Master Trading Discipline and Consistency 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 #621: Master Trading Discipline and Consistency In this video: 00:25 – The mental side of trading well. 00:49 – Tom’s background. 02:40 – You don’t need to be perfect. 06:34 – Ideas for new traders. 09:25 – AI and the future as a trader. 14:25 – Closing the trade early for profit. 16:52 – False results from gurus online. 19:50 – Trading and stress. 23:14 – Andrew looking at D1 charts in a few minutes. 26:25 – People need support and community. Andrew Mitchem Hi everybody. It’s Andrew Mitchem here at the Forex Trading Coach. Welcome to another video on podcast. I’m really excited today to be joined by Tom Winterstein, who is a certified mental performance coach and trader over in the US. Welcome a long time. Nice to see you Tom Winterstein Great. Thank you. Great to be here. The mental side of trading well. Andrew Mitchem Tom, look, I think we’ve got a lot of great information that we’re going to help people with on this, video on podcast. Because we were just chatting about the mental aspect of trading and how it’s something we’re both huge on, but it’s something that most people just completely overlook in their trading, especially if they’re new. Andrew Mitchem So maybe you can give us a bit of background on yourself and that aspect of your trading and how it’s crucial to someone’s success. Tom’s background. Tom Winterstein Sure, sure. Thank you. Thank you for that. Well, I’ve spent over 30 years in the markets as a trader, an investor and an educator, and I’ve been focus on, you know, global markets like futures and, equities and commodities, forex and, and even crypto using a price action based approach. But that wasn’t always the case. That wasn’t how I started. Tom Winterstein Like most traders, I went through various different systems, indicators, you know, gurus, signals and stuff and totally ignored, any of the, the trading psychology or mental performance side because I thought I didn’t need it. You know, I could succeed without that. You know, most traders, you know, like yourself and like me have been very successful. We’ve had successful periods in our life and we approach this as something that it’s another thing we can be successful in. Tom Winterstein Although it’s not quite that easy, it doesn’t translate that as well. If you leave out certain parts of it. So what I realized is that most traders don’t struggle because they they lack a strategy. You know, most traders have a strategy. They’re not just, you know, throwing a dart and buying or selling willy nilly. They struggle because their execution breaks down when there’s real money on the line and in their emotions take over the, the class and that that right there, you know, that experience was the shift that led me to focus on building a repeatable performance environment. Tom Winterstein Okay. Right. Hence the mental side of it had to be combined with price action or whatever your strategy or edge was today. My work centers not only in price action, but risk management and mental performance systems that help traders perform consistently, not perfectly, but consistently. And that’s that’s really, you know, the best we can strive for as traders or investors is to be consistent and have a system that that, you know, takes us through the decision making process. You don’t need to be perfect. Tom Winterstein So in the heat of the moment, those decisions are outsourced to our process. Andrew Mitchem Yeah. Interesting. I like I really like the phrase that you use to that not making it perfect because I think when people get into trading and, you know, they buy a course or they read an e-book, whatever it might be, they see that boring bit at the top that talks about risk management and psychology and mind control, you know, mining everything, the all the important things that we’re going to talk about. Andrew Mitchem But they get that, oh, I don’t need that. I scroll down through the important bit because I want the strategy. And then when they do things like backtesting, they they want the perfect strategy. And and your phrase about it’s not perfect is so true because as we both know, we can see what we think is an A-grade setup. Andrew Mitchem You take your trade and it still doesn’t work sometimes. So that’s just the way of the markets. But not being perfect is something that people, don’t want. They want to be perfect, but they ignore the important and the risk and the micro. Why? Why is that? Why do people do that? Is it just a boring topic? Tom Winterstein Well, it’s many cases. Like even myself, when I was younger, I didn’t know what I didn’t know. Andrew Mitchem Yeah, I know. Tom Winterstein My my background, a formal education is more in, information systems, computer science. Yes. I have a postgraduate degree. I have a master’s degree in business administration with a concentration on finance. But it did teach me about human emotions. When it comes in to to an environment like this. And it’s it’s trading is is pretty much a scenario unlike any others in the world. Tom Winterstein Okay. You know, when it comes down because you have your money at stake and you know, it’s it’s and really we’re performers, okay. And there’s a lot of different roles where people perform. Could be a doctor or a lawyer. Pilot could be a skilled, you know, craftsman, a welder or whatever. Those are all acquired skills, okay. And training is an acquired skill. Tom Winterstein However, when you get into, you know, the actual trading in the heat of the moment, there’s, you know, there’s psychological things beyond or our awareness or beyond our control that we just don’t realize that are taking over. I give you one real simple example and we call it, you know, and this is how a lot of traders will sabotage themselves. Tom Winterstein And we call it the identity gap. And and what I mean by that is, you know, like you mentioned, people will read books, take courses, watch videos, and they’re highly skilled. Okay. But what happens is their performance lags their skill, meaning that they have all these tools, they know what to do, but their performance has has seemingly lagged their skill acquisition. Tom Winterstein And so their subconscious labels them as an inconsistent trader. Yeah, okay. And that’s a really hard label to break because 90% of our overall actions are directed and guided by our subconscious. And that was something that I didn’t really understand. I didn’t want to understand when I was a new trader. I’m like, that has nothing to do with with trading charts, you know, or anything. Tom Winterstein Until I realized and her and I had done quite extensive study under, you know, a high performance psychologist, when the concept was, was approached to me that, hey, your subconscious is getting in your way, but it’s something that can be reprogramed. And what stuck out with me out of that whole sentence was reprogramed because of my computer science backing and like, oh, okay, I need to understand the syntax. Tom Winterstein Tell me the language. What can we do? Are there and there are specific tools to work on. You know how you get in your own way as a trader, you know, without getting and I’m not a psychologist, but but I understand the tools and know how they apply in the trading and investing, world. Ideas for new traders. Andrew Mitchem Right. Interesting. So someone starting out that’s watching this, you know, let’s say that new ish trader, the difference that we would see as people who help and we’ve been through this ourselves, you know, the difference between a demo account on a live account and people struggle with that transition, don’t they? They, they go, a demo account of making money and I go live and I’m not making money. Andrew Mitchem Why is that? What’s going on in their mind that creates that change? Because in theory, if you’re profitable on a demo, don’t do anything different. And you should be profitable in a life. Tom Winterstein Yeah, well, that’s the theory and the demo, right? Yeah. The demo account can be a trap for many people. Because demo trading doesn’t really prepare traders. And what I mean by that is without emotional consequences, execution habits never fully form. Okay. So there’s no there’s no real risk of, of a consequence in this case. When you trade, you lose money. Tom Winterstein That’s a consequence and there’s no real risk of that consequence. So therefore we don’t develop habits to overcome that potential. And and people will tend to do things in a demo account that they wouldn’t do with their with their live account. Andrew Mitchem Yes. Yeah. Tom Winterstein You and I see that all the time. Yeah. And, and when I first I’ve done it. Andrew Mitchem Yeah I’ve done it. You know years ago. Yeah. Tom Winterstein Right. Right. And I so different when I first started, especially when I first started trading futures, that I felt so different with demo, it didn’t I didn’t think it was helping me. And so I really didn’t trade demo very much to the point was that, okay, even, you know, and this is, you know, before micro contracts, but even with one micro contract, people’s palms will get sweaty. Tom Winterstein And you can you can feel your heart and you can hear your heartbeat and think it was one micro contract in a, in a, you know, on the Nasdaq or the futures or, or if you’re doing, you know, the smallest of contract size in the forex market, it’s just different in a live account than it is demo.
