The AlphaMind Podcast
Mastering trading is not about mastering markets but mastering yourself. The AlphaMind Podcast focuses on the 'Trader Self'. We look at the person doing the trading, their interactions with the market, the impact the market has on them, and the skills, actions and activities needed to navigate their way through the complex and uncertain terrain of financial, commodity, energy and crypto markets.
The AlphaMind Podcast
#158: The System That Fits: Thor Young on Behaviour, Drawdowns, and Life Off the Screen
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In this episode of the AlphaMind podcast, we sit down with Thor Young, who took the long way round into trading, starting out in IT before making the leap. Thor's refreshingly honest about the early days, blowing up more than one account before he finally scrapped his original strategy and built a systematic approach that actually suited who he is, not who he thought he should be. He talks about how meditation and a good community helped him get through the mental side of it, and why the real battle isn't the market, it's sticking to your own system when a drawdown is testing your nerve.
He also opens up about juggling trading with a full-time job and family life, including raising a neurodivergent child. It's a warm, honest part of the conversation, and one we think a lot of people will see themselves in, whether they trade or not.
Thor is the author of A Complete Day Trading System (2021) and has personally mentored hundreds of traders, helping them build greater discipline, consistency, and confidence in their execution. Today he trades live daily while mentoring alongside his partner, Dr. Vanessa Charland, through Market Alchemists, where together they continue developing systematic approaches and tools designed to bring clarity and structure to the trading process.
To learn more about Thor and his work:
Market Alchemists: https://marketalchemists.org/
Book: A Complete Day Trading System
X: @thoryoung
Instagram: @thoryoungMA
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheMarketAlchemists
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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.
When you're trading, the cognitive load while you're trading is immense. You've got so many charts, so many indicators, so many signals, and now you're trying to make decisions at the same time. You're trying to make these intuitive, discretionary concepts behind what you're trying to do. And unless you're in a I mean, again, I don't like to be inclusive, like all inclusive when I say things like this. I'm sure there are people out there that have the mental throughput to handle that kind of thing. But I would say for the vast majority of us, that's not going to be true.
SPEAKER_02Today we are delighted to bring you Thor Young. Tor is a fascinating individual I met a couple of years ago in Vancouver when I was invited to the Bare Ball Traders Communities uh conference to be a speaker. And uh, you know, he really impressed me. He's someone who's moved from the world of IT and systems into becoming a a full-time trader himself. And um, you know, he's also an author and an educator. Uh, with his partner, Dr. Finetta Scharland, he co-founded um The Market Alchemists, a performance-based uh community known for translating complex market concepts into practical and repeatable trading strategies. Um he's also the author of a complete day trading system, where he shares um some insight into his his own um his own trading, um the systems he's put together and uh talks about discipline and uh consistency and confidence in execution. Um today he trades live whilst mentoring traders alongside his partner, and they continue to develop uh tools and systematic approaches and work to bring greater clarity and structure to the trading process. Um this is a great episode. Um we go on various aspects of uh of uh the journey Taur has been on. Um and also talk about some personal issues and the challenges of setting up um whilst um whilst having a family situation that you have to manage as well. Just before we start this episode, a little bit about AlphaMind. AlphaMind is a performance development and coaching business for people in the financial markets. We work with clients from across the spectrum of financial markets from the largest institutional firms, global hedge funds, private equity firms, investment banks, commodity and energy trading businesses. We also work with retail traders and private traders keen to develop themselves as traders beyond the technical level. In other words, developing the performance aspects of trading, the mindset, the behavioural, the psychological challenges, the challenge of being yourself, in other words. If you are curious about any of our services, do check out our website, alpha-mind.net, or email us info at alpha-mind.net. Now on with this week's episode.
SPEAKER_01As always with uh Alpha Mind, we like to sort of dip into people with perhaps trajectories into trading that are different to our own. And um Tor came from an IT sort of background and uh drifted into um pivoted into stock trading in around about 2017. Um was closely associated with Andrew Aziz, of course, we've been known from Bed Ball Traders and we've had Andrew on the show and uh has developed his own um passion for trading and particularly around helping others, but also his own style. And uh I think we want to dip into that today, understand, you know, I guess what inspired that that shift, you know, the big shift, and maybe what skills that he's really brought from that uh IT world that are actually relevant for trading, because we all see the way that IT and AI are starting to shape things a bit differently. But um, you know, he also has a joint venture which uh with his partner called Market Alchemists, and we want to find out a bit more about that as we move forward. And I think that uh you know the alchemist word itself, that transformation, um, is very interesting. We want to dip more into that today. So, Thor, welcome to the show. And perhaps, yeah, I guess I guess my first question is that the sort of the the shift really. I mean, you've certainly gone from being in it to trading, and and and was it an easy shift? Did it did it work? Was it was it a troublesome journey? Were there challenges, or was it absolutely just damn easy? Welcome.
SPEAKER_00Thank you so much for having me on, and I I really appreciate it. Um, the shift, there was nothing easy about that shift, uh, that's for sure. Uh I blew up my first trading account, about blew up my second one. So it was not an easy venture. But I was in IT and my daughter was diagnosed with uh nonverbal autism. And it had quite the challenge to it. Yeah. So, but for me, I needed an occupation that was still stimulating for me, but gave me the flexibility on any given day to say, hey, if I have a doctor's appointment to go to, or something I need to do with her, especially, or just be available to help with the higher need for care that I would be around. And that's really what pushed me into. And then, you know, you mentioned I was affiliated with Andrew Aziz, and I started trading, reading his book, and it kind of got me into it. That's why I got into bare bull traders at the time, and it was quite the experience, but took me quite a it took me a bit um to get things going. I I learned very much, especially after listening to this podcast quite a bit around the same other time, that performance was the element. And although I was an IT person, very adept at picking up the technicalities of the market, being able to produce the repetitive action necessary to see the consistency that I wanted was very hard to come by.
SPEAKER_01Interesting. And uh was there an obvious choice as to to to what you looked at in terms of uh trading product? Would you was it guess purely stocks? Was it individuals? Was it big indices? And and and how did you sort of form your view? Was it well you just built upon the the the bare ball stuff, or did you have your own sort of insight early on?
SPEAKER_00So I actually did not do very well with the initial bearable stuff. It's a very momentum style of trading, which I found the momentum style was what I personally had a lot of trouble with. It it drove a lot of anxiety into my trading and it caused uh it required a lot of like order flow reading and and very quick decision making. Um, I trade mostly futures now, and I really enjoyed using more of a longer hold method. So I consider myself to be more of like an intraday swing trader. Uh so I tend to go for as much of the daily ATR as I can possibly capture in any given day. So I like I take maybe one trade a day, two trades a day, I hold them throughout the day, and and that fit my personality a lot better. I didn't have to make decisions quite so fast. Um, I could do a little bit more work in the pre-market to figure out what I like. And then eventually that translated into developing an indicator that I utilize through the trading platform that I use, and it actually calls my plays for me now. So it don't have to do so much work on the discovery part. I just have to make sure that once it calls, I'm following all the rules that I have and then taking good trades. Not that that always comes into a winner by any means, but it helps me control, especially the um, you know, with uh Steven, we had a conversation once, and he was the first person I ever heard uh use the term behavioral slippage. And and that for me, that was the hit for me. Um, like I would have these moments where I would vary by small amounts, and then all of a sudden, a week later, two weeks later, I'm I'm barely trading the same thing anymore. And I was like, wow, I really got to dial that in. So that's my main endeavor on almost every single day is to just stay in it and not allow these small fluctuations to vary my performance.
SPEAKER_01And and that those early challenges of um of understanding what slippage actually meant. But the experience of that slippage, what what was it? How would it translate into impact in you? Was it frustration? Was it guests you know fed up with the market? Did you step away at any particular time? Did you kind of have to sort of reset your your interest? Uh I mean, this is sort of the the world that retail traders that um thousands and thousands listen to the podcast. And I think it's understanding that and and and how did you overcome it? Because the difficulty perhaps wasn't just for a few days, right? It took a while.
SPEAKER_00I mean, it took me, I did coming into trading, made that decision. Like I really liked it a lot. So I was like, I'm gonna make this work. And I so I really dug into that concept. But it took a year and a half to two years, I would say, before I would consider myself to be any kind of consistently profitable. And that's depending on who you're talking to, is a very wide definition, right? Like, you know, maybe making a hundred a day, two hundred a day. And for the amount of effort I had put in and the amount of time compared to my previous occupation, it really wasn't measuring up. But I saw the potential exponentially that if I can get this, if I can do it with $50 and I can do it consistently, risking $50 per trade, then someday I'll be able to do this consistently, risking two or three grand a day or per trade. So, but it was about developing that consistent behavior. And that was a lot harder for me than I expected. I had always done quite well performance in other endeavors, but trading certainly elicits uh a lot of the bad sides of this. My my partner, she often says, we we naturally suck at this. And and I think it's really true. I think trading really pokes at some of the worst parts of being human when it comes to those, and and especially where becoming wanting to be right, becoming more important than making money. So you you will hold through drawbacks and and you will you you'll let it run your stops, you'll do all these little things because you just want to win. And when you're a trader, being a really good loser is probably gonna be the best way to make money.
SPEAKER_02Wow. Well, you uh you gave me such a rich run. You can save me screwing notes there. I almost don't know where to start, but I'm gonna start with your last one. Because I I've said this a lot, and I say this to a lot of people. And in fact, I've just got off a call with a coaching client who Yeah he's done phenomenally well in the last six months. He he works for a commodity trading firm, he's made a lot of money. Okay. And he's just had a slip back, which is obviously never a straight line. Okay. But I've been really impressed with how he's managed that. Okay. And I have to say this, you know, finding value, making money is not that difficult. Holding on to it. That's the battle. Okay. And I said to him, you know, what's gonna hold you in really good state is not how you make money, it's how you dealt with when when when the situation didn't work out the way you want it. Because so much of this is random. We we we're engaging with randomness. We're engaging with chance, we're engaging with probability. And you're not gonna win every time. But if you've got a system or a method or an approach that appears to have a positive edge over time, you've got to learn how to make that play out. And that's what it is, it's the process, not each individual result. Not each individual win. And and you said about that need to be right, it's not the need to be right, it's the need to execute the process that produces the return. And and I heard a I read a brilliant line, and you'll appreciate it as well. Um, I was reading Bob Rotello's book, Golf is not a game of perfect, just a few weeks ago. And he he's a sports psychologist, he's probably the greatest sports psychologist in the world, if not one of them. And there was a line in there which came out which he said it's more important to be decisive than right. And I just stopped when I read that and I'm like, yeah. That is it. Because we actually never know whether we're right. But we need to make a decision, we need to act. And if we sit there trying to know whether we're gonna be right or not, or we're just getting in sorts of a mess. And in golf, that means the ball flies anywhere or doesn't fly at all. But in trading, it means you don't pull the trigger, or you're half the size, or you hesitate, or you you know, or or or you get led by your fears into FOMOing. And you know, you do everything that you do wrong. And then the irony was about a week later I was watching uh a clip on YouTube of uh of Elon Musk talking uh from when he had his PayPal business. And he more or less said the same thing. He said, if you wait there trying to be right with whatever you do, okay, forget it. He said, if you've got something, go for it. And if it's not right, if it doesn't work out correct, you can modify it afterwards. You've got information, you've got data, you've got new news. Okay? Just do it. And a lot of the top entrepreneurs and very successful traders, they have something akin to that within how they work. And it's there's so much there, isn't it? There's there's learning to lose well, best loser wins, but of course we had uh we had Tom Hugo on the podcast talking about that a couple of times. Um that's a fantastic phrase. And and you know, I often say learn to lose well. And then learn to win. That's the first thing. So every single hedge fund wants, they want people who can lose well because then they can you know put the foot down on the leverage pedal or whatever it is they do.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I guess picking up on your point about we will suck at this because uh we had uh Jason Shapiro on the podcast, and one of the things that he said is that you know, this word of trading, yeah, it's horrific as a career path. I guess horrific. And he was saying, Yeah, but I wouldn't be talking my kids into it, I'd be telling them to go and get a law degree, then you know, drift dri drift into trading if that's what you want to do. Because you're kind of walking into disaster zones regularly. But if you're not prepared to push through, learn from the comeback, um, then you can run out of money pr pretty quickly. Um perhaps I just want to dip tour into again your past when because I I know that there's it wasn't a straight line, no doubt, that there are moments where you must have thought that's it, I I'm giving up, and that there was maybe sort of some sort of trauma, sort of link linked to that. And and really our audiences love trying to talk about it, because whenever we put that as a title of a podcast, we get a huge amount of people tuning in because it's often people don't talk about these things, and if you do have something to share in that, and and perhaps how you pushed through that to carry on, it'll be great great to hear.
SPEAKER_00Oh, certainly. Um the traumas were abundant, uh, but I have one particular one that I remember, and it was this day after I was probably about a year and a half in, and there was this day, so I'm probably late 2018 at this point. And I'm like, you know what I'm gonna do today? Every time I think the market's along, I'm just gonna go short. And every time the market looks short, I'm gonna just go long. And I had the best trading day I had had in quite a while, and it broke me because I I suddenly realized that not only was I not doing something right, whatever I had learned was exactly backwards because I was able to produce so well in that. And the good part about that was it was the moment where I took the strategy set I was using at that moment, like a piece of paper, wrapped it up into a crunchy little ball and threw it in the garbage can and started over. And I said, I need something that's gonna work for me. I need something that's gonna be better. And I did, I did take a brief break. I went out for a couple of weeks, uh, recentered myself and really started doing that. I started doing a little bit more reading, a little bit more research, probably some of the reading and research I should have done before I was putting money into the market, to be honest. And that's when I found uh a system performance like projection that really worked well for me. Because what I also found, and and Steven's point earlier was beautiful on this. I I tell people that I work with that behavioral slippage isn't the money you lose, it's the money you never make.
unknownYes.
SPEAKER_00Right. So I would have these moments where I would take three or four stops and then I'd go long. As soon as it was in the money, I'm like, all right, I'm there, I'm break-even, I'm covering, and then I'd watch the ticker run all day long. And I was just like, man, I'm just not doing it right. So I refocused on the performance aspect. I defined a systematic approach that I could replicate and then started really testing and tracking. I started using trade tracking software to track my trades every day. I would spend more time in the evenings going through them and finding out what was working and what wasn't working. And then I I can't I finally got into a methodology that was working. It took me about another half a year after that. But that time went by very quickly for me because I was very excited now, like seeing that I had something. And then it clicked in me that if I do not perform this, you know, repetitive behavior, I mean, you got to think, what do they say? The clinical definition of insanity is like doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. Right. But for me, doing different things over and over again, expecting the same result in trading probably gets you into the same category. So for me, first settling in on what was going to be my system, and I ended up writing a book on it later called a complete day trading system. It, you know, I developed a where, when, and how strategy that really worked out for me. I had specific locations in the chart I was going to look for the trade to set up. Whether it was buying or selling, I did not care. It just had to be there. Once it was there, depending on where we're at in the chart, if we're very high, obviously I don't necessarily want to buy. So, but I wouldn't just sell. I had to wait till the market conditions were actually selling. And then I had a very regimented profiting strategy. I risked a certain amount of money per trade. I had a certain profit target the same way every time. And that allowed me to get past some of those inherent issues because, man, it this occupation, like you're right, it is a nasty occupation. I mean, it's almost like asking someone if you're a carpenter. Yeah, you can be a carpenter, but you have to hit your hand with the hammer at least four times a day. You know, and that's the only way. If you don't do that, I'm not going to hire you as a carpenter. And it stunk.
SPEAKER_02You know what? It's interesting because you know this this is our bread and butter, what you're talking about now. Okay. Um and obviously we, you know, myself and Mark, we we we do a lot of coaching with people right across the industry. You know, we've been there, so it helps that we know you know what they're going through. Um and I think it makes it a little bit easier for us to coach them. But um it does actually, because we we can sense it, but you know, it the thing I say is that our DNA, our wiring, it's not made for this occupation, it's not made for this existence. It it's we've evolved over millions of years. Um and I hope you're not one of those guys who doesn't believe that, but we've evolved over millions of years to survive in the natural world. Okay, we've not evolved to think how do I hold this position overnight and into the next day, maybe for a few days, or maybe a few weeks even. We've not evolved to just continue the process even though I haven't eaten today and I'm probably gonna eat tomorrow. Yeah, we've evolved for instant results. We deal with a threat or the opportunity that's in front of us. That's what we've evolved to do. We've evolved to survive, to survive and then thrive on top of that. Okay, let's get a roof over our heads, shelter from the storm, let's be near water, let's have stuff to eat, let's work in a group and a society group. So we need to work as a society, a community, a tribe, uh whatever you call it, that's where we're our best, and we need the approval of others. So we're all geared towards getting that. You know, this is a job that you know, or even you know, it's the last, you know, perhaps the last 100-150 years, people have started thinking more about the future, planning ahead. You know, and trading is that, you know, if I've got a system and it's not working and it's losing money, I want to fix that because I am driven to fix that. Okay, I'm not sitting there going, okay, this is just a drawdown, it's gonna probably draw down a little bit more. I'll sit with it, maybe after about two, three months, it's gonna come back up, get into positive territory, which if you've got a system, it should do. Okay, and then as we see it draw down again from a peak to a trough, you know, we we it's very hard to just sit through that and rationalize it. You know, we we feel like the whole world is going wrong, and uh, you know, people to catastrophize, you know, they extrapolate what's going down. I always say to people, no one ever looks at what they've done from trough to peak, they only talk about peak to trough.
SPEAKER_01It's it's interesting. It's uh you you made a very interesting point that I don't think um people do enough, which is you made a decision to stop and burn everything that you'd learnt today. You rolled it up and you chucked it in the bin. Um, which isn't a let's look at it and refine it. That that's a I need to start again. Um, and I personally don't think enough people have that attitude. Too many people hold on to the baggage of what they built, they're too invested in it. I spent so much time, I'm not gonna change, you know, it's not cost bias stuff and all that, you know. I've and but actually, you know, it's almost a trade in itself, isn't it? To make that call saying, you know what? I need absolutely to start again here, um, because I've been wrong. And these that sort of vulnerabilities, and owning up saying, this is not working, and it's not working to the point like I need to scrap it, I need to go back to basic principles and build from what I've learned since I've built the original one and which is what you've done, right? And it's it's been obviously fantastically successful for you. But as a lesson to the community, you know, there there may be moments where you have to not just stop, but you have to stop and scrap, and then you have to rebuild on on new learned principles. Because, you know, we I always get worried by people tweaking, tweaking platforms, tweaking systems. Of course, you from the world of IT, as soon as you start playing with code and tweaking it, it goes, it's just it becomes awful. The collapse, the potential collapse of things starts to increase. But I don't think so. I think it's very important that you shared that and that you do you were willing to say to yourself, you know, that that was wrong, and I need to I need to move on. Was that the only occasion where you've done that? And are you in what you'd call sort of a stable scenario now? Or do you constantly think, you know what, I might still be wrong, and there might still be some things I need to rebuild because the world has changed?
SPEAKER_00So I had um when it comes to that, I am using a system now, I've been using it for I published my book in 22 and I started writing it in 2020. So I've been using the same system now for six years, and it's been performing quite well. Um I've also, and this is something I think people really underestimate, is just the value of experience in the market. Like everyone thinks like you're just gonna pop in here, read a couple of indicators, and all of a sudden you're gonna be making money. I'm sure there are the minute few who do that. But I believe for the vast majority of us, especially retail traders that are starting off with not the world's biggest bank account, you know, you can't just bludgeon the market with your volume and get money out of it. You can't scout positions, you're not going to make money doing that. You have to actually figure out a way to tolerate the ebb and flow of the market. So now that I have a system that does that and my bank role is building a little bit, the big thing that I'm trying not to do is now allow slippage to come into what I already know to be working because there are many days where I will have a losing day. Uh, Steven was talking about that earlier. Like you're going through a drawdown period. It's very difficult not to get focused on that drawdown period and just start throwing everything out. But it's also hard not to start tweaking. So you if you have a system that works, once it's working, sometimes you just have to let it lose. You know, being a, especially in retail, I don't have a lot of experience with the longer-term stuff. So I have to speak from my experience as a retailer. But I think being a professional trader is not about what you do when you're trading, it's about what you don't do. You know, not taking the positions, not putting things all over the place, not starting to get back in, not over-trading. There's so many different things. And Steven, you're always so brilliant with that kind of stuff. Like it's so easy to be so happy and so excited when you're going, you know, when you're going upwards, you know, oh, this is great. We're making money, it's awesome. And then it draws back. And as soon as it does, you're you panic, you freak out, you start doing all kinds of crazy things, and that just causes a much deeper bleed, you know. So it was very, very difficult. But throwing out that initial one, you know, I felt crazy to do it, but I also felt crazy to stay where I was because it was not working, not even a little bit. So I was like, I've I've just something's wrong here. And I think it's going to be easier just to take the eraser to the chalkboard, just dust it off and start from square one again, and and stack that on top of the now year and a half of experience I did have in the market. Um, it's like kind of like a good trading book. Read it two years after you read it the first time. It will not be the same book you read the first time. Your experience will be like a magnifying glass to really cool elements. I know I've read Stephen's book multiple times. And every time I read it, how did I not get that out of it before? Like it was right there. But it's because I didn't have the experience, I wasn't ready for that knowledge yet.
SPEAKER_01So if we look at that from the perspective you've largely talked about trading process there and about you know adopting that. But what about the process around you? You know, that and how you manage yourself to be in you know the right condition to be ready for the market. Is there anything that you started to adopt to actually not just set up the trade, but set up you for the trading day and and manage the day and then obviously exit and uh and rest beyond that?
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. Um, I think there's two different plans to have. I think one is you have to have your trade plan. Like if you have a trade that's available, how do you handle it? Right. That needs to be mapped out. But also yourself. So many people are trying to juggle so many things while they're getting ready for that. And for me, one of the big helps, and I know there's people out there who will probably kind of scoff a little bit, meditation for me was a was a really big help. Uh, my partner um is uh she's actually a doctorate in uh neuroscience, and she studied in Liège, and um she now practices, she has a psychology practice in Canada. And I could not stand to meditate. And then I realized that if you can't meditate, you need meditation because it's a it's a focus exercise. If you know, every time your mind starts to wander, you have to bring it back and and and stay focused and keep that in there. That translated to when the trading started to get out of focus, it would bring me back in. So now, and we do this in our community that we have, every single morning, 15 minutes before the market opens, we have a meditation session. And the newer people, you can feel the anxiety coming through their computers because they just they want their levels, they want to get in, they want to do this, they want to get ready, they want to prep. And it's like, no, we're just gonna sit here in the quiet and just center and focus on us. And but in time, once they really get used to that, they realize, no, I've already got a trading plan. I don't need to overthink this right now. What I need to do is focus on me and my performance. And that is the big key for everyone who's listening to this. I will tell you, trading itself is actually not that difficult. Finding the right spot, directionality, sure, it takes a bit to develop that. But the stuff that this podcast, and it's why I've always been such a big fan, by the way, this podcast covers, I think, is what really makes successful traders, which is it is it is performance in the market, performance in yourself. That's what's going to make a great trader. You can know all the facts, all the news, all the indicators, all the time frames, hikanashi candles, whatever it is out there, right? But if you don't have the ability to do it, it's useless.
SPEAKER_01No, indeed. And I think you uh and thanks for calling upon meditation. I don't know whether whether you you fully saw my proof, but I was chairman of the British uh mindfulness association for for several years, and uh that that was my sort of uh backbone that kept me going through you know nearly 40 years of of markets. And of course, people like Ray Dalio will will tell you that the one thing that was his backbone in his trading career behind all of these decisions was um claim it as transcendental meditation, but you know, having one of the portfolio things available as part of your discipline, you know, to center yourself to be to be present and you know to to some point you you you can get get deeper than presence, you know, to the level of being enlightened. Um from a markets perspective, superpower. For sure. You know, a lot of people in markets have got like the you know, it's I can't be seen to be doing that, but we we've we've run it in some of quite a number of our sessions globally with with big corporates, and yeah, but people a lot of people haven't never done it, but when they when when they get exposed to it and the amount of clarity and calmness that they achieve from it that they've never achieved before, they get it. They get it. So yeah, it's yeah, and uh totally agree. If if you don't do it, do it. It is um something that will be be a good friend for you through, you know, the um Jason Sapiro described murder murderous career of markets as for real, as he says, but of course there's a discipline to it, and the community uh, you know, sort of the methodology that you share, really important. I think Ed Secoita also has uh in in in his world, you know, uh I think he has retreats uh that are trading retreats, but they're very much um uh meditational or mindfulness based in terms of the recognition that we're kind of all fragile, you know, whoever we're we've all got a degree of fragility about us. And we need to accept that, and we need to make ourselves a little bit more robust by doing things that look incredibly soft but they're incredibly powerful. You know, John McCaskill, Navy SEAL, we've had on the show before, you know, one of the biggest podcasts in America, gentlemen, um, basically doing mindfulness. Um, so the Navy SEALs are doing it, and the top sportsmen on the planet are doing it, and it's performance-based as a as a product, then guess what? It's probably a good thing to adopt. Absolutely. I often wonder, you know, we've got we we're called alpha mind, but sometimes sometimes it's more in perhaps remembering that perhaps we could should have called ourselves, but we wouldn't, but but mind alpha, because you need to get the mind right, and then you and then the alpha comes. So, but um it is an interesting tie-up. So thank you for sharing that.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah, absolutely. And again, we we spend so much time working out our bodies, we go to the gym so that we can become stronger. Meditation is going to the gym for your mind. You know, you if you focus in on that and you start gaining control of where your mind goes, that is very powerful for trading and your performance, like top Navy SEAL, top athletes. I think, especially for retail traders, but maybe traders in general, we are more like athletes than we are, you know, like some big like guy who knows all the economic data and is trading for it's like, no, we're more like a hockey player, you know, and if we can really focus in there, oh, that you're right. The power that it comes from that is is quite amazing. And it really reduces stress. It really helps you when those bad things happen. You can focus back in, you don't get so triggered by stops, you just accept them as being a part of the process, and then you move on to the next thing.
SPEAKER_02You're talking about noise in the head now, which is all part of that process. I want to ask you this, there's a question which we've kind of covered a little bit, but I I just want to come back to sort of being specific about it. So the the question I asked you in you know what we're gonna talk about is the challenge of sticking with a system or approach when it's not working, but knowing that it works, or at least because we don't know that any system works a hundred percent, but that we're 99.9% based on everything we've done, all the backtesting, everything. Okay. But all systems go through periods when they don't appear to be working, when they're throwing up signals that seem to run quite odd and counter to prevailing use. Um and yet you know you have to take them because the system says take them. And you think as a system, you're mad. How can I take this? And that was something I saw a lot in March-April with people who didn't take the signal systems. Um one particular client I was discussing that with this week, and I know he said it's okay to not mention him, but mention the story. You know, he he's did he's done really well over the past couple of years, um, following a really good system that he's spent many years getting a system that he's comfortable with. You know, you talked about that before. You have to have a system that aligns with your personality. Um and he's got that, he did really well, and you know, he he he's a professional in another field. And last year, for the first time ever, he made more money from trading than he made in that other field as a professional, um, but then this year, his signal that he got on his SP tracking was a buy signal in early April. And he's looking at this and going, we're in the midst of potentially World War III. We've got the oil price exploding through the roof. There's people coming out saying oil's going to $200 a barrel. Uh the Straits of Hormuz appears to be closed seemingly for good. Um the world seems to be going into hair in a handbasket, and my SP is giving me a buy signal. I'm not doing it. I am not playing. In fact, it only makes sense to sell it. I'm gonna sell it. Now you can imagine how that went. Yeah, yeah, and and I know from speaking to guys who try systematically in hedge funds, guys who are top retail traders, some of them who are very well known, all kind of went through this in March April, went through this fight and had different versions of that story. Um if you're running a longer term system, maybe if you're running a shorter term system, these things aren't quite as as as as pronounced, or maybe they are, maybe you could tell us that. But you know, that that's the battle. How do you how do you take a signal that seems to be running counter to everything you're seeing? And is that an issue for you, Eva?
SPEAKER_00It absolutely is an issue, not necessarily in my performance. Um, so I actually remember that time period and I feel deeply for uh for him because as most of you probably know if you're looking at a stock chart right now, would have been a good spot to buy. Yeah. So, you know, um, and and there's for me, there's really I can deal with the loss a lot better than I can deal with watching it go without me. And and I'm so I'm not quite there. I also have a concept for me. When I'm trading, I consider myself to be, for a lack of a better phrase, a dumb executor. When I'm trading, it is not my job to think, it is my job to do.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, the the thinking, I will allow that to occur while I'm not trading. So, like an old school floor trader, right? They're gonna give him a ticket, he's gonna walk out onto the floor, and when it hits the level, he's gonna do what the ticket says. So, and I think that's actually really difficult for retail traders because we've taken on all the roles, right? You're you're the one analyzing it, then you're the one because you're passing through your broker, you're not talking to your broker. So there's no one there to advise you or say anything otherwise. And then you're also walking onto the floor technology-wise, and you're actually performing the action itself. There's no disconnection between you and the decision-making process. But trading, you know, not that long ago was really quite different. You would say, Hey, I want to buy at a level, this looks really good. You'd send your order in, your broker gives it to the trader, the floor trader is the one who's going to pick it up for you. And he doesn't care if he buys low or sells high. That's not his job. His job is just to buy when the ticket says to buy. So, and it works out really well that way. But that is a very inherent issue with being a retail trader because you get to make all the decisions yourself. And that makes that Process following. And I have had similar times with my system, which I really believe in, but there are weeks at a time where it seems like every call that system makes doesn't work. But this is where you're where time in the saddle is going to help you out. You know, after you've been through a couple of cycles, you've seen it work, then you've seen it not work, then you see it start working again, you're like, okay, so I'm just gonna have these short draw periods where it's just not gonna function. The hard part is not ever knowing when that's going to occur. Like it's just gonna happen.
SPEAKER_02The thing is that you know, if you get a thousand signals a year, okay, that's um that's fine with that, roughly. Okay. You just have to take them blind. That's the bit we gotta do. We've got to suspend where we are now to know, okay, this is gonna work along the future. I just have to trust the process. That's everything.
SPEAKER_00Everything.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think the um one of the one of the things that I emphasize is that the only the most important consistent thing is is the consistency around your your own part of the equation, as it were, but you in the equation. Just make sure that everything is as it should be, you know, the the sleep, the rest, nutrition, the the meditation, and those very, very human things. Just make sure those those are consistent. And then face whatever you're facing. Um you know, so the the most important thing that we have control over is around ourselves. We have no control over the market. Okay, no, no control at at all. We think we might. And actually, one of the problems with technical analysis is that a lot of people get convinced through, oh, I could have bought their sold there, and I, you know, and they'll they'll they'll think I'm I'm really, really right being bullish, and they'll find every indicator possible to put onto their chart that underlines the fact, oh, I'm right to be bullish, and they're not right, and it all falls apart. The only thing that's consistent is you, so and then but if we look at the 85% of people that are losing money generally, or whatever the number is, 85 to 99 or whatever it is, it's a big number, right? It's because then they're not they're focused on the trade, yeah, with with no focus on themselves. But the people that are making the money have got it the other way around, they're focused on getting themselves like Dahlia, getting themselves right.
SPEAKER_02What did Tom Hugo say when he was on? He was a broker and he saw all the mistakes all his clients were making, and he set out to do a method which was the opposite to everything they were doing. Yeah, and I've got other clients who work like that who were brokers, and they sat there and they're going, like, oh Jesus, 99% of our clients are losing money. What are they doing? Because I need to learn what they're doing and do the opposite and be on the opposite side.
SPEAKER_01Well, what is that? I mean, don't forget, I was on the the the Granite protest. The the biggest stack of orders we had at the end of the day were the unables, the council. In other words, where people had a great idea but they didn't commit, you know, so because otherwise they'd have been filled, right? So the bigger stack was was, and it's the same for any brokerage business, the biggest stack were the unables because people get stuck a bit in rather than bought it. Um, you know, and I think that discipline, that commitment, if you got an idea, kind of do it rather than I've got an idea, but let's work a bit below the market. And um, so so it does work through to process at some point, but it's there's an attitude of you know what's your attitude to carry into this world. Like I say, the only thing you can control is every bit about yourself and get that right and then base the market is very much the approach that uh I I convey to my clients. And we had a client in in Singapore came to us once and said, Yeah, this this is not about me being made a better trader, it's being made a better version, being made a better version of me. As a consequence of that, I become a better trader, and that's often forgotten because they're getting people out there thinking, I want to be a better trader, I want to be a better trader, how can I be a better trader? Get frustrated because it doesn't translate into anything, and they read and they'll look at everything. I want to be a better trader, but they they forget about the starting point, you know, the dahlia starting point is I need to just make sure that I'm the best person as possible of me as a performance um you know artist in whatever field I perform, to then face that and then I'm comfortable facing it with the best opportunity.
SPEAKER_02The second question I was going to ask you, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, is the challenge of applying the behaviors that you know you need in order to succeed, but which don't come natural to you or or are not habitual, and which therefore require conscious thought, requires awareness of your own actions, and a fight against those ingrained habits and attitudes. Just curious to hear what you've got to say about that.
SPEAKER_00So I actually believe this may be one of my few advantages uh that I have. So I like rules-based games. And but I am certainly one of those people that when someone starts breaking the rules in a rule uh-based game, get pretty bothered by it quite fast because I'm that's not how we do this. So I think that was a lean for me that I had as a strength, which did not help the beginning of my trading. When I got into trading, and I think the delayed gratification side of the growth process was really hard. You know, I wanted to make money, I wanted to make it fast. So abiding by the rules did not seem to be the most efficient way to get there. It's uh like if you've ever uh like the turtle trader um methodology, you know, it's that really works and it helps a lot. But yeah, I was lucky that I had a lean towards that, although it did not save me uh for the beginning. When I scrapped everything and I went back, that was one of the major decisions I made. In that is okay, we have to switch this up. It's time to slow down, take your time, put everything in place, and then just execute what you intend to do. Um when you're trading, the cognitive load while you're trading is immense. You've got so many charts, so many indicators, so many signals, and now you're trying to make decisions at the same time. You're you're trying to make these intuitive, discretionary concepts behind what you're trying to do. And unless you're in a I mean, again, I I don't like to be inclusive, like all inclusive when I say things like this. I'm sure there are people out there that have the mental throughput to handle that kind of thing. But I would say for the vast majority of us, that's not going to be true. If you're trying to think while you're trading, you're not going to do very well at it. You need to have your system in place first. I like what you said about going back and walking through it, right? Gain the experience when the market isn't open. Test the strategy while it isn't open. Get your system laid out then. Then once it's open, just do it. And you'll have a much more chance of following the rules you're trying to go with.
SPEAKER_02Can I ask you about your daughter? You say she's got non-verbal um autism. Does that mean it's audible autism? Is it is it that?
SPEAKER_00Say that again.
SPEAKER_02Is it audible? Would it be audible autism? Is it noises and sounds?
SPEAKER_00Oh, lots of noises and sounds. Okay. Um and she and she communicates in a very so she she was diagnosed non-verbal. She is still technically non-verbal because she can't have a conversation the way you and I can, but she does have a bank of about a thousand words now. So, like if you say, Hey, are you hungry? She can say hungry, yes.
SPEAKER_02Oh, I see, I see.
SPEAKER_00So I'd like hot dogs.
SPEAKER_02Okay, okay. I was gonna say that one of my clients who had audible autism, and he was a brilliant, brilliant trader. But he was really good at being creative and feeling the market. Um and he actually built a brilliant trading system as well, but that was creativity. He then got somebody else to help him build it who would have been more like you, very rule-based, very structured. Um, but his his creativity was what created this incredible system for day trading futures. Um but as a trader, he was brilliant. But he he would see things other people don't see. But as a rule-based thing, he wasn't the best at following the rules. But we won't bring that in there because I think that's a personal thing.
SPEAKER_00I mean, it doesn't bother me at all. I'm I'm happy to talk about any aspect of my life. Um her her journey is what brought me to my journey. So I without her and without that, and it was very stressful. That actually was happening while I was trying to learn to trade. So she had a a very serious one. She's she's what we would consider to be permanently disabled at this point. Like, she's never going to like have a normal, whatever that means, kind of existence. Um, she's fairly low functionality, but she's happy and she's beautiful. So um she lives an amazing life, and and it's it's been really amazing to watch her develop. But at the time of my trading, it put a lot of stress into what I was already trying to do. I mean, as you said earlier, it's we naturally kind of have an evolutionary disadvantage to doing this whole trading thing in the first place.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So then you're trying to deal with those things, but at the same time, you have you know, a child that is really struggling on a day-to-day basis. She also has some behavioral elements that are quite detrimental to herself. So you're it's this constant need to be vigil and and pay attention. So it takes a lot of your mental game to to to away from the trading. So part of that for me was actually structuring out and saying, hey, when the market's getting ready to open or when I'm doing my analytics, like I need to do that. And I would do it at like 11 p.m. I would wait till everyone in the house was asleep, and then I would sit up till one o'clock in the morning going through stuff because at that moment I had the peace for the clarity that I needed to be able to go through all of those things. And for those like out there that are, you know, even parents with just neotypical younger children. This is something to keep in mind. If you're running back and forth between different events, or if you're a new retail trader who still works a full-time job, so you're trying to cram in some trading before you have to go do the grind, right? These things are gonna be very difficult to deal with because they're gonna make you rushed. They're gonna make you take trades, not because setups are there, but because you have one hour, and then after that you don't have an attempt to you can't trade anymore for the day. So it's these kind of things are very difficult. I think this is often why the market rewards rewards people who don't need the money. Right? I I so many people you come in and they've already got a big bank account, they're retired, they really don't care if they win or they lose. They're just looking for something stimulating. So they come in there and then they do success, they do amazingly well, but they're not playing the same game that I think the majority of people who come to retail trading are doing. Most people who are coming into retail trading, they want supplemental income, and they often want it to do it with an account that is significantly smaller than is what is necessary to make the kind of money they're interested in. So you have to do all kinds of bad behavior to try and make money, and it rarely pays off.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so that that that's a fantastic point. Um but it can pay off.
SPEAKER_00It sure can.
SPEAKER_02It can do. But you know, uh as I said before, I think there's a kind of You said first of all it took a couple of years before you started getting any traction at all. That's very common. Um I often find people say it's four, five, six years before they start getting anything what they would call sustainable. Um they have to build that self-trust, that system trust, but they have to also allow the system to work through various market cycles, and you know, you might have it working through a very good market cycle for the system in the first couple of years. Um but you know, how how do you manage you know you you may have tested it already in different market environments, but how do you actually live that? Like you say the walkthrough there. Um and and you know, before before you sort of increase the size, which you have to do at some point, which you know you can do, you have to kind of live those difficult ones because it's there's nothing worse than the first year you you live the size, it might be a flat year for it. Um there's a lot of challenges there. And I I think a lot of people do have very good systems but can't stick to them.
SPEAKER_00Agreed.
SPEAKER_02That was great what you said there. And I think this is great for anyone listening who's thinking of starting their own system. Um before we go, Mark was gonna do a conclusion soon. Um how can people find out about you? How can people think about joining your community? How can people inquire about that? Where can they find your book? What's the title again?
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. Um, all of the information can be found on uh my community's website, which is www.marketalchemists.org. We're called the alchemists because one of our favorite books is uh Paolo Coulo, the Alchemist. Um and it's really leaning into the fact that it's a journey, right? And you have to go through that in order to get it. And sometimes the end is exactly where you started, but you still have to go through the journey in order to recognize the value there. And uh I have a community, it's a mentoring-focused community, more on the performance side. We do trade together, we often say we suffer together, and uh, and I and I have that with my partner, Dr. Vanessa Charland. And we go through and work with our people every single day to try and help them really become the best versions of themselves. And I really like that you pointed out out before you're you're not gonna flip a switch and be a great trader. You it you're gonna have to do a lot of work on you. And and the market is a you versus you game, right? No one cares about your stops, no one cares about your risk or what you're putting in. I mean, sure, maybe they can see it and they'll try and sweep little areas where they expect people to be for extra liquidity, but you're the one who put your stop there. So, you know, it's it's really a very it's a fun game, though, once you can get the hang of it. But it's gonna take a quite a bit of time, you know, be humble, be kind to yourself, and just recognize that this is gonna be potentially one of the greatest things you've ever done, if you can get through the learning curve. And it's right, it's not one year, it's not two years, it's probably closer to five to ten. And if you don't have the ability, if you need to pay your bills tomorrow, and you're hoping trading's gonna get that for you, get a regular job for a little while, a nine to five, punch that clock, get those bills paid, and then when you have the clarity to do so, come back into trading, and you're gonna you're gonna make it faster that way.
SPEAKER_01Well, that was one of the best conclusions I think we've had on any one of our 160-odd podcasts, or you know, that sort of uh, you know, like you mentioned earlier, well, humans get stuck at this. Right? And um, but how you concluded is very sensible that we need to have a degree of patience, we need to have the right perspective of what is possible, but we also have to have some protection, you know, about our livelihood, and that as you say, to start off pure as a pure retail with no backdrop, yeah, there's um uh there's a lot at stake. But if you can get it right and you have the right structure and you can build the right confidence with the right within the right community and the right guidance and listening to the right podcasts, of course. Um at some point, at some point it clicks, but it's not gonna be tomorrow, it's not gonna be next week, it's gonna probably end that five to ten year period where you start to really understand it. And expecting anything sooner is generally quite rare. It's not impossible, but it's generally rare. Oh, yeah, patients. So look, we're delighted to have had you on the show and uh to share your story, a relatively new story, of course, 2017 to now is a super short journey, but so much in it, and I think um so so many messages there for our community to to pick up on, to experiment with, particularly around meditation, which I think we're great great supporters of, and about how that can be the superpower that you know it informs you and drives you forward in this world of performance. So thanks Thor once again.
SPEAKER_00Oh, of course. It was an absolute um privilege, a little bit of a dream, actually. Um, I've been listening to you guys for quite a while, and for me it was kind of a bucket list item, you know, like being on Alpha Mind. That's that's that's a good time. So it's a very reputable podcast. I I recommend it to everyone who's around as I do Steven's book, and um I really appreciate the opportunity to be here. You guys were amazing. So thank you so much for what you do, for what you do for the community, and and of course for the privilege of hanging out with you for an hour. It was it was very enjoyable.
SPEAKER_02Thank you for joining us today on the Aftermind podcast. We do hope you enjoyed this show. Um, do go to the show notes if you want to find out more details about Tor and his services and how you can reach out to him. Um if you're curious about the work of AlphaMind, our coaching programmes, our development services for financial market businesses, do check us out, alpha-mind.net, or email us info at alpha-mind.net. Thank you once again. Um and do um, as a reminder, we have nearly 160 episodes now of the AlphaMind Podcast. Going back over seven years, so there's a very deep library of some amazing interviews for you to uh check in with when you have some time. Wishing you all the best from Mark and myself.
