Pride Before the Fall

I have a post-it note on my bathroom mirror that says “I have nothing to lose.”

I originally set it there after one of the worst trading weeks of my career and have kept it ever since as a reminder

It reminds me that despite the losses I experienced that week, it did not define me as a person

In retrospect, I am glad that I experienced that week as it helped to detach my identity from this profession and allowed me to perform even better thereafter

Like the Tweet I posted earlier today says, “When you dedicate yourself to perfecting a craft like trading, it becomes a part of who you are… This is dangerous” https://x.com/BCalusinski/status/1886839572937761094

There is no place for emotions in trading and I tell you that wholeheartedly from my own experiences

Don’t just take it from me, listen to other traders in the comment section of my recent post:

Some of you might be wondering why I have been talking a lot about trading psychology recently and maybe some of you are even annoyed by it…

It has become increasingly obvious to me recently that there’s an ongoing crisis in the retail trading space

The root cause of this is not lack of setups, opportunity, or even ability in many cases

The crisis is directly tied to the psyche of the participants in the market

A bunch of traders flooded the markets post-Covid, without a fundamental understanding of the mindset required to be consistently successful at this profession

Notice how I said ‘consistently’ successful. I do not care about one trade, grand slam or not, I care about the collective over time. One successful trade could be luck, repeated success over weeks, months, years is the real tell-all and the only way to stay in the ‘game.’

You need to truly understand this and abide to it on a daily basis in order to elevate your trading abilities

I have been asked by numerous people across my trading career for mentorship on these very concepts

I have never considered myself to be in a place to do that, as it might be a distraction to my own self-improvement and iteration

I would much rather post for free to the masses on X and go more in-depth here on this email list to 'mentor' the maximum number of people in my audience, rather than just a select few

This also keeps my ego grounded, as you all can challenge my thoughts in the comments or replies to these emails, allowing me to grow as well

My only request is that you treat these emails as personal mentorship between you and me, and take them seriously as a result

I am laying a psychological foundation with these emails early-on so that you understand where I am coming from when I share trading-related techniques in the future

Have a good week

-Ben