As a new trader, where should I focus my attention? Trading Lessons from Mark Randall
hey traders this is blake marl with trader summit and with me again is mark randall from but i'm going to get this correct alpha hyphen mind dotnet mark one of the co-founders welcome back how are you hey good to see you i'm glad we're going to be talking of the whiskies of western scotland today i look forward to that now it's pretty early in the morning here for me but you know if i if i got to take it never too late for me there you go okay perfect and it's full and it's full well let's see what happens by the time we are finished here in the next 20 minutes so welcome back and and i want to say i i really enjoy spending time with you because you know just just hearing what both you and steven do at alpha hyphen mind alphamine.net i i love it because you know performance coaches trading coaches i think is an important factor to the success the future success of traders moving forward and and uh so getting your ideas and the way you approach different people in different groups is is important um and i think these are great conversations to have now you've probably worked with all sorts of traders you know from from traders institutional types uh that have been in the markets for you know 20 30 years that maybe just need a little bit of tweaking but i'm sure you've you've spent some time with some some newer traders that are are fairly uh you know newer i say newer let's say within five years of their their you know their trading career what what based on your experience what are some of the things the big differences you see between traders that have been doing this for a long time and traders that have been you know are newer into the business if you will well thanks for having me on the uh the show blake great great to be back it's nice to have you and the important subject i think what we're going on about today is the stuff of the base you know everyone needs to have a proper base and um in the bank that i worked before i was um very much interlaced with the the great the graduate intake stream into the markets business and a lot of those were kind of um you know future traders they were already trading often on desks and um some of them had their own background accounts having developed it from university and we're kind of thinking that it was something they wanted to professionalize but anyway so they were they were early in the space um what was originally interesting to me is that the people that you'd have thought would would make it um if you kind of read a cv and thought oh yeah this guy is going to do well yeah you'd be so wrong right so as a rule of thumb um the economists the people that studied economy in economics at university didn't often have the the skill set for trading and yet the people that studied um an engineering-based um uh sort of curriculum sure like civil engineering like uh like chemical engineering or something like that they had sort of a quasi-mathematical spatial awareness kind of uh skills they became they became the traitors that's so interesting you know and and i've always wondered this and and i'm gonna let i want i want you to obviously expand on this but i've met so many people over the last especially let me let me just back up a little bit for let's go to the financial twitter we call thin twit you know i've been on twitter for 12 13 years i've met a lot of traders i've met a lot of economists i've had conversations sometimes i think people some economists are so smart and so intelligent that they end up talking themselves out of into bad trades and sometimes out of good trades because they think that they know better i i don't know is it do is that is that kind of what you're alluding to i i think it's just that they're not involved in the kind of the flow of market when they're talking economics right it tends to be more macro for a start yeah of course there's you know macro traders are out there that's fine that's cool but where a retail trade is not gonna not gonna likely start trading as a macro trader sure right so um it's a different time scale it's more of a literal type of process you know economists tend to write articles and whenever i used to get you know even strategy from economists i always choose to bloody well tell them make it really really clear what the strategy is and make that strategy clear really really early and that was in the days when we could share strategy i know things have changed now which chinese wars and all that sort of stuff but you know they really like to tell a story among the time the area the story is finished everyone's in the strategy and the strategy is over you know right right right their mindset is kind of a bit too professorial um i think it's it's intellect and it's part of the fabric of what market is and what markets are yeah you kind of need those people in it but you need them at that professorial type of level now i'm not saying that every economist is going to flunk it as a retail trader sure because it depends on what what other skills you're building at the same time and just whether you can tone down um a skill set that you've got and tone and tune into a more required skill set for trading um and i think if you've got that agile mindset and awareness of just your own capability you should be able to do that but then it's a case of who's mentoring you who's coaching you because you know to do that alone without any experience is super difficult so when you're talking about the new traders mark going into you know the the the newer class if you will and you've got you know people on paper where they you think wow this this guy or this gal should be a good trader but that it doesn't always equate to that what do you think is the differentiator if you will is it is it the person that can actually you know follows a set of rules and then they they abide by those rules no matter what uh they have better risk reward they because they don't they don't think they can outsmart them the market they know you know hey when it's here i need to get out that type of thing what what what do you see is like the difference between the two well here's an acceptance that there's it's a learning process that doesn't end okay um right and i think those that want to go into the practical sense of applying skills and start with low risk learn by mistakes you know build the story uh you know review review strategy revise strategy you know and evolve that way i think they're the people that tend to be successful that sort of keep the involvement but they manage risk they keep exposure they try things that they're creatively looking at the market as a very broad beast and of course part of that decision making is what the hell am i going to trade because you may have a personality or or a risk appetite that's focused in one direction you might be trading a product that's entirely entirely not the right product for you yeah you know you you might be um you might be a longer-term trader looking at short-term swing trading or you know there may be a total mismatch as to as to your profile as a trader yeah compared with what you've jumped into to trade because maybe your buddy's been doing that but what you kind of need to step back is that okay what do i have a sense of knowing about because if you if you tend to know some aspect of the product it kind of helps right so if you've got a little bit of knowledge about what what equities are and what dividends are and all that kind of well well okay well you're comfortable with equities but if you've got if you do happen to have a sense about kryptonia follow that story and crypto's your thing then crypto's your thing but you know tread with care you know i think so there's all these flavors out there of products but an early trade particularly retail that kind of guess gets the bandwidth okay you can trade the world what are you going to trade well you know do you want to trade asian products in london time do you want to trade u.s products when it's getting thin in the morning and this stuff um you know do you really understand the calendar of events that are going to come out for particular products that could totally ruin you without you realizing that danger is approaching at 1 30 on the first friday of the month you know that type of stuff right yeah a lot of people agreeing to that information and kind of get involved and it's that it's those moments of bursting volatility that to you as a novice has come out of nowhere but from a professional they're kind of they kind of know where these you know stand back and watch moments are and if you don't have a sense of stand back and i'm watching in your mentality of the market as as a as a new trader to the marketplace then the market's going to kill you you know the market will will take you out so you just need to start with all those things really in mind so that almost takes you back to a pre-trade period of time where you've got to build this base of all these levels of awareness you need to be aware of and then you walk towards a market of choice with the right risk profile the right product choice and what what not and then you enter it and you start to gauge what goes on at certain times and you know how how am i managing a fast market how am i managing a sudden loss and how am i moving on from that and what's my state you know do i guess go like that and you know collapse or do i take it and move on and how quickly can i reset myself to the next level of awareness required you kind of look kind of all those things kind of need to be happening before you start putting some really big risk on the table because if any of those things are not tuned in properly any one of them could kill you i mean it could be the most bizarre thing that kills you so you know mark taking like myself as a currency trader predominantly currency trader i trade 24 hours a day you know and and i'm sure crypto people trading in the crypto asset class are like me um but it even it's even worse because cryptos trade all weekend long um but if you're trading equities you know you you have a certain time where equities will close futures will close you might be working worried about what happens in asia or europe or u.s overnight wherever you're at but it's it's less of an issue so i think time has a lot to do with how you approach the market as well how much what what time do you have to to trade around your personal life and schedule is that is that correct yeah i mean the way i talk about this with uh with other professional traders i have to have the problem of never never quite knowing when to switch off from being in i'm home honey mode right rather than i'm trading mode and taking a trade to bed with me at night literally mentally waking up at three to check where the trade is waking up at five to check where the trade is waking up exhausted if you get any sleep and doing the same again five days a week which goes on right so you need to kind of accept that the biggest dollar value of anything is time time is worth more than physical money the more time you can have and keep on your side for the balance what is life the better because otherwise you don't want to be the you know the richest trader in the planet with no life story um you know it's not not not a great space to be so i think balance and approach is really really important but uh as i've described to quite quite a number of people is that you know determine when you're when you're closing bell is as a person right the market has a closing belt right yeah i say bing end of trade not futures market we're used to anyway bing and end of floor trading let's move on to whatever and that was kind of like the end of that day so as a as as a habit to pick up early it's actually say you're saying to yourself that uh i don't know 6 30 p.m every day that is my market my own market closing bill when i'm basically i'm leveling up my risk or i've come off of the trade but 630 is my closing bill and that's really really really and and whatever happens after 6 30 whatever happens after 6 30 right because otherwise the market starts to own you rather than you own the market you know that's that's that's those are some huge words mark and i'm going to tell you from personal experience i wish we would have had this conversation three years ago you know sometimes you're in a market it doesn't matter what market you're trading but the the the market conditions aren't ideal for what you're trying to do and the this is the one business that i i think people need to understand and in my view that the hours that you put in doesn't always equate to profitability it's not that it's not it doesn't work like that like and i wish i would have known that oh if i'm putting in 16 hours a day sitting in front of my computer that doesn't necessarily equate to i'm going to make more money and i think a lot of people struggle with that as new traders so what do you tell those people like you know because if if i'm new to trading and i'm newer let's say i'm newer i think that is what a lot of people think is like oh well you know if i just sit here and i and i do my analysis and i you know just keep going that it's gonna eventually equate to making money eventually right but that isn't always the case so what do you tell those people or people that are kind of guests stuck in this bad process of period yeah go out for a walk and come back and let's get to talk about where you are and what you've learned because you need to unlearn these things you need to de-weaponize this stuff that you're throwing at the market as a weapon because it's the wrong weapon and then you need to re-arm yourself with the stuff that's super important so you know where have you picked up technical analyst skills from you can go to like the worst there are so many crap places on the internet i've seen people invent words there's some guy turned up a business school in london invented something called the buffalo market and he wasn't a markets guy and um so we have to we wrote this business school saying you've got to be careful who you're engaging with because they're talking absolute bananas um so i'd say you know golden sauce go and for me certainly from uk perspective and i guess the society of technical analysts do a home study course that's outstanding and is that should be the base for anybody looking to do technical analysis because professionals and it becomes a professional qualification recognized by a big institutions and actually if you use alpha mind in capitals you get a discount going there so that was unintended i i didn't expect that one that was good um yeah you know it's right nice so you're right like and and like in the in the us or you know internationally too i think a lot of people you know will seek out a cmt you know chartered market uh a cmt designation but what i you know again i i i'm gonna go back to the new trader and and you know this i think the the new trader really has a lot to of obstacles that they have to overcome and i think this is good information for them so i'm going to ask you i want to ask you this and and i you may or may not have an answer for a new trader but you know new traders come to me and they say they'll ask me hey blake what is a good percentage i should be making in my first year trading or my second year trading do you do you ever give people an answer that question because i'm sure if i've been asked that question you've been asked that question like you know and it could be worded a little differently like in my first year or my second year trading or by this time i should be making x percent what do you think what do you say what do you have as benchmarks do you do you look at benchmarks as i have to make a certain percent or it's a certain uh number of trades that i should be profitable before i can tweak this or what do you say about that i mean because those are questions that i think all new traders want to know forget measuring yourself because you'll upset yourself warren buffett's consistency is 20 percent right 20 i mean then he's got all the information in the world and all the traders in the world and his his benchmark return is something like 20 consistently okay so if you think you're going to be 300 percent and 500 or catching the wave and whatever the reality is in the whole in the whole market that actually even hedge funds have difficulty meeting like even five percent or whatever the numbers are right so you know so you've got to be a little bit realistic about the fact that you're making money slowly you're going to get a big win every now and then it's how you manage your losses becomes more important yeah that it's almost man the cleverest trader is the guy that manages his losses and can get out of a trade quickly and manage himself back into the next trade and yeah run it for as long as he's comfortable to run it because yeah ideally meant to run your profits for as long as you can um and cut your losses as quick as you can so you know i think they're the things that are super important it's more about worrying about what to do with losses than what to do with profits oh there's something to be said about that and i think a lot of people as traders they get lost in the i could have made this much but they're never managing what the downside risk is first i and me personally when i'm dealing with a new trader i say the first question you should be asking yourself is what is my risk not you know how much money can i make what is my risk and am i able to even stomach that risk to start so you know as a new trader i i again i'm gonna say uh if you're a new trader out there how do i find out more about what you do mark uh over at alphahyphenmind.net how do i find out more about you um was alphahypermind.net my personal website is the mindteam.com which is slightly more palatable
but i guess get you to my sort of uh more personal comprehensive stuff under mark randall consultancy um but um the alpha mine podcast is out there too so retail traders looking for you know appropriate information with um with market psychologists and veterans and retail traders and you've been on the show um the alpha mine podcast is a competitor but you know we're out there we're thought leaders and we connected some big guys and we have outstanding conversations so listen to podcast channels with the right sort of content you know what's interesting mark is uh i i actually spend my time now uh i found myself over the last 12 months listening to a lot of podcasts and i've been so excited to add your podcast to my to my library of my normal listening material so thank you very much for for doing what you do and um i want to say you know i i really enjoy the time that i get to spend with you hopefully the new traders out there especially the new ones for this particular episode um got some takeaways and some nice golden nuggets to take home with them uh today so i i do appreciate your time and i know the traders here at trader summit really appreciate you and you guys can do you can show your appreciation by giving us a thumbs up if you're watching us on youtube if you're subscribed to the channel uh or if you're not subscribed to the youtube channel subscribe there you so you can get this content for free and then also um make sure you click the the link in the description below to get to mark right on tradersummit.net um mark thank you so much for your time and i hope the next time that we get to speak we get to speak about maybe some different subject matter more whiskey it's a real pleasure blake i think we're pushing out outstanding work between us um yet the there are so many people that again sucked into this world of trading without appropriate guidance and you know some some of it is is obvious right some of it is is obvious but actually perhaps it's obvious to us when we've got like decades of experience and we've seen people more people fail even professionally than we've seen succeed so um yeah there are some good there's some good little nuggets as you say in there that um hopefully will be invaluable to those that are listening and watching us and i can only wish you for the moment a very happy christmas and happy new year and i'm sure we'll speak again next quarter happy holidays to you merry christmas to yourself and your family and i will look forward to speaking to you this next time hopefully right at the beginning of 2022 so thanks for joining us again mark take care guys bye-bye bye hey traders blake morrow here thanks for stopping by our youtube channel don't forget to like share and subscribe to our channel also click the bell notifications so you do not miss any of our market related trading analysis from some of the leading industry experts thanks for stopping by we'll see you in the next video
2021-12-01 02:42
