Traders Mastermind

Sponsored by Pepperstone

Years ago, I found a strange edge in a head-to-head trading game: while everyone else rushed to trade, I waited. In this episode, I share what that taught me about patience, understanding the real objective, exploiting other traders’ mistakes, and why sometimes the best trade is no trade at all.

Sponsored by Pepperstone

We all want results now, something new, and an easier path, but these natural instincts can sabotage our trading. Here’s how to recognise and overcome them.

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Trading has too many moving parts. Entry, exit, stops, targets, scaling, hold or fold, how many trades, breakout or mean reversion. When you're in a drawdown, it all turns to noise.

So here's one drill to cut through it. Strip out the variables and answer a single question.

It won't fix everything. But it gets you off the back foot and gives you something to work with instead of just bleeding.

Have a listen and see if it's right for you.

Sponsored by Pepperstone

When you trade for yourself, you wear every hat... CEO, risk manager, senior trader, junior trader. Nobody's holding you accountable, and that's exactly the problem.

In this episode, Mark Holstead unpacks why most traders stay stuck in the same cycle: feel bad about a mistake, promise to do better, repeat. The missing piece? Real consequences.

Here's how to engineer them, using trade hesitation as the worked example. It won't fix everything, but if you've done all the right groundwork and still can't shift a bad habit, this is probably the piece you're missing.

Sponsored by Pepperstone

No big claim in this one. Just a thought on why staying open-minded might be one of the most underrated attributes a trader can have... and what being open-minded actually means in practice.

A clickbait short came through my feed the other day. Guy ranting about how a specific strategy was total nonsense, how "this is how the funds do it." Except a bit of digging turns up four or five firms running exactly the strategy he says doesn't work. Twelve-year track records. All public.

So this episode is about the alternative. You look at a strategy and you land on one of three things: you like it and you'll test it later, you take something from it, or it's not for you. And then it ends there. No energy spent telling everyone else it's rubbish.

I cover:

• Why open-minded doesn't mean chasing shiny objects
• Taking the process, not the strategy (a hedge fund's stress-testing approach I nicked)
• Expressing the same trade idea a different way
• Moon phase strategies and why I don't care if they work
• Building your own playbook from borrowed parts

Most hedge funds don't beat the market. Most traders don't make money. That's just how it works. The best take the spoils.

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Early 2000s. I flew from the UK to Las Vegas to sit in on a new trader intake at a prop firm. Three strategies, all working, all making the firm serious money.

I went home and couldn't trade a single one of them.

Not because they were bad. Because they were never going to fit me… I didn't have the capital, the stomach for size, or the appetite for spreadsheets. Took me a long time to work out the difference between "this doesn't work" and "this doesn't work for me."

In this episode, I break down all three strategies (NYSE opening print fair value, ECN liquidity rebates, and pairs trading), why each one failed in my hands, and the filter I now run every new strategy through before I waste any time on it.

Relevant timing, given we're currently tearing down 12 popular strategies in the Pepperstone webinar series. Some will be for you. Most won't. That's the whole point.

Sponsored by Pepperstone

Two traders. Same meetup, same market, same year. One bragged about every win… until the week he vanished, fifty grand down on borrowed money.

The other never bragged, and ten years on, he's still trading and thriving. Mark unpacks the one thing that separated them: process over ego, long-term over the quick win.

Most traders are wired to push… bigger size, more strategies, faster progress.

But the most successful people in any field share a trait we rarely talk about: they're not afraid to take a step back if it sets up a bigger step forward.

If you've been grinding month after month with nothing to show for it, this one's worth a listen.

Thanks to Pepperstone for sponsoring this episode.

We all know the high-water mark... fund managers use it for their equity curve highs. Hit a million, lose some, climb back above the old peak before you get paid.

But what if you applied that same thinking somewhere else entirely?

In this episode, I dig into using high-water marks beyond your account balance.

• Longest trade held.
• Most days sticking to your rules.
• Fewest red days.
• The longest journaling streak.

None of these moves your PNL on their own... but together they support it, and more importantly, they reframe what progress actually looks like.

Because here's the problem. Especially in those early years, you pour in the effort and the equity curve shows you nothing.

It's a recipe for despondency. So you measure something else. You chase a personal best in the things you know matter, and you start to believe bigger things are possible.

Could be the unlock you need.

Thanks to Pepperstone for sponsoring the episode

Sponsored by Pepperstone

Most traders obsess over strategy, mindset, and discipline… but what about creativity?

In this episode, Mark explores an idea sparked by a post from "StockBee" (an X trader credited in the new Market Wizards book with helping at least one wizard make hundreds of millions): that progress in trading often comes from thinking creatively, not just logically.

Mark unpacks his diagnose-then-prescribe framework for solving trading problems, identifying the biggest domino holding you back, then finding a fix, and shows how adding a "creativity lens" can unlock solutions you'd never reach through pure logic.

He shares real examples, from using a cheap desk timer to slow down impulsive decisions to creative ways of improving your risk-to-reward ratio through smarter entries.

If you're more creatively wired than rule-driven, this reframe might be the unlock you've been looking for.