Why Stoics Make Better Traders

In this episode of Stoic Trading Psychology, we explore why Stoics often make better traders. The market is unpredictable, emotional, and completely indifferent to our opinions—qualities that mirror many of life's greatest challenges. So how can a 2,000-year-old philosophy give traders an edge today?

We'll discuss the Stoic principles of focusing only on what you can control, detaching from short-term outcomes, overcoming ego, and embracing uncertainty. More importantly, we'll connect these timeless ideas directly to trading psychology, showing how they can help you stay disciplined, manage risk, and make better decisions under pressure.

Whether you're in a winning streak or navigating a difficult drawdown, this episode will challenge the way you think about success in the markets—and remind you that your greatest edge isn't your strategy, but your mindset.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

The market doesn't care what you want. It does not care what you think should happen either. And the sooner we realize this as traders and accept that, the better traders that we will become. Welcome to another episode of the Stoic Trading Psychology podcast. My name is Kevin, also known on YouTube as FX Telepath. I forecast the market every single Saturday so you guys can see the power of the strategy I'm trading. So make sure you guys check that out on my YouTube channel at FX Telepath. Today we will be discussing why Stoics make better traders. It's very simple. If you guys have not uh read the book Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, highly recommend it. I've told members in my group you have to get this book. It's going to help you out in just in life in general, which is great. Everybody, you know, the whole the whole reason we are trading is because we want a better life. So why not also include books that can help you in just in life in general? And the reason that that book helps you in your trading is because it teaches you how to be a stoic person, have a stoic mindset. And most traders fail because they're trying to control what they can't. So we're going to be touching on that in today's episode. It's going to be great, probably one of my favorite episodes. Um, and also stoicism is a philosophy built around handling uncertainty. And trading is one of the purest tests of uncertainty. I get comments on my channel all the time. How do we know which supply or demand zone will hold? We don't. We are uncertain. Of course, you know, we have some sort of an edge, and we can determine if a situation is higher odds or lower odds, and we understand that we have a risk reward, and we have to let that play out in the long run. So it's all about being stoic when it comes to trading. Of course, you obviously need a strategy as well. Uh, I'm not going to sit here and just be like, oh, you can just buy wherever you want and you can be stoic about it and you'll win. You won't. The problem that a lot of traders run into is they revenge trade, they blow up accounts, um, they start changing their strategy, all because they're just impatient and not understanding that this is an uncertain type of market or you know, job, whatever you want to call it, and you have to accept that, and you have to understand that your risk reward in the long run will play out if you stick to that same strategy, if you've tested it. Right? It's not just one simple fix. This is a long-term game, and we discuss things more in the long term. And that's why I do this podcast. You have to watch, you have to listen or watch every episode because it's very, very important. And we're we touch on so many things that I I can't touch on all of it uh in just one episode. Okay. So the market is indifferent. The market does not have any emotions. There's no emotions at all. I mean, that is true to an extent, of course. You know, I've I've talked about this sometime in some of my YouTube videos, where the market can have an emotional reaction, 100%. But for the majority of the time, it has no emotions. And the those massive influxes we see in price or drops in price from the emotions, like we talked about, it's not like you know the market doesn't independently have an emotion, obviously. But it's important to understand that it's actually somewhat against you, in my opinion. Um because it kind of tests your emotions, your ability to handle you know, price fluctuations going up. It looks like it's going up to hit your take profit, then all of a sudden, boom, it drops right before your take profit is hit. And that will challenge you. Um it isn't, and people under people view trading in the sense of it's either going to reward me or it's gonna punish me. And I understand that, right? I'm not gonna sit here and be like, I don't get it. I totally understand. I'm guilty of that too, before. Uh obviously, as as time goes on, you understand that it's not rewarding you, it's not punishing you, it just is. And it's yours. It's up to you. Same thing with life. If somebody says something negative to you, it's completely reasonable and rational to have an emotional response, whether whether you act on it or not. Like somebody says something mean to you, you're gonna be upset. It is up to you how long you are still upset about. Because a big part of of stoic philosophy is understanding that it's if it doesn't you know harm society or if it doesn't harm um trying to think of the other one, if it doesn't harm your like your identity or whatever, then you have to understand that it's not a big deal and you have to move on. It's completely on you to determine how long you're going to be upset about something, just in life in general, and then you can tie that into trading, where if you lose a trade, you're gonna be upset. Reasonable, rational, acceptable emotion to have if you lose money in a trade. I'm not saying it's not. However, we have to, it's on us to determine how long we stay upset about that, and that's what's gonna separate the professionals from the ones who struggle to have emotional discipline and maturity. Uh, we have to understand that reality simply is, especially in trading, it just is. It's not there's nothing that the market ought to do, it just is. And our opinion about reality, it doesn't change anything. Your opinion about the trade doesn't matter. So we have to stop taking losses personally. That's rule number one, in my opinion. That's not personal. And I'm sure a lot of you know that, but then again, when it comes, like you're probably sitting here, okay, I already know that. However, when we start to trade, that can become a different story. We forget these these lessons. Uh, we have to view every trade as feedback rather than failure. And that's kind of a cliche saying, oh, that's like I don't know, when people started going on Twitter, I would see the same accounts tweeting the same thing. Every trade is feedback instead of a failure. It's like very cliche, but it is true. Um, and then the big I've talked about this before in my podcast. Uh as you get better, you'll understand that there's not like you can only learn so much from your trades, and eventually you'll pick up on patterns, and then like some of your trades eventually won't be feedback. It'll just be okay, that's just my you know, allow my my reasonable loss in a string of long trades where I'm profitable long term because of my risk reward or because of my win rate. So we have to understand that as well. Um, yes, you when you're beginning and you're testing, every trade it's gonna be feedback, right? And you have to determine if you're gonna write that down or not and understand the market better. Uh we have to control what what we can, right? Um the massive stoic concept is controlling what we can. We can only focus on what is within our control. There's no point of focusing on anything other than what is in our control. And what are some of the things we can control as traders? Number one, the biggest one, and this is gonna like this is what people seem to struggle with the most, is risk management. That's the first thing we can control, right? Having a stop loss in rule number one. I don't care what anybody says. If like I believe that as you get more experience with trading and you build on your psychological aspect of trading and you become somewhat of a professional, I I personally can have a trading strategy without without a stop loss. But if you're a beginner trader, which I'm understanding most of you probably are, you have to understand that risk management is going to be the most uh important concept, having that stop loss in place, and then if that stop loss gets hit, buying the appropriate amount of shares or units or whatever you're trading, where if that stop loss gets hit, that equals 1% or less of your account. It's that simple. And that goes for if you put $500 in your account or $5,000 or $50,000. It doesn't matter. At first, if you only have a $500 trading account, I've talked about this before, you're not going to make that much money. You just simply aren't. Let's say you made 100% a year, which you're not. Let's say you did, just for the sake of the argument to prove my point. 100% a year, you're at a thousand bucks from a $500 account the next year. Then the next year you're at you're at $2,000, year three, you're at $4,000, year four, you're at $8,000. Start starting to get better, right? But it's not ideal. So when you first put deposit money, you're in it to learn. And the whole point, I've talked about this before as well. Try to get a good job so you can find your trading account. But risk management is so important. And then position sizing again, I touched on that as well. The position sizing, super important. You have to make sure that when your stop loss gets hit, that loss doesn't equal more than one percent of your account. And if you're new, I recommend like 0.5%. Uh, another thing we can control is patience, right? Um, a lot of people have a hard time with that as well. With my strategy that I trade and that I talk about on my YouTube channel, is supply and demand zones. And a big part of supply and demand zones, the concept is we are allowing these institutions and large players show their hand by creating a massive rally for demand or a massive drop in price for supply. We're not predicting that move. We are being after that zone is formed, we wrap our lines around the basing, that becomes our zone, that becomes our entry point with an entry before the zone and a stop loss above for supply and a stop loss below for demand. But after that zone is formed, we have to be patient, we have to wait. And there's been many times where I have an order, it doesn't get filled. I have an order, it takes like three days to get filled. I'm a swing trader. We have to understand we have to be patient, and that's something we can control, right? Let price kind of come to you. Of course, there are strategies where you have a breakout strategy that's reasonable, but even in that kind of strategy, you have to practice patience. Another thing we can control is following our rules. And I've talked about this before, you have to um try different things, right? I have I obviously recommend supply and demand trading. I am biased, I will admit that. But again, you can tune into my forecast every single Saturday. You'll see the predictions and the accuracy of it. It's all there. You can't edit a YouTube video. I'm not just posting, oh, look all this money I made in my Lambo. I'm not posting any of that on my YouTube channel. So, of course, I will recommend supply and demand zone trading, and I have tons of educational videos on my channel related to that strategy if you guys are interested. But again, you could trade any strategy, but it's important to try different things out when you're when you're trading.

unknown 10:22

Right?

SPEAKER_00 10:22

And I'm not saying go from support and resistance one day and the next day go to supply and demand, next day go to chart patterns, whatever. I'm saying that if you're trading supply and demand, add something in there. Maybe just just play around with it, get get interested. Love this game. That's how I became a better trader. I stuck to supply and demand the whole time, but I was constantly trying to learn, and that kind of touches on one of the next ones, which is continuous learning. But again, we have to follow our rules when we I didn't finish that. I'm sorry. We have to follow once we come up with our rules after experimenting, we have to follow our rules, and that is what is in our control. And it's easy when you get the hang of it, trust me. And then I kind of touched, I kind of touched on it earlier. Continuous learning. You have to be continuing to learn, of course. Again, if you continue to learn until you back test a strategy that you know works, and then from that point, you're still continuing to learn, right? You're jotting things down in your journal, seeing how prices react, how to manage your trade in this situation, how to manage a trade in that situation. So we're obviously continuing to learn, but it will be less when you have your own strategy that you've tested. It'll just be more collecting data. Um, and then that kind of ties into the next one. Out of the out of all of them, which is journaling. We're collecting that data to put into our journal. And a journal doesn't mean your emotions for the day. I I don't really believe in that. I mean, I I do to an extent. I think having a journal like to you know, log your emotions, how you're feeling. I think that's important, but ultimately you want to journal, you know, whatever strategy you're trading with supply and demand zones, it would be um how much, how big of a move away it was, what the basing was like, how long it took to get to the zone after, uh, how much what was the higher time frame trend? What was your entry time frame trend? There's so many data points that you guys can analyze and journal, so important. That will tweak your strategy to be the best it can be by collecting data. So that's very important is to journal your trades. The things we do not control are market direction. We definitely do not control market direction. Everybody knows that. But who cares where the market's gonna go? I get questions all the time. Do you think the zone will pull back? Do you think price will pull back to our zone? That's not even like I mean, I don't think there's any stupid questions, but it's close. Because it's like, who cares? It doesn't matter. I don't care if price pulls back to that zone or not. I know that the market will be around tomorrow, and I'm not worried about it. I just have my order in. I don't care where the market's going. If it comes down and hits my zone and takes puts me in the trade, great. If it goes on without me, I'll wait for another setup. Another thing we do not control is the news. Um, this not to say to avoid the news. Uh, let's just say, I don't know, something crazy happens. We all know the last year, 2025, crazy with new stuff. I'm not going to get into the political side aspect of it. Um But let's say it's a bad day where some crazy news is coming out, a new war, whatever, oil tanker, this and that. It doesn't matter. If it's clearly significant and the markets are going all over the place, as a swing trader and as a day trader, especially as a day trader, it's not a bad idea to just pull all your orders for the day and wait for tomorrow. Wait for the wait for the tides to settle. I think that's completely reasonable. Um and tying it in with news is the economic data. I tell everybody all the time, if you are day trading, we're not trying to predict the economic data. Even if you can predict it accurately, it doesn't mean that price is always going to go in that direction first. It could easily drop, it could be positive news, it could drop, stop everybody out, and shoot up in your direction. So we're not predicting that news. I actually recommend everybody to understand let's say you're day trading. As a swing trader, I don't really pay attention to it as much. But if you're day trading, you want to know when that you want to check forex factory every day or check it once a week, and then go in on your charts, the charts that you trade, put a vertical line at the time that that news is coming out, and then you know, even you could even use a rectangle box to point out a time where you will not be trading, you will be letting that news or economic data release and let the emotional ride happen, because usually that's what happens, and then we could proceed from there. I usually recommend you know, if you're already like I wouldn't take a trade if you're day trading 30 minutes before, even even like an hour would make sense, and then after the news, I would wait probably at least 15 to 30 minutes. Depending on if you know if we get that one crazy move and things start to settle down, then we can hop on the trades. I think that's reasonable. But if it's 15 minutes later and the price is still going crazy, maybe just don't trade. And another thing we can't control, probably the most important thing to understand that we don't control is winning any single trade. We don't we can't control that. Right? It's impossible. Just like with poker, I I've I love playing poker. The poker is a great game to help you with one risk management, two psychology, and three understanding odds. It's great for that. And it's it's just it's the perfect game to aid you in your trading, and it's fun. I highly recommend you guys get into poker. Um it's like it kinda it reminds me of trading so much. There's so much to learn. And there's like levels to it as well. But it's like just like with poker. If you have pocket aces, you are most likely to win that hand mathematically every time. Obviously, the more people in the hand that you're playing, the math the probability of winning that hand becomes lower. It's kind of like trading as well, where some trades, in my opinion, are high higher probability uh than others. But with pocket aces, we can expect to win the majority of the time. And even with like three people in the hand. And so we but we also have to understand that you know, if I lose the pocket aces, I'm not gonna get that upset about it. I actually get more upset when I have pocket aces and I'm on like the big blind, everybody folds to me, I don't even see a flaw. That's make that just makes me cringe. I don't actually get super mad or anything, it's more just like, oh my god, really. Uh but we can expect to win with pocket aces the majority of time. We can expect pocket aces to be a profitable hand, but we also understand that not every time we have pocket aces, we are going to win. Not at all. So it's very important to understand that the single trade doesn't matter. It matters in the sense that we have to make sure we are, you know, everything I said before, following our rules, being patient, proper risk management, position sizing, all that. It matters in that sense to care about every single trade. But the outcome is what we don't care about on a single trade. We have to judge ourselves by the quality of our decisions, not by the outcome. Very important. We have to also detach, like I just mentioned, detach ourselves from the outcome. Traders become emotional because they they need this trade to win, because you know, they've had they've they've saved up $500 and they put $500 in their account, and now they're now they need to, you know, turn that into for some reason they think they're gonna turn it into $50,000. The reason that they think they're gonna turn $500 into $50,000 is because there's a lot of quote-unquote scammers on YouTube in this space, and they make very unrealistic uh claims of of profit. So desperation will lead to you being attached to the outcome of every single trade, which is not good because that leads to revenge trading. Their identity becomes tied to the result of that trade, and that is dumb. We don't want to do that. And again, we can be we can be emotional within the next five minutes after losing a trade. I think five minutes is reasonable. We have to continue to move on. And the trick to not get too upset with a loss is like I said before, to only risk one percent of your account. It's like a hack. Like people get upset if you if you risk ten percent on a trade, then yeah, of course. If I risk ten percent on a trade and I lost, it'd be hard for me to not be upset. I would actually be upset for longer. So it kind of ties in the risk management with this. Um, it all ties in. Professionals think in probabilities. That's what we have to remember. It's a long game, not every trade matters. One trade means almost nothing, like it means something, but it's like so close to meaning nothing. If you if you guys took 200 trades this year, would this single loss really matter? That's what we have to ask ourselves every time you place a trade or every time after every after every loss. It's a good thing to ask yourself. If you knew you'd take 200 trades this year, would this single loss really matter? Ask yourself that after every trade. Write it down. Ego is the real enemy when it comes to trading, revenge trading, like I mentioned before. That's not good. That's how you oh, I gotta win it back. That's a bad mindset to have. That will destroy accounts. I'm guilty of it too. I have done that when I first started trading. And it's almost like it's not even revenge trading, like, I gotta get this back. It's like I'm just like getting I'm turning I turn destructive, where it's like, man, you know, F this, I'm done. Just you know, so many times I've wanted to quit. So it's not always about getting it back, it's like you're trying to like show the market who's boss. It's like there's you're five foot five, and there's a guy who's seven foot, and he's completely demolishing you, and you're just gonna keep he knocks you down, and you just get up and try to just punch him in the face again. It's it's not even about winning the fight at that point, it's about just you know showing them who's boss and trying to show the market who's boss, and you're gonna get screwed. Uh, we cannot, we hate people refuse to admit that they're wrong. That's I mean, that seems to be a problem as I get older in life here, it seems to be a problem with everybody just in life in general. And again, I'm not saying I'm perfect, I am guilty of all of these. Okay. Except for poor risk management. I've actually never, not once, have taken a trade with poor risk management ever. So that's like the one one thing I've been good at is from the start for some reason. Uh, but people admitting you're wrong, right? Sometimes that kind of all ties into revenge trading. Admitting you're wrong, okay. I was wrong, right? My mistake. And it wasn't that's not necessarily even a mistake, it could just be again the valid loss in a long string of trades. Uh, a lot of the traders will move their stop losses as well, and that screws with you, right? Because, like I said, that one that stop loss gets hit, that's 1% loss. If you move your stop loss down, well, now that 1% loss is turning into 2%, 3%, and like at some point it's gotta turn around, right? That's how accounts are blown. And look, I will be honest with you, sometimes, yes, it will work. I've seen it. You know, if I just move my stop loss, but I just know it all it takes is one time of like price just continues to drop and drop and drop. We drop like a rock in the ocean, and all it takes is one time to completely screw yourself. You could literally move your stop loss ten times, and it could work ten times, and then all it takes is one time where it didn't work, and you just absolutely screwed yourself, and you're in a huge hole, and it's like, when do you sell? Don't even put yourself in that situation. And tying it in with that is adding to losing positions as well. I'm not even going to talk about how with my strategy there are times where you can add to a losing position because there's a zone underneath the zone. I'm not even going to get into it because I'm not going to be talking about strategy in this. This is mostly psychology. If you were a beginner trader, if you have a profitable winning strategy and you've been doing it for years, adding to a losing position could make sense as long as you at some point get out, and that risk is maybe you trade 1% risk, but like if you add it to your position at this point down here and you already plan that out, if you lose that, okay, now you're down 3% and you can handle that loss. That's reasonable. But if you're a beginning trade beginner trader, you definitely do not want to be adding to losing positions. It's it's a huge account, it's a huge detriment to your account again if prices keep going down. And we have to we have to remember the ego wants to be right. And all whose ego does not want to be right? Everybody wants to be right. The stoic wants to find what is true. Something to remember as well. Profitable traders don't need to win every argument with the market. Right? If they just view the market as an argument, we don't have to win every argument. You know, we got a wife, you gotta pick your battles, right? We we we don't need to win every argument with the market, we don't need to win every trade. Kind of kind of just repeating myself now. That's the problem with these podcasts, is it turns into just rambling, but it's also important. I'm kind of the whole point of doing these is to drive it into your head. Um, we have to understand that obstacles are going to become opportunities. Losing streaks, that's an opportunity to practice your psychology, right? And in order to become a professional trader, you you already should know that you're gonna go through a losing streak. So if it happens to you, why not embrace it? Understand, okay, what am I doing wrong? If you start to get on a losing streak, review your last five trades or three trades. Say, was I following my plan? If you weren't, readjust, start to follow your plan, take a week off, review the plan, start to follow your plan again. Okay. If you were following your plan, you have to understand maybe this is just a normal losing streak. We have to understand that miss trades. That's a good way to practice your psychology as well. A lot of time, my group, I see people upset that the trade didn't come down and hit them, or they just missed their entry. I get it, it's frustrating. And as you and again, all this comes with you listening to these podcasts, driving it into your head, and with time. So missed trades is another way to you know embrace that, practice your psychology, understand it's just normal. And of course, well, drawdowns is a losing streak as well. Um, I just have some points written down here, and that's kind of what I'm going off of for this uh podcast. So instead of asking what is happening to me, ask what is this teaching me? And again, we've touched on how it's not always going to be teaching you something, it could just be, well, actually, it would be teaching you that, oh, this is just a normal loss, or teaching you you didn't follow your plan, or teaching you that wasn't even a good zone, or and again, that's kind of strategy specific. But for me, it would be like teaching you, oh, this wasn't even a good zone. You know, the move away wasn't good enough. So every setback becomes data, experience, a lesson, and an opportunity to improve. And view the same thing in life as well. Anytime somebody gets angry with you, says something to you in public, where maybe usually you'd respond, you can practice stoicism, practice your psychology and life, and also in trading. So remember, a stoic trader accepts the uncertainty. That's part of being stoic, that's a huge part of it. We are uncertain what's going to happen, that's how we react. A stoic trader controls what they can. We don't even chase certainty. We don't chase certainty, we accept the uncertainty. We don't let the ego make decisions at all. That's a huge part of being a stoic trader. A stoic trader measures success by disciplined execution. That's so important. Reudisciplined. That's what I'd be asking myself. And if this challenge if this episode challenged you guys, you know, in the in the in the way you think about trading, let me know. Share with another trader, let me know what you thought. Um again, we have to have a a valid strategy to trade as well. But working on this even without a valid strategy is is good as well. And I again I highly recommend you guys get my meditations by Marcus Aurelius. So important. So important to read that. Um, but anyways, I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. Hoping to do more in the future. Let me know what you guys think. Hit that subscribe button if you're on YouTube. And if you found me on the podcast app, let me know. I'm interested to see how many people are actually tuning into these from just looking on the podcast app. I'm very curious. Um, and I hope these are entertaining to you guys when you're at work or on your drive or whatever. Let me know. Check out my YouTube channel at FXTelepath. And then I have a YouTube channel for this podcast as well, Stoic Trading Psychology Podcast. Check it out, give me a sub there. Let me know if some ideas for podcast episodes or if you know anybody you know who's a stoic who'd be wanting to be interviewed or something like that, that'd be cool as well. Looking to kind of grow this channel. So, anyways, guys, take care. I will see you in the next episode.