Line Your Own Pockets

Michael: 00:00

Okay, everyone. Welcome back to Line Your Own Pocket's End as seems to be customary with us now, after we do a cool interview with a new person, we like to shoot the shit and just talk about what the interview was like, what we kind of takeaways, things that we could learn from it. So if you haven't seen the interview with Jared, it's gonna be just the episode before this on the channel, you should definitely check that out. Some very interesting kind of trading psychology tidbits, pushing it into systematic trading and how, you know, that psychology side of things a little bit different than maybe the discretionary side of things. So I thought it was a really good interview.

Michael: 00:37

There were some answers that I know I'm gonna talk about that I was actually surprised about that that we got that answer. But yeah. Well, Dave, what do you think?

Dave: 00:46

Yeah. I sort of felt like you ever get in a situation where you're out in a conversation somewhere, maybe it's an argument or something. And then a week later you're like, Man, I wish I'd have thought of this to say to them. It's a little bit like that. Every interview we do on here, I always have that feeling, Man, I wish I should have asked him this, or I should have asked him this as follow-up.

Dave: 01:09

So this is sort of the outlet for that. But the one thing that stuck out at me early on in that interview was he was a little modest there when I asked him about the top performers across these different fields for people that he coaches. There's just there has to be some really good insights he finds and is able to share with some of the people he works with based on that. I mean, I just know that there there has to be some really interesting things. And it reminds me of my wife who is a was a very good runner.

Dave: 01:52

She was in the Olympics. She was a top performer in her field. And so I get a firsthand look at her habits, her the way she works out, and it's a very interesting situation. I'll never forget this. So, you know, I was he was my coach.

Dave: 02:13

I was what I thought was a pretty good runner. I, you know, I would my thing was I would I didn't have a whole lot of talent, but I could outwork people. Right? I would do more work than them. And on race day, I could beat a lot of people.

Dave: 02:31

So I thought I worked hard. Right? I was no slouch. And then there were just happened to be one situation where I saw my coach, who's now my wife, work out. And I had she had always been the one watching me work out.

Dave: 02:48

So this was I never really got to watch her work out. So I go to the track and here she's in the mode of workout by herself, dark. And I saw her coming around the track, coming down the home stretch, she's doing intervals. And within probably ten seconds of watching her, I realized there's no secret to her success. She just flat out works harder than anybody else is willing to work.

Dave: 03:19

I mean, it was palpable how hard she didn't care how ugly she looked, how what kinda grunts she was making. I mean, she was just working harder than anybody else I had ever seen. And it really took me back because, like I said, I was a hard worker, I thought. But, man, I I realized I could not go as deep as she could go. And it was a really good insight that I like, I'll never forget that, and I've taken that away, that moment, okay, what does it take to be the best of the world?

Dave: 03:54

And that's what it takes.

Michael: 03:57

Yeah. And it was a it was a little bit of of that, right, because I remember you asking that question and saying, okay, what's the difference there? And, you know, a bit of a a bit of a waffle, but that that was kind of the answer I expected as well was that, you know, listen, these people are up before you're up there. They're doing it before you you went down that kind of thing. One, the the answer that really stood out to me is something that I think was the thing that I didn't expect is he was talking a lot about burnout, and and kind of how that happens and I propose a question.

Michael: 04:30

So what do you do in this market? You know, this is the the craziest market we've seen in a long time. And I kind of expected the the answer of your mental health comes first. You you know, you have to you have to kinda go through it and, you know, take the break and blood, the market will be there tomorrow kind of thing. And the answer was no.

Michael: 04:49

It's like, it's time to nut up. Right? It's like you you figure out how to rest later, but you have to make it through the next couple months where where the markets was gonna be crazy. And I think that kind of shows a bit of that same attitude of I I don't I don't care that you're you're kind of burnt out right now because the market's so crazy. This is the time to to make hay.

Michael: 05:11

And and I'm glad he said that because again, I was gonna push back a little bit because I expected the right the the more calmer style of things and it was like no work. So that actually helped me because, you know, we try to make these evergreen, but we're recording this during one of the fastest bear markets in the history of all time high or all time. And it's just been a very volatile market. I think a lot of people might be listening to it at that time and feeling some of this as well, just a bit of burnout from what's going on in the market. So I very happy to see an actual trading kind of psychologist is to give me free rein to just kind of keep pushing and say, okay, maybe after the summer's over or when things calm down, I'll take a couple of weeks off.

Michael: 05:57

But for now, I just need to need to keep going.

Dave: 06:00

Yeah. Yeah. I thought that was a good, I definitely remember that answer, and he was he was pretty adamant about it. Yeah. It was it was some tough love to some people, I bet.

Michael: 06:10

Well, especially yeah. And especially where we are right now or, again, if someone's listening to this and there's another there's always something crazy seeming to come and go in the market where I've seen a lot of that and it's kind of contrary. And we talk about this a lot contrary to the popular thinking where I'll go on Twitter spaces and I'll talk to a lot of people and things like that. And there's a lot of a, if this market's stressing you out, go to cash, enjoy your summer, come back later. And that just seems to be the thing that is regurgitated almost without thinking behind people.

Michael: 06:43

So I really like the idea of no, right now is the time to work, right now is the time to we're getting, you know, 10% swings in the market. You better be trying to exploit that in some way. So yeah, I like that. And again, wasn't expecting it at all.

Dave: 07:01

Yeah. One difference there that that may have been coming through is, you know, he started off coaching a lot of poker players. And with poker, it's it's less like, you you you know when the big event's coming up. A lot of a lot of poker players play the WSOP, the World Series of Poker. So that's a very regimented schedule.

Dave: 07:26

You know exactly when it's gonna be. You can plan ahead. That's where all the action is. There's all sorts of tangential action in Vegas during that event. Like, there are all sorts of cash games that aren't affiliated with the event that are just there because everybody's there.

Dave: 07:41

Everybody's playing poker.

Michael: 07:43

Yep.

Dave: 07:43

So it's a little bit more predictable than what you have in the market where you could wake up and not have, you know, have no idea that today is gonna be the best day you ever had. So it's a little bit different there. I bet that's a little bit of his background and then most of the people he's coached coming through.

Michael: 08:04

Well, and, yeah, that makes that makes perfect sense is that you're right. You don't have a prep day. It's not, you know, I'm training my entire life for this, this one day or this one week or whatever. It's just you wake up and you, okay, what was tweeted today? Is it enough?

Michael: 08:19

Right? Are we up 5%, down 5%? There's not only nothing you can do to control it, but there's nothing you can do to predict it either, it's just going to happen or not. So you buy it you know, kind like The

Dave: 08:32

one analogy I could come up with is earning season. So earning seasons come in the markets, and you can you know, there are strategies. I've got several strategies that look at just earnings names. So, yeah, that's a that that makes or breaks some traders business, and that's very predictable. Like, you can look at earning season and see.

Dave: 09:00

So I've got a good there's a really good or I think it's a great chart of earning season over the course of the year, like a bar chart. It's got a one, you know, one day for every or one bar for every day in the year. And you can really see it's always surprising to me how spread out the first earning season of the year is compared to the other ones. Mhmm. I think it's because most companies are reporting annual earnings at the first of the year.

Dave: 09:35

So that first earning season of the year, it goes for a long time, and you see that there's there's shorter bars across a longer period. The rest of the earning seasons are small. They're more compressed, and the bars are way taller. So you have more companies reporting earnings on the same days, the same bunch of days. I will put a link into the show notes.

Dave: 10:00

I've always been fascinated by that chart, and I always look at that. And I'm always cognizant of where we are in earning season or not in earning season.

Michael: 10:10

Well that would be that would make a perfect sense for, again, normal markets where it's not a tweet moving us 10%. That yeah, if you're planning on or if you're feeling burnout or you're feeling a little tired but you have a chart like that, you can go, okay, for this period of time, I need to just bear with it. I need to buckle through. And then when that dips, maybe that's where I'll take a little bit of break. And I know a lot of traders that do that is do only earnings plays.

Michael: 10:39

Only want to be in those type of mentalities. These are more discretionary traders. So off earning seasons, they're off the screen, they're off working. That's the kind of recovery that went through. So that was great.

Michael: 10:51

And again, I was just, for me, was just super surprising to see that. I just, in my head, almost had him saying, like I had the answer that I thought he was gonna say, and I probably would have bet money. If you had said, okay, what do you think he's gonna respond to that question with? I almost, I think, would have bet money of, right, you have to, you know, the the kind of platitudes that you hear all the time of preserving mental capital and and doing this. And especially so because he had mentioned that he wasn't he didn't have a lot of pure quants that he was dealing with.

Michael: 11:26

It was mostly discretionary. So that's why I really thought it would have been that because I'd say even more than way more, I guess, than us. It's very important if you are the one actually making the decisions in real time that you're, you're have some sort of kind of rest and then lack of burnout. And we know that impulse control goes down when you're tired and things like that. But yeah, so I was surprised to see it, but I think it's great because it, you know, gives me that excuse to keep going when things are tough.

Michael: 11:58

And and you've get everyone else in the world saying, just take a break. Just just relax for a while.

Dave: 12:02

Yeah. Yeah. Let me look at my notes here for another there's there's some really good points I wanted to touch on. The one thing that I I was you know, you talked a lot about or asked the question about, okay. You know, a lot of people come to automated trading with as a way to sort of get rid of their emotions or control their emotions.

Michael: 12:30

Yeah. And I I would say that's and I don't know if it's the same with you, but I would say that is 95% is some some people believe that the only thing that's stopping them making money in the in the market is these these occasional blow ups that they have, which again could be true. But yeah, I'd say 90% of traders I talk to when I tell them I'm a systematic trader, they go, oh I should do that because I, you know, I keep going on tilt and losing all my money.

Dave: 12:59

Yeah. I'm always struck with the fact that, you know, if you're trading a bad strategy, your emotions are gonna be in the way all the time. Right?

Michael: 13:12

Yeah.

Dave: 13:12

Like, just trade a better strategy. Improve the strategy you're trading. I sit I've helped traders come up with better strategies and that sort of a workflow for improving the strategies they have. It's a lot easier to trade when you got a strategy that's making money versus one that's just barely squeaking by.

Michael: 13:32

Your mood increases when four to five days you're seeing Profitable as opposed to one out of five days. You'd just be shocked how the green on the screen changes the mood as opposed to the other way around.

Dave: 13:45

Yeah. So, gosh, just so many of these problems just dissolve and go away when you tackle your edge and you sharpen your edge. And, you know, you have, I call it a path to confidence. You have to have a path to confidence, and that means you know, trading's easy when you're trading with small size. It doesn't really matter.

Dave: 14:08

But you need a path to become confident to trade with enough size to be meaningful, and that's different for everybody. But you need to be on that path, and you need to be you always, at any given point, you need to have questions that you're trying to answer that will get you more confidence so you could trade your strategy with more size. Why are you not trading it with more size right now? You should know the answer to that, and you should have some things that, man, if I answered this, I would have more confidence. It's not like you're gonna be door, but you want to be more confident that you can put more and more size on over time and know that it's gonna do well and know that you're doing the right thing.

Michael: 14:56

Yeah, and it's I wish I could find it, but yeah, I've seen memes online from It's funny that even even us nerds with the systematic trading can memes, but I saw one from one systematic trader account that I follow. And it was just like, oh, I just need to fix my psychology. Then he put below, but my edge, and it was just a line pointing straight down. It's like, you don't have, you know, if you don't have that, you're A) you could be the most like Zen practitioner in the world, and super kind of religiously doing exactly what you should. But if what you should is going to lose you money, then eventually you're going to put so, you know, it's one of those that I do agree that a lot of people have the psychological issues of, you know, not following rules and, you know, a lot of stuff that we have talked about before, and I'm sure we'll talk about even more in future podcasts.

Michael: 15:51

But I 100% also agree that yes, it becomes way easier when you are at least somewhat confident that you're going to hit a button and make money. It makes it easier to hit that button at the right time. Whereas, again, I say most people, the psychology issues just come from not even just a lack of edge, a lack of any plan at all. They sit down and they watch everything tick around. They think, I think it's a goodbye here.

Michael: 16:17

And then they buy. And then you get that emotional roller coaster of when they're right, they feel like a genius, when they're wrong, they feel stupid, as opposed to just not having a plan. And again, we'll talk about this in future episodes, I'm sure, but it's one of the main things about having automated type systems is just that ability to detach yourself, right? It's not me, it's this. I'm not an idiot.

Michael: 16:44

It's just not just didn't work out today kind of thing.

Dave: 16:47

Yeah. So it's funny. This week, I was invited and gave a talk to the local university here at UNC, University of North Carolina, for their honors program. So I know the the one of the professors there, and he asked me to come give a talk on sort of a just my career, sort of a career of entrepreneurship, trading, and now coaching. He he just thinks that's interesting.

Dave: 17:18

He wanted me to present to the group. So I'm in this classroom speaking to some rising seniors. They're getting ready to go on the job market. A lot of the lot of the questions I got were I could tell that, you know, they wanted they wanted a sure thing. Like, they wanted some input, like, get get some input in the system, and then that produces some output.

Dave: 17:44

Like, if you do this in your career, you're gonna end up this way. Yeah. And they wanted some confidence or some security around that. And what I told them is you're never gonna have that confidence. You're always gonna be in a situation where you're not sure because you can't predict the future.

Dave: 18:06

You're not sure what's coming. All you can do is do you know, put a a solid plan in place and execute it. And it's the same with trading. You don't know that this strategy is gonna perform well into the future. It could fall apart right now.

Dave: 18:25

You we can't predict the future. Right. But you can do a lot of legwork and a lot of research to give you confidence, to raise your confidence level, to be able to put to trade with size with a certain strategy. And it's the same kind of thing. People need that confidence.

Dave: 18:42

They need to be right. They need to have some something they're sure about, but life's not that easy. Right?

Michael: 18:50

Well, it's not to go like mega nerd, I'm sure you heard about Bayesian probabilities. Right? Yeah. The whole idea of first time you see the sunrise, you go whatever. And it's like every day you see the sunrise, you're fairly confident all the way to near 100% confident that it'll happen the next day, but you never get that confidence even on something as simple as that.

Michael: 19:14

If you're just looking at the probabilities of something, and yeah, that's 100% true, that it gets way, way better, but you're never going to reach 100% because you just, again, it's an unknowable future. There could be something that happens next day that changes the way any of these things work when it comes to markets or natural, you know, the nature or whatever. Yeah, you're just trying to get good enough that you feel confident enough kind of pushing the button and then whatever happens happens.

Dave: 19:47

Yeah. So there there was another part of the conversation with Jared that I thought was interesting. So I asked him about optimism and the role that that played in success across any field. And I thought he I I thought he answered the question as if I said, like, a sort of Pollyanna attitude where you're just you always have rose colored glasses on and you're, you know, sure and hopeful things are gonna be gonna work out. But I wasn't really that's not exactly what I was suggesting.

Dave: 20:33

And I think it is you know, I think optimism is, I I think, an important part of being successful as a trader. I mean, you you have drawdowns. You have all these things that could go wrong. There's all these frustrations that can happen, But you have to have optimism, and you can't let these things get you down. I just think that you know, so I just wanted to clarify.

Dave: 21:07

This is not like a Pollyanna thing I'm suggesting. Suggesting. It's like a general attitude of optimism that you're gonna figure this out. You're gonna have a solid plan in this in times of uncertainty. And just like we were talking about before, you're never certain, and you have to sort of be able to dwell with that as a trader and, you know, build a solid foundation in what you're doing to be able to live with that uncertainty the best you can.

Michael: 21:43

Yeah. You need you need a certain amount of optimism that even just you can make it, right, that there is an edge to be had, or an edge to be exploited in the market, and then, you know, over time that edge will be, you know, profitable and all of that. Because yeah, I think there's a certain amount of just pessimists out there, and in my world, the more long term trading world, you see it a lot with the Permabears, right? I don't know if you follow any of these guys, but there's a guy named Tom Lee, who's, he's everywhere CNBC and all of that, and he gets labeled as a permeable all the time. And he's like, and then his answer to it, I always think is hilarious that he's like, yeah, but I'm gonna be right 75% of the time.

Michael: 22:28

So the market, if you pick any point in history, the market's up 75% of the time one year later. And that optimism, think really, really helps. Not as a, I'm just gonna hope things go up all the time and whatever it is, but hey, you have to have the optimism of, you know, that whatever drawdown you're in is gonna recover, that there is some edge, especially when you're starting out, that there is some edge that you're gonna be able to find in the market and exploit. So I think that's really, really important. I think, you know, the whole realism side of things is good just to make sure that you're grounded and that you're doing the work required and you understand that it's not just gonna, things aren't just gonna work out for you magically, but yeah, I kinda saw the same thing where he's, I think I think you guys were kinda talking past each other a little bit there.

Michael: 23:18

Yeah.

Dave: 23:20

So there was another thing that that that struck me about what he said, and it was sort of a surprising answer. It was the conversation about mindfulness. Do you remember that one?

Michael: 23:32

Yep.

Dave: 23:33

Yeah. So he I I thought I was surprised that he say basically said, you know, mindfulness is a tool. It's not really a solution. It's not it's not a be all end all. So I was a little surprised to hear him be a little more flippant about that.

Dave: 23:53

You know, that's a that's a term that gets thrown around a lot, mindfulness, and how important and valuable it is. So I was it was interesting to hear him downplay it.

Michael: 24:04

Well, and I think it's one of those terms that like we do this a lot as human beings where we say a word so much that eventually it just loses all meaning. Like, you know, you call someone you don't like a Nazi, and then like everyone is just, you know, we just continuously lose lose meaning in words. So I think mindfulness is one of those one of those things that it could be defined as pretty much anything and probably just loses meaning quite a bit for for most people. Because like, are you saying the actual act of being mindful when you're doing something is bad? Probably not.

Michael: 24:39

I think he's probably more referring to like the a lot of the woo woo and that kind of thing. But that's something again too, if depending on the word, I would probably disagree a little bit because, you know, if he just meant being mindful about things is bad, then I think we could all kind of disagree that that's probably not the way to do it. For anything that you're doing, you should probably be mindful about it. But, yeah, I think that was more about do you need to meditate? Do you need to do yoga and align your chakras and all that kind of stuff?

Michael: 25:08

But it very much just seemed like it was the answer to a lot of these things were just to do it and to put in the work. And that might be one of those things that that's just where he kind of comes from. Like you mentioned with the, with the story with your wife is that at some point there is no answer, right? The answer is work. I think we see, especially with a lot of like the TikTok and Instagram stuff about the perfect morning routine, and then, you know, you do this and this and this and everything will be fine.

Michael: 25:40

And, you know, motivation, motivational signs that you put up on your wall and whatever. But at the end of the day, it's right in trading, do you have an edge? Can you exploit that edge? And are you putting systems in place to make sure that wherever you're lacking in exploiting that edge, you're you're leaning on some system to do it. Right?

Michael: 25:59

So it just seems like the way he was pushing with a lot of these things was more practical, I guess, than anything is just, you know, this is the kinda exact route you have to take as opposed to, hey. Here's a a Tony Robbins book to listen to, and then all of a sudden, you'll be a better trader.

Dave: 26:17

Yeah. I mean, this is your talking there. It reminds me that, you know, e even if you have all sorts of perfect processes in place, mindfulness that works for you, it all comes down to p and l. Right? Even if you got a great system, doesn't really matter if you're not making money.

Dave: 26:37

So but that that's the that that's the definition of success, and it's the whole reason we're doing it. So, you know, all this stuff is sort of sort of goes out the window when you if you make P and L. So that that's the most important thing, and that's that's what you should be focused on on, obviously. It's kinda silly to say, but, of course, it is.

Michael: 27:01

Well, I I think it's one of the main things that I that I love about trading more than anything else is that as someone who, before I became a dad, was a big gamer, there's a lot of parallels there with, you know, at the end of the at the end of the game, there's a scoreboard. It's like, did did you your team win or did it lose? Right? At the end of the the day or the month or the year when it comes to trading, it's did did your equity line go up or did or did it go down? So, yeah, at at the point, we're we're basically just looking for ways to make that a little bit easier or a little bit better.

Michael: 27:37

And the question is, where do you look for that, right? Do you look at, you know, internally and try to fix whatever is happening, or do you look externally? I think a lot of that too needs to come down to individual answers, right? Do you have an amazing system that backtests absolutely awesome and it should be making, you know, 30% a year with minimal drawdown and all of that good stuff, but you're the one screwing it up all the time, then yeah, maybe you do need a little more mindfulness or you need to replace some things that you're doing with something else. But I would say that problem is less common than a lot of people think it is.

Michael: 28:22

I think that, you know, like we talked about the, it's more common to, that you don't have, that your results are inconsistent because your process is inconsistent and the trades you're taking are inconsistent. And that's, again, it's one of those chicken or the egg type of things, right? Is your crappy trading making for poor psychology? Is your poor psychology making for crappy trading? And like most things that we'll probably answer with in this podcast is the data we'll tell you, right?

Michael: 28:51

You should be able to go and say, I did everything perfectly, this would have happened. And instead this happened. If that's the difference, then yes, you got to fix your psychology. But again, I'd say most of time it's the other way around.

Dave: 29:03

Yeah, it's What you mentioned there about definition of mindfulness and depending on that, like, it reminds me of, you know, we've talked a lot about a trading journal and what it is and what it isn't. Yep. And what it isn't, in my opinion, it it should not be a trading diary, you know, what you felt like that day, what your emotions were like, blah blah blah. It should be some hard numbers. What were your results that day?

Dave: 29:35

A journal in my mind is a database of your trades, like what's actually happening. And that's that's the way you get better. That's how you turn those results into new P and L for tomorrow. Well,

Michael: 29:51

and I think it will do some of that for the people who are, and again, we're not, and I'm sure you're not saying this either, if you wanna take another journal where you just write down every day where you feel go ahead, that's just a different thing. But I think the trading journal will end up being that psychological aspect anyway, even if it's just hard data. Yeah. Because what you'll start to see hopefully is there's some reconciliation between these, this is what I should have done, and then this is what I did. And you should end up seeing that in your data anyway, where like, why is the difference here so big between what should have happened and what happened?

Michael: 30:26

And if the answer is not mechanical, it's not, you know, my robot was slow at executing an order, or, you know, my power went out. It's nothing physical that happened, you just look at that and you say, the difference here between this, you know, back tested or imaginary P and L, my actual P and L, that's, that's me. And then you start to, it does the same kind of purpose anyway. And I'd say it does the purpose way better because you're actually physically seeing, there's nothing that will change a habit quicker than if you look at the end of a month and you say, okay, I'm down $2 this month. And if I wasn't an idiot, I'd be up $10 this month.

Michael: 31:05

I don't think there's anything that will change your mentality quicker than just seeing that number and saying, okay, instead of me being pissed off and losing money all month, I could have paid my mortgage and fed my family if I was just doing different things, right?

Dave: 31:21

Yeah, very, very motivating to see that, you're totally right. There was so one final thing, I think, or the last thing I have on my list is what he taught so I asked him a question about how do good performers get great. Like, how do they how do you take it to the next level? And I thought his answer was really great there about sort of like a chart consolidating. Yeah.

Dave: 31:48

I thought that was a great answer, and it's totally true. You you so I see that with people. I see that with a lot of traders where especially when you're trying to increase your size, you know you've got an edge, and how do you increase size? You you can't it's hard to do that all at once. You kinda have of have to experience the size at different levels and trading a different level for a period of time to really acclimate to that new size because it's gonna and that those levels are different for everybody.

Dave: 32:26

And you just have to experience the the act of trading with the new size for some period before and it's hard to you'll run into problems where you skip those steps. You you increase your size too much. You haven't experienced the levels between here and there, and there's value in that that you'll that's part of getting to a new level.

Michael: 32:54

Yeah. And we talked about too with, I think, the we talked about how to increase size and the example I used was the whole boiling the frog alive. And I think that's another example of what he was talking about that kind of incremental increase. It's kind of how it should go. If you have a system and that system has edge and you start trading it, then that kind of incremental increase shouldn't bother you that much.

Michael: 33:18

Like you mentioned, it's like a big push up in your equity curve and then some consolidation sideways, and then you say, okay, now I feel comfortable to making that next next slow leap. And then at the same time, being able to make small gains over time like that, I think A helps out a lot mentally, but it's one of those you'll look back a lot later and you'll say, wow, you know, look how far I've come just by increasing 1% a day or 1% a month, you look back at the end of the year and you say, Oh, well, yeah, I'm quite a bit off. But I like that too, because the based off some of the other answers, I was kind of thinking he might just say, You know, you should just, if you got an edge, should just exploit it and, know, take, take a bigger risk and, and, you know, pull your pants up and do it. But I did like the example of, I'm glad he agreed with us there of, of pushing that up slowly because something I've seen with my traders and I've seen happen all the time is they increase too fast and then they end up putting it back down, right?

Michael: 34:22

So they went from risking $100 a trade in the testing phase, now they're risking $1,000 a trade and they have a bad week, and then they go right back to a hundred dollars a trade. And it's like, yeah, that's the middle ground there makes sense. So I really, really like that answer as well.

Dave: 34:39

Anything else? Think it was a great interview. I love having those conversations. Any other topics that you call that we should bring up?

Michael: 34:48

No. Overall, I thought it was again, just like you mentioned, I thought it was great interview. I really do like the idea of a psychologist on because, again, we do we're kind of experts in our own field, which is the more quantitative side of things. I think bringing on people that are look at this from a little bit of a different angle, I think is great, even though he didn't have a lot of systematic traders under his belt. It turns out, like we talk about all the time, that it's you're just you're playing a different game.

Michael: 35:16

The game's not hugely different. You still have the same emotions and everything, but there's there's not there's no way that someone who's a discretionary trading expert and someone who's a systematic trading expert when it comes to psychology is going be living in wildly different worlds, right? The way they execute trades, that game is different, but at the end of the time, you still have to battle the thing between your ears. So I really loved all of the different examples he gave, things he talked about. And again, like we mentioned a few times, we were surprised by some of the answers.

Michael: 35:48

So I was happy to hear a lot of non kind of cookie cutter answers that you would expect to hear from a lot of psychologists.

Dave: 35:55

Yeah. I think the big takeaway for listeners would be look for and learn from top performers in different fields, maybe not just trading. There's a lot of you know, anytime you see somebody that is motivated about what they do and is getting out there and doing something every day, whether it's an artist or whatever the field may be. There is something to learn there by their process and and what they do to be great at what they're doing. Maybe completely unrelated to trading, but there's definitely some lessons you can take away and use those to make yourself a better trader.

Michael: 36:41

Yeah, and that's, you know, we will talk about this in the future, but it's the same when people ask me for book recommendations or things they're interested in getting in trading. I'd say half the books I give them have nothing to do trading. There's some golf in there. There's some poker type stuff. So, I like that.

Michael: 36:59

And it shows that if someone's able to coach a, you know, poker player and a trader and different aspects and different sports and everything, it just shows that at the end of the day, a lot of this ends up being the same kind of parallel, right? You're trying to do the same thing. You're trying to perform at a different level, whether you're, you know, looking at cards or you're looking at charts, At the end of the day, it's the same kind of thing. It was great. And, know, I'm excited for more interviews.

Michael: 37:28

Think the interviews every now and then and getting the audience to listen to some other voices than us is probably a good thing too.

Dave: 37:36

Yeah. One last thing. I encourage creators to look at hold'em poker. It is a super fun game. There's you're probably gonna like it if you like trading.

Dave: 37:53

There's there's various casinos where you can play it. I have a I've had a home game every month for probably ten years now. Super fun for just a mental challenge and getting friends together from all walks of life. Casinos are really fun places to be in poker games. That's something that totally surprised me when I first started playing poker.

Dave: 38:17

I always thought of these seedy places where criminals go, but man, I've met some of the most fun, friendly people at poker tables. It's just a fun community to be involved with, and yeah, totally recommend it for traders.

Michael: 38:35

Absolutely. Yeah. Anything out there that does probabilities and anything out there that expands your brain from a different thing I think is good. Especially new traders, I find they get really locked into it. It ends up being, they're so excited to make it work and they're getting so into it that they almost work too hard and do too much.

Michael: 38:56

And it's kind of like I always give an example of like a comedian. If if you're a comedian, all you did was write about comedy the whole time, then you're not going out in the world and seeing anything that's funny or doing anything that's funny. So at the end of the day, sometimes going out to a different aspect and learning something new somewhere else, you can take that back to your trading and then you could be a better trader. Again, it was a great interview. I'm excited for more of the interviews.

Michael: 39:24

I know we've had a couple of people that we're talking to to come on. So let us know what you think of the interviews and potentially people you'd like to see and all that kind of stuff. We love the feedback that we get on the channel. But until next time, I'm Michael Noss.

Dave: 39:38

And I'm Dave Mabe. We hope you join us next week on Line Your Own Pockets.