The Psychology Hack Every Trader Needs Podcast: Find out more about Blueberry Markets – Click Here Find out more about my Online Video Forex Course Book a Call with Andrew or one of his team now Click Here to Attend my Free Masterclass YouTube: Dr. David Bonanno Enroll to Max Discipline Click Here to Learn More About Max Discipline Click Here to Checkout the Book: The Consistently Calm Trader: Master the War Between Discipline 626: The Psychology Hack Every Trader Needs In this video: 00:17 – Talking about mindset in trading. 00:54 – Dr David Bonanno helps traders. 08:02 – Traders issues with over trading and thinking money! 13:24 – Don’t reinvent the wheel. 16:30 – You don’t need a 90% win rate. 21:40 – You have to love the concept of trading. 25:55 – Traditional forum sites don’t work. 27:50 – Be real with your trading. 30:25 – Contacting Dr Dave. Andrew Mitchem Hi everybody. It’s Andrew here at The Forex Trading Coach. Welcome along to another video and podcast. I’m really pleased today to be joined by Dr. Dave Bonanno over in the US. Dave, welcome along. Nice to have you here. Dr. Dave Bonanno Thanks. Yeah. Great to be here. Talking about mindset in trading. Andrew Mitchem Really looking forward to this because quite often in trading we talk about strategy and rules, talking about indicators and charts and things like that. But today we want to bring it back to something that applies to everybody. No matter what type of trading you are, whether your fundamental trade, a technical trade or a mix. And it’s really important that you start to understand, your mindset within trading. And that’s why, Dr. Dave here today is here. And how he’s going to help you and all of us listening and watching with the mental aspect of trading. So, Dr. Dave, maybe you can start about introducing yourself, what you do and how you help traders at that. Dr David Bonanno helps traders. Dr. Dave Bonanno Okay, great. Yeah. So I started off, as a therapist who is really trying to help people with problems, especially PTSD. And most people don’t really know what PTSD is like. If you look it up, there’s no definition. It’s just a list of symptoms. So the way that I define it now is that it’s when you have adrenaline and it just is overactive. And the thing to know is that when you have adrenaline, it makes your logical brain go offline. So I maintain that adrenaline is every trader’s enemy, and it doesn’t mean that you’re in full fight or flight, or that you’re afraid or that you’re angry. It can affect us in a lot of ways that we’re not even really aware of. And so if you like, read other mindset books or listen to other people who talk about the psychology of trading, they talk about changing your thoughts. But what I’m really all about is how to, engage with your subconscious in a way so that it doesn’t contaminate what you’re doing on a moment by moment basis. Andrew Mitchem Interesting. So you’re taking a slightly different approach to it. So on a like just to get it on the beginning, but to give her some right at the beginning on, on a, on a like a practical basis, someone’s out, they’re trying to identify a trade setup or they’re in a trade maybe. What do you do that could help them with those scenarios? Right. So I had this trader named Tony, and he was really successful in his career, and he wanted to gear up for retirement. And he he was a very logical guy and he could understand intellectually probabilities and all that. But when money was on the line, especially when he was trying to scale or even when he was trying to, take payouts from the prop firms, he would find himself just not quite making the right decisions. So of course, he looked at his strategy and and his, you know, technical skills. But I think what he didn’t realize at the time was sometimes adrenaline would get in the way. And and so that could be like if he was putting pressure on himself to provide a financial security for him and his family, or if he couldn’t really accept losses all that well, and I’m not even talking about like, yeah, I’m not talking about like throwing a tantrum or anything, but like, his wife would notice that he wasn’t in a very good mood after he had a red day. And so, yeah, we we needed to look at what was going on for him subconsciously. And, you know, we all could try to think like, well, you know, I’m pretty much in control of my emotions or I didn’t really notice, you know, what was happening for me in the moment. But we’re talking about subconscious stuff. And by definition that’s what we’re not aware of. Andrew Mitchem Yeah. Dr. Dave Bonanno So yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, one of the things I do first is I help people to identify, what exactly is going on for them. And it doesn’t mean, you know, that we have to go back to the past and blame your parents for everything. Like I was taught to do as a therapist. But we use, eye movements, which is, like EMDR if if people don’t know what that is, it’s the most researched, intervention for PTSD that there ever was. And I’m sure you probably even know people who’ve done it. So anyway, that kind of allows us to interface with your emotional brain. So, like, we have two brain systems that are at play at the same time. It’s kind of like two TV shows that are superimposed on each other, and you can’t just ignore one of them and sometimes I yeah. So sometimes our head and our heart is in sync. But a lot of times it isn’t. At least as much as we’d like to think that it is. So yeah, if we can actually like kind of interface with that part of our brain, that’s the part that makes our logical brain go offline. So we still do need that emotional part. Like it’s sort of like, like, you know, when you’re dreaming, then you wake up and your logical brain think so that was crazy. But that’s really because the logical brain was out of the way. And it’s it’s coming on, you know, with your, emotions. So what I’m getting at is, that when you’re able to move your eyes, that’s what allows you to connect with your heart. It’s great for journaling because instead of trying to go back and guess at what you were doing subconsciously, it really kind of helps you to get there. And that’s what we did for Tony. Andrew Mitchem Interesting. And so his results work improved dramatically after some time. Dr. Dave Bonanno Oh, absolutely. Yeah. He’s he’s doing awesome now. He just, showed me a picture of a house he wants to buy in Florida, and, he, he needed to help his parents out. And he, he was putting a lot of pressure on himself that he wasn’t really quite aware of. And that’s going to add adrenaline and, you know, like. Yeah. So like if he if you look at advice from other trading coaches or mindset coaches, they’re like, okay, well you have to control your emotions and you have to use your willpower in order to kind of, push them aside and focus on what you need to. Yeah. And that that can work sometimes, but it doesn’t work all the time. And if you’re telling somebody who’s full of adrenaline that they need to calm down, that’s kind of like telling somebody who’s full of alcohol that they need to be sober. Like it just. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s yeah, yeah, I know I’ve tried. But, Yeah. So I think instead of trying to use your willpower and then blaming yourself when you, when it doesn’t really work, and then people start to go into a cycle. Right. Like they start to doubt themselves and they start to think, well, maybe I’m a weak person or whatever. And really, I think they’re just kind of setting themselves up for failure by expanding, their body and their mind to react in ways that it’s not set up for it. Because once again, like when you’re in fight or flight, you’re but your brain is designed to go offline, like, you know, if you’re if you’re in the forest and you see a bear or something, you’re not supposed to be going through all the, pros and cons of the opposite, like you need to be running away or fighting. It would. Yeah. That’s right. Yeah. So that’s just how we’re built. So. So when we’re training and there’s like, you know, people can follow their rules, fine. If there’s not too much pressure. But when you’re scaling up or when you’re trying to, make this one being trained, you know, that’s going to really help you out. Or if you’re trying to get like a good feeling, like if you’re if you’re a little bit maybe addicted to training, you’re doing it to feel good, then it’s going to backfire. And then the harder you try, the more you’re feeding energy into that negative cycle. Traders issues with over trading and thinking money! Andrew Mitchem Yeah, that’s really interesting. I get a lot of people over the years that come to me and they have this exact issue, and a lot of people, unfortunately, when they get into trading, they they have this mindset. And like I did exactly the same over 20 years ago, you get into it, it’s new, it’s exciting. You think you’re going to make lots of money. Then you start looking at charts and lines and dots and arrows and indicators and you think, wow, this is awesome. I’m good. Look at this. Crosses this. I’m going to buy here, make a fortune. And then you soon realize it doesn’t work. And you then or the other issue I noticed that a lot of people have is they overtrain so much, you know, they want to go down to the very short timeframe charts because they believe the more they trade, their more they’re going to make. And they’re and you used the word just now about being addicted, whether it was alcohol or addicted to things. And I find that so many people have that, that they’re trigger happy. You know, they go to click, click, click, click, click trace and and of course, inevitably it wi