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What's up everybody? Welcome back to the Trader Code podcast.
Today we're going to be talking about the most expensive lessons the market will ever teach you. The ones that you simply can't learn from reading books or watching YouTube videos.
The ones you have to pay for
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with your own money, your own mistakes, and your own pain. So, I'm just going to personally share like the experiences, the lessons that cost me thousands of dollars to learn, including the time that I gamble away my dad's $1,500
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school fees that he has given me and the realizations that came to me after making my first million dollars at the age of 21 and failing absolutely nothing. And also like the mental frameworks that separate traders who survive from traders who blow up.
Once
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again, these aren't tips. These are scars.
These are what I've learned via trial and error over the past seven years. With that said, let's get right into it.
So, this is my biggest lesson in my 20ies. You know how everybody say
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the journey is the reward. I disagree.
I believe that arriving at the destination and realizing that the journey is the reward is the reward. What I basically mean by that is that you have to buy the flashy in order to realize that you will always want the next shiny thing.
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You have to achieve the seven figure net worth to realize that money don't actually buy you happiness. You have to take the fancy vacations to realize that the best meals are at home with people that you love.
You have to indulge in the mindless pleasure and honistic
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lifestyle to realize that God is the only one who can feel the emptiness within you. Quite simply put, you cannot get rid of desire.
You have to satisfy the things that you desire to learn the lessons you otherwise never would. Once again, I
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really believe that you can't just tell someone this. They have to leave it.
You can't just tell someone, "Hey man, money doesn't buy you happiness." and this guy is automatically going to stop chasing money. No, it's like they have to go and make the money and then realize that money doesn't actually buy them happiness.
This also means that it's
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completely fine to enjoy the finer things in life. This also means that it's completely fine to enjoy the finest things in life after you have earned it as long as you don't get addicted to it or become a slave to it.
As long as you don't let them control you rather than
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you controlling them. You know what?
Let me just quickly tell you a story on the time where I made my first million dollars before the age of 21. So when I was 18 years old, I set a goal.
I want to make $1 million by the time I was 30.
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And at the time it felt impossible. It felt like I have to move mountains in order to achieve that goal.
I remember sitting there drawing timelines, calculating how long it would take if I went to university, got a job at 20,
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work for 10 years, making three to $5,000 a month, maybe I will get there before the age of 80 or 65, you know, but as a waiter, which I was back then, earning about $7 an hour, working 8 hour shift after school from 6:00 p.m. to
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2:00 a.m., you know, making about like $48 per day. I realized that I probably wouldn't even make six figures in my entire lifetime.
And that thought just crushed me. Like, it kind of made me gave up on the dream.
So, I thought to myself that, you know
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what, maybe if I invested my paycheck, my monthly paycheck into stocks and let compounding do its work, I would eventually hit a million dollars. Maybe not by 30, but maybe by like 90.
And fast forward to a few years later, you
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know, I've been grinding my ass off. I've been working 16 hour a days uh every single day on trading, just continue refining the skill set, you know, for like four straight years, right?
And a lot of days where I felt exhausted, I felt drained, but I just kept showing up because the thought of
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making the million dollars, retiring my father kept me alive. You know, the the thought of like just proving my doctors wrong just lit a fire in me.
And I will pretty much be constantly check my bank balance every single week just to see, you know, like a few extra thousands
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coming in from trading, from the business, from YouTube, whatever it is. And I think that was like my only hit of dopamine for the the next four years, right?
And then it finally happened. You know, whatever I've manifested has actually became my reality.
that I
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remember that that one final trade it was on gold where I made about $23,000 and I withdraw that profit from my trading account back to my bank account and that push my bank account over the edge. On December 21st, 2021, just a few
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days before my 21st birthday, I opened my banking account and there it was, a million dollar. One 0 0 two commas, seven figures.
I you not when I said that, my hands were
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shaking. My chest actually felt tight because I just couldn't believe it.
Four years of obsession and I was finally here. I finally made it.
I finally turned my dreams into reality. And you will probably be thinking that I'll be
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screaming, popping champagne, celebrating, but honestly, I just sat there staring at the screen speechless. I didn't know what to feel.
I didn't know what to do. I just felt like I've made it.
And that high lasted for about like 5 10 minutes and then it was gone,
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right? It was just emptiness.
And I realized that I was actually extremely depressed because now that I've achieved my goal, now what? You know, I've spent the past four years of my life working day and night for this exact moment.
And when I finally got there, I actually
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felt kind of depressed. I actually felt nothing.
So I told myself, you know what, fine, right? I need to spend this money.
I need to reward myself. Then I will finally feel like, you know, I've made it.
So what I've did is that I've booked a trip to Bali, right? And this was during my army block leaf, right?
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Where we had like this oneweek holiday where we can travel to wherever we want. And I said screw it.
What's the point of having you money if I don't actually say you. So what I did was that on a body trip, I went to a club.
I popped bottles. I pooked up a girl by telling her that I was taking a helicopter the next day, you know, and
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then she came over to the place. She invited six more girls to the v.
I smoked cigars by the pool wearing like a $25,000 Rolex Submarina on my wrist, you I was living the exact life that I used to fantasize about back when I was a broke, lonely, depressed, insecure 16
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year old kid. And there I was.
And yet I didn't feel happy. In fact, I felt like I've just lost my purpose, my meaning in life.
And I think that's when it hit me. The destination is never the reward.
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Making the million dollars wasn't the reward itself. It was becoming the person who is worthy of making the million dollars.
It's the journey. It's the struggles.
It's the difficulties I
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had to overcome along the way. And the truth is you will not understand all of that while you are blowing accounts, while you are in the the sucking phase.
You will only understand that after you have reached the destination, after you have achieved your goals, after you you have achieved your wildest dreams and
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your dream life. And here's the thing, money only solve money problems.
It doesn't buy you lasting happiness. It doesn't solve your childhood trauma.
It doesn't get rid of your internal conflict. All of those stuff are still within your control.
You still need to solve them yourself. Once again, the
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crazy thing is you almost have to spend it in order to find that out. You have to spend the money that you have made in order to find out.
You have to buy the car. You have to buy the Rolex.
You have to pop the bottles in the club. And for a moment, you have to feel like you're on top of the world.
But then you get
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used to it. You hideonically adapt.
And suddenly that thing that felt like everything yesterday feels like nothing today. And now there you are chasing the next shiny thing, the next upgrade, the next hit, the next car, the bigger house, the battle women.
And that's the
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trap. Happiness isn't in the numbers or the toys.
It's in the process. It's in the grind.
It's in waking up every single day with a mission that actually means something. But once again, don't get me wrong.
Go out there and still get rich because if you're poor, if you
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can't even put food on the table, life is miserable. Money give you freedom.
It give you peace of mind. But like I said, after a certain point, roughly around six figures a year, studies has really showed that it doesn't really make you even happier.
At that level, you know,
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you have covered your basic needs, your your comfort, and a few luxuries. And after that, it's not about happiness anymore.
It's about meaning. is about finding something meaningful to work on for the rest of your life.
You didn't blow up because of ignorance. You blew up because of overconfidence.
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Just think about how true that is. Just think about how many time that has happened to you.
You know, you win a few trades in a row or a few months in a row and now you think you're invincible. You're unstoppable.
Like you have figured the market out. So what happens next is that you start neglecting your
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trade plan. You start disregarding your risk management rules.
You start ramping up your lot size because you know what you are doing, right? Like you are the best trader in the world.
You're going to win the next trade. And the next thing you know, you have gave all your
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profits back to the market all because you let a win get to your head. All because you got complacent.
You got overconfident. Remember, the market doesn't care about how many green days you had.
The moment you stop respecting it, it will humble
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you. It will kick your ass.
Which is why it's imperative that you stay paranoid at all times, even when you're winning. You know what?
Especially when you are winning. Just to drive this point home, I'm going to tell you another story.
So, back when I first started treating
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trading seriously, there was this one time where my dad gave me $1,500 to pay my school fees. And back then I was pursuing a real estate business diploma in polytechnic, right?
So the school fees was about 1.5k per semester. And
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that money once again wasn't meant for trading. It was meant for my future.
You know, it's meant for me to pay my school fees so that I can eventually graduate, get a good paying 9 to 5 job and live a nice stable life, right? After all, that's what all Asian parents want.
But
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here's the thing. A few days earlier, before he gave me that 1.5K, I had just turned $500 into $3,000 trading gold.
I thought I was the next Warren Buffett. And then I blew the entire $3,000 the next day.
Okay. But the point here is my
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brain was like, "Hey, it's possible. It's possible to make so much money in a short period of time.
I can definitely replicate that that same result again." After all, once again, I had just doubled my account multiple times in a row. So, I'm pretty sure I can do it
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another time. And as you know, that's the dangerous part of early wins, right?
They start tricking you thinking that you are gifted when in reality, I was just suffering from beginner's luck. So, anyways, when he handed me that $1,500,
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I told him, "Cool, thanks, Dad. I'm going to use this to pay the school fees tomorrow." But instead, I deposited it in straight into my trading account.
You know, just just being a little cheeky boy. I thought to myself that I'm going to double it.
You know, I'm going to turn the 1.5K into 3K and then I'm going
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to withdraw 1.5K to pay the school fees like what I've promised him and leave the other 1.5K in my trading account to compound. You know, at first it felt like a secret mission, you know, like like I was about to make a genius move.
I was about to change my life with this 1.5K. I will be able to drop out of
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school if I can just turn this 1.5K into 15K and then eventually into 100K, right? Like like that was the plan.
And lo and behold, within 24 hours, it was gone. I had just lost it all in a series
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of bad trades because I didn't manage my risk at all because I was so fixated on trying to flip the account that I was completely ignoring the reality of the market. I sat there staring at the screen and it
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wasn't the money that crushed me. It was the shame.
It was the fact that I had just betrayed my father's trust just for a lottery ticket, just for a chance to get rich. And here's the worst part.
When that happened, I didn't tell him.
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I couldn't like I was just way too embarrassed, right? like, "Hey, Dad, I had just used your hard-earned money, your your paycheck last month, and I gamble it away, right?
So, I couldn't tell him. So, I just kept it to myself.
I continued waiting tables, washing dishes, and I use my next monthly
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paycheck to pay for that semester school fees instead." And for years, he had no idea that happened. He really thought that I used that 1.5K to pay my school fees.
And then, fast forward to recently, a few months ago, we were at this family dinner. You know, I bought him to have a buffet at this restaurant
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that at the Risk Cultton, which is quite funny because that's where I used the bus tables, right? Fantastic food.
It costed me like a,000 $100 per person. So, I spent around like $600 in that one meal that day, whatever, which is half of the 1.5K.
But anyways, I finally told
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him. I was like, "Hey, Dad, you know the 1.5K that you gave me for school fees four years ago?
I actually gambled it away." And he just stared at me for a second. Then he laughed.
I didn't expect him to
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laugh, but like I guess to him it wasn't some huge betrayal. It was just his kid trying to figure things out, trying to figure life out.
And I realized something that night. He wasn't disappointed in who I was back then.
He was actually proud of who I became.
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Because before I ever learned how to make money, I had to learn not to disrespect it. Some lessons hurt in the moment, but they built you into someone your younger self needed and someone your parents can be proud of.
Someone
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who have learned the rules of risk management. You didn't get stopped out because the market is wrong.
You got stopped out because your opinion is. Follow the price instead of your pride.
Now listen, the market is always right. Price is the truth.
Your trade ideal,
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your opinion is simply a guess. It's simply your perception of the truth.
Which means that if you don't have the humility to accept a small loss, you will inevitably suffer a big loss. And that's the biggest dichotomy of trading is that you can either choose
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to be right or choose to make money. But you cannot have both.
If you choose to put your ego over profits, guess what? You're going to be right a lot of times.
But you are going to make very little money because on the times where the market is actually right, you refuse to
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accept the fact that you are wrong and as a result you end up holding on to losing positions and those small losses eventually compound into big losses where it outweigh your wins. So profits or eagle you choose.
The biggest risk is not in the market. It's the belief that
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there is no risk. Every single market crash in history comes from a bubble which is simply an extended period of time where people are so blinded by the insane returns that they completely forget about risk.
Think about the com
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bubble. Everybody thought that you know the internet was going to be like the next big thing and every single internet company is going to like just go straight to the moon.
Think of the 2008 financial crisis, right? where people are just borrowing so much money so that they can actually invest into real
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estate because they thought that real estate is just going to go up initely right then eventually the bubble pops and this immense amount of grit suddenly turn into immense amount of fear. Here's the thing that you must understand about risk.
Risk doesn't
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disappear just because everybody ignores it. In fact, it compounds.
Eventually, there's going to be a black swan event that wipes out majority of the gains, cause price to pull back by 30%, 40% or even 50%.
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So, the illusion of there is no risk is what creates complacency and complacency kills more traders than volatility. Hot times create strong men, strong men create good times, and good times create
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weak men, and weak men create hard times. And this whole cycle repeat itself over and over again since the dawn of time because people tend to get complacent.
People think that you know everything is good and they start taking their foot off the pedal and inevitably
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that leads to a bad time. A time where there's going to be a lot of hardship.
So that's simply human nature. Good traders think about their next move.
Great traders think about their next five move and the consequences of the consequences of their actions. Amateur
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traders are constantly thinking about what's the best price to get in and once they figured out they enter into a position blindly thinking that now price is just going to go straight to 2P. Amateur traders are constantly thinking about what's the best price to get in.
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And once they have figured that out, they enter into the position blindly thinking that price is just going to go straight to take profit just like this. no pullback whatsoever without taking into account the different possible scenarios that could play out in the next few hours or the
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next few days. And this is what separates amateurs from professional traders.
Great traders are playing chess while everybody else is playing checkers. Before they enter into the trade, they have already mapped out their next five move.
Where's my
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invalidation? What if news comes out?
What if the timing of my entry was wrong? How long do I hold it straight for?
What if price goes against me overnight? They have already mapped out every
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single one of these situation here. And that is exactly why professionals can stay calm in the midst of chaos.
They have already mentally prepared themselves for every single possible scenario and is ready to deal with the
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consequences so that when actually hits the fan, you know, they know exactly what to do to minimize their losses to cut their losses early rather than sitting there, you know, like just not knowing what to do. So back in the military when I was training as a marksman, I would mentally
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rehearse every single step from the way that I breathe, from the way that I take up the prone position, from the way that I look into the scope, from the way that I squeeze the trigger, and even the sound of the shot landing exactly where I wanted it.
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So I would do this every single time before I get into the shooting range. And by the time I was on the shooting range, my body simply followed the script that I've already played out in my head a thousand times.
And that's the power of visualization. You know, it makes the real thing feels like déja vu.
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And as a result, my body did exactly what I visualized. And I end up getting marksman in just one try.
All because I've done a lot of time mentally preparing myself for every single thing from every single situation, every single shot so that I could actually
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like just do what needs to be done so that I can actually like turn my visualization into reality, my manifestation into reality. Success equals strategy plus timing.
Even the right setup at the wrong time will fail.
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Most traders neglect one of the two and they wonder why they are not profitable. Strategy tells you what's the objective of price and why it's moving.
Timing tells you when to enter to capitalize on the institutional flow of money. Beginner traders like to focus on
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strategy, you know, getting the perfect setup and they completely forget about the timing. They don't bother checking is this the right window to be trading this instrument.
Is the macro environment supportive of my technical
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bias? Is there still enough momentum in the market?
Perfect setup in a sideways market date. Perfect setup at the end of a parabolic move after price has already made this huge move.
Date. Perfect setup, but you have entered two hours too early.
You're going to get stopped
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out before the move actually happens. Remember, both strategy and timing have to align.
That's the art within the science. Patience is part of timing.
Waiting for both to line up is the mastery. No matter how high price gets,
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gravity will always be waiting in the form of mean reversion. So let gravity do its thing and wait for the pullback before entering.
Remember everything that goes up will eventually comes down. And once again, that's not philosophy.
That's not me
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pulling out of my ass. That's just mathematics.
Min reversion is like the Mac neck that pulls price back to equilibrium which is fair value because you must understand that the market will always move from phases of imbalance to balance to
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imbalance to balance. And this cycle repeats itself over and over again.
Which means that this parabolic move that you see in the market where price just goes straight up or down. They might look exciting.
They might look unstoppable. They might look like it's going to keep going forever.
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But they are also mathematically not sustainable. And the thing is like we all know this right like we all know that eventually price is going to start crashing down but we still chase move that already happened because of fear of missing out.
And I define fear of
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missing out as when you let imagined profits distort your identity. When you chase a move not because it fits into a trading plan but because missing it feels like proof that you are not a real trader.
feels like you are slacking off.
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So it's important for you to just like chill, you know, just let price come to you rather than chasing price because the more you chase price, the more it's going to run away from you. And that's why I say the hardest part of trading is sitting on your hands while everybody
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else is piling in. If you have the patience, you are going to get the outsiz returns.
You are gonna get the A+ setups that will allow you to make a ridiculous amount of money. The market is eventually going to reward you if you
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can just patiently wait for the high property setups. The best traders are not the one who have a high win rate.
They are the ones who have learned how to lose better, faster, and cheaper than everybody else. To me, win rate is a
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vanity metric. It's useless without context, which means that you can win 80% of the time and still be unprofitable because your losses always outweigh your wins.
Amateurs avoid losses. Professionals embrace them and plan for them.
They lose battle by
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cutting their losses fast and sticking to the damn plan. They lose faster by recognizing when their trade idea is invalid.
And they lose cheaper by protecting their downside using proper risk management. The edge isn't in winning more.
It's in losing less money
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less often. It's never the loss that hurts.
It's always the feeling of being wrong and holding on to a losing position that does. Losing money sucks, but the pain is only temporary.
What really hurts is when you hold on to a losing position because you can't accept
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being wrong because of your ego. And every single minute you refuse to crystallize the loss, you are literally voting for pride over profit, for ego over profits.
It's like you much rather be right rather than to be wrong. It's
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like you much rather choose to be right and suffer a big loss than choose to be wrong and suffer a small loss. And the pain doesn't comes from the fact that you got stopped out.
It comes when expectations do not meet reality. It
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stems from the hope that come before you enter into the trade. Hoping that you were right.
Hoping that price will reverse. Hoping that you don't have to admit that you up.
And letting go of the need to be right is the highest form of discipline in trading. Is the
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ability to just know that you can be wrong at times and just accept that and move on. And it takes a lot of humility for you to have to do that.
You don't lose because of a bad entry. You lose because you can't sit still when you're in a winning position.
One of the most
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difficult things in trading is holding on to a winning position all the way till you take profit. Having the patience to do that, you know, like just leaving the trade alone even though price starts pulling back, starts going against you, even though your brain is
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screaming at you to get out right now. The thing is, you can't hit home runs if you're constantly swinging for singles.
Which means that if you want to get the outsiz returns, you want to get the big wins, you have to learn how to let your winners run. You have to hold a trade all the way to your TP.
And that is
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exactly why I don't believe in taking partial profits. Because if you're doing that, you are simply just trying to avoid the pain of losing the profits that you have made.
And you try to rationalize that by saying that, oh no, um, I just want to make sure that I protect my downside. No, you're just
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scared. You're just a That's why, right?
Which also means that if you have the boss dip conviction in your trade ideal then you are going to be able to hold it all the way to STP without taking partial profits. And if you don't then that explains like a deep rooted
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issue in your trading system because it just shows me that you don't trust your trading system. And if that's the case you need to go out there and build trust.
You need to go out there and build undeniable confidence in your edge so that you can actually hold a trade all the way to your TP so that you can
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actually get a big wins. There's this exercise that I call the mirror test.
If you cannot look in the mirror and explain why you took a trade without cringing, it probably wasn't a good trade. That cringe tells you everything.
When you take a good trade, you can
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explain it confidently. You know, my bias lineup uh market was actually in a bullish trend direction.
That is why I executed the trade with confidence. But when you take a bad trade, you will try to rationalize it by convincing yourself that you did the right thing.
Uh I I
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follow this trading guru sickness. You know I this guy tweeted that this coin is going to go to the moon.
So that's why I entered for for this buy right here. It was irrational but uh I'm I'm doing the right thing.
Once again that cringe that you are feeling right now
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means that there is a lesson to be learned from it. And that is why I also say that your trading journal is simply a mirror in written format.
It's not only like you just need to you not only you not only you not only need to journal your trades but you also need to review your trades so that you can
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cringe at them so that you can learn from them. Post trade honesty is the most uncomfortable form of accountability but it's also the most valuable thing that you can do as a trader because it allows you to to just like stare at your own inadequacy and
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just learn from your mistakes so that eventually you don't commit the same mistake again. Trading with emotions is like smoking.
You know it's bad for you and you should quit yet it just feels so good in the moment. Both never ends well.
It's like you know
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revenge trading is stupid but you do it anyway. You know FOMO trading for more entries are reckless but you do it anyway.
You know averaging down without a trading plan is suicide but you do it anyway. Why?
because it feels good in
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the moment. Because it satisfy your hunter gatherer brain because it's aligned with how your amygdal is feeling right now.
That dopamine hit of action of doing something, you know, trying to get back at the market or trying to
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force trades when there is no opportunities. That excitement is what drive you.
Just like a smoker, no cigarettes will kill them, but he lights it up anyway. It's the same thing right here.
Both say just this one time. You know, I'll trade with
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emotions just this one time. I will smoke just this one last time.
What they're both doing is that they are ignoring future consequences for present pleasure. Emotional trading might bring you short-term relief, but remember it always brings you long-term destruction.
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And the thing is, you can't just quit emotional trading with willpower. You have to replace the habit.
And that is why I say it's so important for you to actually have like a mechanical trading system because when you do now you have a system that tells you exactly when to buy, when to sell. And this allows you
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to completely remove emotions from decision making from the equation itself. So now you don't rely on your gut feeling or fear or FOMO in order to get in.
No, you rely on a structured framework and you don't enter until that gets met until every single entry
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criteria gets met. So having a mechanical trading system will solve 99% of your emotional problems right now.
Overtrading is what impatient traders do to feel productive. You're not making money.
You are just busy.
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It's like there's a lot of activity going on right here, but you are not making the right decisions. I define overtrading as the addiction to doing something, anything, just so that you can feel like you are a good trader.
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just so they can feel like you're doing your job. And quite simply put, it's impatience disguised as work ethic.
Hey, look how many trades I've took today. I'm working so hard.
No, you're just anxious. You're just greedy and you
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can't sit still. You're just bored.
That's why you enter for the trade. Real productivity comes from waiting, preparing, and executing only A+ setups.
And the lie that you constantly tell
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yourself every single day right now is, "I'm working hard. I'm staring at chart 16 hours a day." But the truth is you're just afraid of being bored or you're addicted to misery and suffering.
You're addicted to chart work and that's not being
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productive. That's just being busy.
Anyone who asks for trading advice or stock tips are not really serious about trading because if you were serious, you would just do the work and figure it out instead of seeking the shortcuts. And once again, I know this because I used
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to be that guy who is addicted to this form of mental masturbation all because I was too afraid to start, start to lose money, start to figure things out. when in reality starting is the only way that you can figure it out.
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It's like I've had so many people come up to me and ask me for like stock tips, trading tips and all that stuff. And whenever I do, I just know that the guy is not serious because serious traders, they don't ask, they do.
It's like you know what you need to do, right? You
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have to open a chart, you have to back test, you have to forward test, you have to join your trade. that you know that you need to do all this stuff but you don't do it anyways because you are trying to procrastinate right so to me I really view asking for advice
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as another form of mental masturbation I mean like it's good that you ask for advice right but you should only ask for advice after you have already done the work and you need that additional edge to actually move to the next level only way to figure it out is to start no cost
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will save you no mentor will do the work for you At the end of the day, you have to start, lose money, figure things out, bleed, learn. That's the only way.
I didn't learn trading from reading books. I learned it from pain.
I didn't got
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proficient at analyzing the charts from watching YouTube videos. I learned from doing.
Experience is the tuition the market charges for wisdom. Books give you knowledge.
Pain give you wisdom. YouTube teaches you concepts.
losses
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teaches you intuition. It's like you can read hundred books on risk management, but until you blow up your account, you will not get it.
You don't really get it because you haven't suffered the pain of blowing up the account yet. You haven't bled in the arena yet.
Once again,
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experience is tuition. It's expensive.
It's nonrefundable, but it's worth every penny. Because every single penny you pay to gain experience is simply you telling your future self that, hey man, I'm just donating my
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money to you so that you can eventually get so competent that you don't repeat these mistakes ever again. The thing, the market charges everybody the same tuition, which is your mistakes.
And the traders who survive this game, they're not necessarily the the smartest or the most hardworking. They are simply the
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ones who have paid tuition and stay and just continue playing the long game. Proficiency in trading comes from 10,000 hours of screen time plus losses, right?
It's not just screen time alone, but making losses and learning from them.
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You don't learn by reading. You don't learn by watching videos.
You learn by bleeding. I can show you how I trade, but you will never be as good as me because I don't even know how I trade sometimes.
That's how I define unconscious competence. So basically there are four
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stages of learning. Unconscious incompetence means you don't know what you don't know.
Conscious incompetence means you know that you suck. Conscious competence means that you know that you are good but you have to think about it.
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And unconscious competence you know that you are great and you don't have to think about it. It's just automatic.
It's just second nature. It's just muscle memory.
And that's where mastery live. And that's the stage that I want every single person to get to.
Pattern
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recognition happens automatically. Right?
And I really believe that you can get to this unconscious competent stage when you have put in at least 10,000 hours. And that is also why copying someone else strategy doesn't work.
It's like you are copying their edge. You're copying their actions, but you're not
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copying their instincts. You know, you're not copying their psychology.
I can't teach you what I don't consciously access. I can teach you all this chart work but I can't tell you exactly why I enter for the trade itself.
I can tell you my trade idea but then there's like
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this deeper layer of um conscious decision which I can't just rationalize it because I don't even know it myself because that is lying in like this subconscious level which I just don't have access to. So you build unconscious competence through conscious repetition
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over and over and over again until you eventually stop thinking and everything start flowing. And to me I think that's the final level of trading.
It's like you can trade without thinking and you're just like moving with the market like water and that's the best part to
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be the best form of freedom is not financial freedom but freedom from the mind. Money only solve money problems.
It doesn't solve you. The only person who can solve your childhood trauma, your boss traumas, your internal conflicts, your issues, your mental
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problems is you. That is why I say a lot of traders are rich slave.
You know, they have financial freedom. But they have built this mental prison in them.
And if that's the case, they're still trapped because freedom from the mind means there is no anxiety about the next
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trade. No FOMO, no revenge trading, no spiraling after a loss.
To me, inner peace is worth more than any P&L. I would much rather earn $10,000 a month and have inner peace than selling my soul just so that I can
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make a million dollars a month. The goal isn't millions, it's equinamity with or without them.
Like for example, right now I'm so grateful for everything I have, but that doesn't mean that I don't want more. I want more money.
Yes, but I'm also okay with not having it as
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well. And that's what it means to have freedom from the mind.
Rich traders, they still blow up because money haven't fixed their mind. They haven't become the person who is worthy of making this amount of money.
So true
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freedom is really just know being okay when you are winning and when you are losing. You're just okay with how the market as it is.
You're not trying to impose your will to on the the market. You're not trying to shift reality to expectations.
You're just accepting reality for what it is. What determines
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the longevity of your trading career is not how much money you have made, but rather what you are afraid of losing. What you are afraid to lose is controlling you.
If you are scared to lose your house, the house have power
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over you. If you are scared to lose your spouse, the spouse have control over you.
If you have made $1 million, but you're terrified of losing it, you will trade scared and you're going to end up losing it anyway. Longevity requires detachment from outcome.
And I think this is one of the
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biggest paradox in trading or in wealth in general. The less you care about the money, the longer you can keep it for.
The minute you stop chasing money, you start attracting money, more money comes to you. So sustainable trading isn't about
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managing positions. It's about managing your trading psychology because your relationship with losses literally predicts your future.
If you can't handle losing, you will not be able to handle winning either. So learn how to control the internal state because once
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you do now you are going to be able to stay in the game much longer that eventually you will succeed. Okay, it's a wrap.
My name is Brett Gold and this has been episode 10 of the Trader Code. Can't believe it's been episode 10 already.
And anyways, remember the
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journey is the reward, but only after you arrive. So go and work hard, make money, and eventually realize that money doesn't actually buy you happiness.
Money only solve money problems, not life problems. And you can't avoid losses.
You have to learn how to lose better, faster, and cheaper than anybody
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else. And the best traders aren't the ones who win the most.
They are the ones who have mastered their mind. And true freedom isn't financial freedom.
It's freedom from your mind. So keep paying your tuition.
Keep learning from the pain. Remember your journey is the edge.
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The setbacks are part of the story. Keep showing up and you'll win in the