaMind Podcast the opportunity to take the test for free and receive a complementary shorted version of the test report.

To find out more, visit the AlphaMind Blog page at this link. Here you can view an example of the Risk Type Compass diagram and will also find further details of how each risk type relates to trader and investor behaviour.

You can find out more about the Risk Type Compass at the Psychological Consultancy website here.

AlphaMind: Powering Performance in Global Markets
AlphaMind brings powerful change, growth and development to people and businesses within global markets.

Driven by a deep understanding of how markets work, and how people and businesses function within them, we partner with clients to create personal performance improvements that elevate returns across their trading activities.

Go to the AlphaMind website to know more.