Mastering Stress and Resilience in Trading and Leadership with AmplifyME CEO Will de Lucy
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Welcome to the Market Maker podcast, hosted by me, Anthony Chung, where every Friday I talk to a member of the team about what happened in markets this week. From macro themes and single stock news to cryptocurrencies and careers in finance, our aim is simple, to make finance interesting and easy to understand for everyone. So let's get to it.

Hello and welcome to this special episode because we don't have a deal room episode with Stephen. We've got a special guest, the founder and CEO of Amplify Me, Will DeLucey. How are you, Will? Very well, thank you. Thanks for having me on. I think this is my first one. It's only taken four years for you to get around to this.

Look, it's going to be worth the wait for all our listeners, I'm absolutely sure, because in this episode, I really wanted to pull on your experience having had a career as a trader, as a founder, and now as a CEO of a growing business that's going global at this point. And I wanted to talk about some subjects just to give the listeners a flavor of what it's like to be a trader.

talking about managing stress, dealing with failure, building resilience, decision-making under pressure, how trading, I'd be super interested to hear your take, having been a discretionary prop trader some 20 years ago to now you go and work with some of the most sophisticated quant hedge funds on the planet.

and how has trading changed and get a bit of an insight into that but like with all of our guests that we have i'll treat you the same uh if i could get a little bit of a a summary of your your background and normally it would be great if you could go back to

When you were a young person, a student, and what were you thinking at that point? Was even trading finance on your radar? Yeah, that's interesting. It feels like a, what was I thinking? No, when I was a young person, I didn't really, I know, I think now there's a lot more pressure on people to think about their careers a lot earlier. I wasn't really thinking like that so much just throughout school. Pretty much every day after school, I'd worked at a local restaurant, I'd

tables to get money. I enjoyed the fast pace and pressure of that without knowing it actually. I think working in that really busy establishment throughout secondary school was a really good preparation for dealing with pressure and working in a fast paced environment.

Went through university as not a particularly excellent student by any stretch of the imagination, but did know that I wanted to work in finance and then managed to secure some sort of summer placements when I was going through university that gave me a lot more insight.

And then landed a role as a trader. I was just incredibly fortunate. In the interview, I remember, you know, they're still the same. Actually, I think a lot of the tests are used the same today, like quick maths, mental maths, which I really enjoyed.

The biggest event I think in my professional life was my first two weeks on the trading floor when I could see the patterns. I could see how markets were moving. I could see how products were correlated. It was probably and still is the biggest light bulb moment of my entire life.

Everything became clear when I got to see it and be involved within it. And that hit me so hard that, I mean, I then traded for almost a decade in bond markets after that, but I never forgot that. And I always wanted to see if I could use technology to build that type of light bulb moment for other people. How can that experience of practical learning by doing, um,

be shared with many more people. And that's where Amplify started back in January 2009. Yeah, and you can't not say 2009. Give us the story about when you were looking for a location and the event that happened. My goodness. Yeah, I mean, it was just such a time of turmoil. But we were really lucky. The guy that we traded for, both Piers and myself, Ralph Goldenberg, was...

brilliant man. And obviously, we traded for his firm for a number of years and so had made him a lot of money. So when it came to us requiring office space and so on, I went to Ralph and said, look, I'm going to go out on my own. We're going to do something that's to do with simulations and education and training and assessment. And he was fully supportive of that. He pretty much gave us

a phenomenal office in Canary Wharf. So he had this large trading floor and he let us have, I think, for £500 a month when we started, you know, a 20-seat desk overlooking the water. And that was great. So he was a huge help, I think. And it just goes to show, you know, once you do start working and the advice to younger people out there, once you do build contacts and people get to know you and you prove your salt,

It's great. I do think people want to help. People want to help good people. And yeah, Ralph's kickstart for us in 2009 when there was so much uncertainty was great. I mean, we're completely self-funded, but he just helped with the office space. And that was probably a really good asset on our side. So you didn't want to set up in New York? Or were you considering that?

We did. We did. And now when I look back on it, it is amazing. Like the looking back on the decision. So yeah, both peers and I went over to New York. It's actually January the 15th, um, 2009 we're in New York and we saw, uh, the plane land into Hudson. We're just looking outside of our window and just couldn't, couldn't, couldn't believe it. Um, we were thinking about setting up a New York because that is obviously the, uh, a larger financial center. And we, we, we really wanted the challenge. Um,

It's been a great story so far, but I'm happy to say that I'm now moving to New York with my family this summer, 15 years later. But that was an interesting decision. But yeah, the opportunity with Ralph came up and that was definitely too good to pass down.

Cool. All right. Well, let's jump into some of the questions I've got for you. And one of the first ones here, because I think as a, whether you're a student and you're kind of facing the application process or you've already grad and you're a bit uncertain and anxious about your next step, you might be a business owner already or an entrepreneur. I think a lot of these things we're going to tackle apply to all. And the first one is about stress, because I think stress is felt by all of those pockets of people that I've just mentioned. So

When you were trading, or even now as a business owner,

Rather than just talk about stress in an abstract way, I wonder if you could give us some tips or habits, techniques that you've used yourself or when you've helped mentor all of the thousands of traders that you've encountered that you've seen work and people have had success from. Yeah, absolutely. This is such a crucial subject. And one of the reasons why I wanted to get into the business of building simulations is

In markets, it's because you can measure so much by how somebody responds to stress, uncertainty, adversity. And they can also train themselves. I was...

a very emotional trader. I'm probably quite an emotional person. I really take things to heart, which is a blessing in a way because it means you care and you want a good outcome and you put a lot of enthusiasm and energy into things. But it also means you wear it a lot. You wear these things and they can be quite heavy. So there's some absolutely practical ways to deal with this. So the first things first, we start right at the beginning. It's self-awareness.

Are you able to recognize when you are in a state of higher stress and you might be in a state where you don't make the most optimal decisions? How quickly can you recognize that? Sometimes you can recognize it with a physical tick, right? Sometimes you can recognize it

just by where you're breathing or by something that you're doing. And that's step one. So self-awareness, can you recognize what's going on with your body and your mind? The second one then is almost like, are you able to mitigate potentially damaging behavior? So you know, when you're stressed and you're worried about something and everyone does this, let's say we all do it, go to bed and a small grain of a problem in our head, then we sort of

Build into some sort of mountain and moulder. So if you can recognize that happening, that's first the self-awareness part. Okay, I'm doing this. This is going to be detrimental to my night's sleep ahead. What's the action that you take? So you've got to have some sort of habit that you force yourself to do.

Now, there's a great book about habit stacking that I read years and years ago that I definitely relied on quite a bit, which is to say, if you want to change your behavior in a way that's going to give you a better outcome, the first habit that you do is something that's fun and easy and something that you want to do. So, for example, I would find my biggest weakness as a trader was actually very often overtrading. I probably

probably got the biggest FOMO out of anyone that I've ever met. If there's a party, I want to be there. If there's a conversation, I want to be involved. If there's a move in the market, why aren't I in it? So that was my biggest challenge is not over-trading. And so I could feel myself beginning to try and force markets that weren't actually moving that much. And as soon as I felt that, then I would actually go and get myself a water or go and get myself a coffee or do something different

that was nice to do. And by taking that first easy habit, it then removed me from my screen, which was the actual outcome that I wanted to do. And it could start off a whole series of other habits, which would be then, as I got back down to my desk, not to look at the screen, turn the screen off and actually review what I was doing, why I was doing it, have a reflection piece. I wasn't able to do that just

immediately. There had to be a habit in the middle. There had to be something that was easier for me to do that would then lead to better behavior. Other examples would be getting into, you know, recognizing real stress and frustration. And then you just want to, well, you just want to throw the screen out the window. You want to do something physical. So very often, you know, for me, I love cycling. I'm always on a bike. I would just get on a bike outside the office and

do a loop, a short loop of the city of London, for example, you know, you're by avoiding traffic and looking at buses and trucks and not getting run over, I would find that would give myself a head holiday. So again, with stress, we're probably our own worst enemies. We take something and turn it into a monster. And so it's about putting a fire break in there and recognizing that you need to put a fire break in there, but

Also recognizing when you're in that stressful position or you're over trading, the last thing you want to do is to stop trading. That's the last thing. So can you layer in a habit that's easier that leads then to that outcome? And that I found really, really important. And it's relevant in anything. I play a lot of tennis. I do that. I have to manage that, you know, where you want a positive outcome. I just think the...

ability to be aware of what your mind's doing and know you it's different for every single person you know you can't really say how someone else should deal with their their mindset it's very very personal in fact it's deeply personal when you watch someone go through dips in trading performance

how they come out of those dips, how they can grow from those dips ultimately, because that's what ends up happening as the great outcome of all of this. The more you go through these sort of experiences and then you get knocked down again, but when you get knocked down again, you've now got a wider, more solid base to stand on than you did before because you've experienced it and you've grown from it and then you get knocked down again.

And you've got that wider, more solid base that comes from experience. So my advice to any students out there is, you know, this is all part of the process. This stress, feeling it, trying to work out how best for you to deal with it. For me, it was definitely habit stacking and just trying to move towards a behavior that would limit the damage that I'll do to myself.

But the great thing is it does become much more resilient over time the more this goes through. Yeah, I think I remember perhaps you and Piers talking about back in the day and the risk manager would be, it's almost like a grieving process when you've had a bad day. It's like you get together,

You know, you have maybe in this case a drink, cheers, and then you put it to bed, come back the next day. I do think we had a risk manager that might have had a bit of an alcohol problem. I do remember one time because we started trading at 7 a.m. It was straight off the doors and by 9 a.m. on one occasion when I was only 22, I think 23, I managed to lose a lot of money.

And he took me out to, there was a hotel around the corner and said, look, let's have a wake for all the things he could have done with that money. But his argument was, and it's an interesting one, his argument was, you know, you have to be able to deal with disappointment and loss. You've got to mourn these events, deal with them, because if you don't deal with these events properly, then

what can happen is they sit in your subconscious just as a small voice that then interrupts your performance a week down the line, two weeks down the line, three weeks down the line. It's there. And the great thing about trading I found so interesting was what you do in the moment that matters is actually evidence of everything that you are. And if you haven't

been able to deal with these small voices should have, would have, could have, now revenge, vengeance, anger, fear. You make decisions that aren't based on the screen in front of you. You make decisions by all of those unresolved things inside you and it can lead to what's so interesting about that is then so that one bad outcome that you haven't dealt with properly then leads to another bad decision that

which leads to another event. And actually, a whole train of events can come from an unresolved first instance. I've mentioned tennis before. Have you ever seen Djokovic, for example, where he's an absolute robot? Let's say a point will go against him. There'll be a difficult net call, and he'll be very frustrated. Now, normally, he'll bounce the ball five or six times,

But you can see him resetting his mindset after that negative event. And he's there, he'll bounce the ball 12, 14, 16 times. He's just getting back into the flow state where it's just a serve. He's done a million serves. He's now going to serve again, just like he always does. And what he's done through that action is put that last negative point to bed and then trade what's in front of him or play what's in front of him, not what's inside.

Such a great analogy. And just kind of jumping on that, that word flow that you mentioned, because you hear this quite a lot with high elite sports athletes, high performance activities. Could you just explain a little bit about that state of flow and what that, how it impacts behavior, mindset, performance? Flow is a really interesting one. I used to talk a lot about flow. I think you always know when you're not in it.

But you probably I don't think I've ever been in a state of flow and really thought, oh, this is this is this is flow now because you're you're not thinking like that. When you're in a state of flow, you're just doing and it just feels natural to do whatever it is that you're doing and you're performing. That's when you're performing at the top of your game.

You're not overthinking things. Decisions are clean and easy. If something goes wrong, it's no problem. You change it. It's a perfect place to be. And everyone's flow is a bit different. So, you know, a big thing that we do at Amplify is helping people find their role, right? Where can you have a natural flow within? For me, I would have been a terrible investment banker probably with my personality. You know, I needed something that was fast and changing. And that's where I found my flow.

So I think to describe flow, it's like you're doing something. It doesn't feel like work. It doesn't feel hard. And it's really making the best of all of your innate abilities. When you're not in a flow state, things just feel so different. I'm sure everyone's had that before. I certainly had it in trading where, well, I remember actually one of the traders opposite me was saying, whoever that guy Midas is, as in Midas, everything he touches turns to gold. Whoever that guy Midas is, I'm his opposite.

And he was going through a state where everything that he did was obviously not working out. And that happens when you're trying to force things, when you're trying to force an outcome. Yeah, it's such an interesting state, the state of flow. I think you know when you're not in it. And that's where then self-awareness comes. If you're not in that state of flow, what is it that you can do in order to

and relax and loosen up and do what's in front of you, not what you want to do. And that's then where the different habits come in. And, you know, the best way to deal with that is different for different people. It might be a holiday. It might be exercise. It might be a few beers. It might be just different for each person at different times. But I think recognizing when you're not in a state of flow and then trying to move within that unconscious competence, you know, it's a really difficult thing to do. And you almost do it

without knowing it. But I think the most important thing is if you're not in a state of flow, okay, just don't try and force it now. Don't, you know, bet all on black. Now's not the time. You mentioned awareness again there, and that's come up a few times. I just wonder, there's kind of being self-aware, and then as you described earlier, taking action.

Do you think people that you've seen generally fall short on one or the other? Because if it was that simple, obviously everyone would be able to deal with stress perfectly, but that's very seldom the case, particularly in trading. There's something in trading I used to talk about a lot called the Kolb's learning cycle, where you would experience, review, conclude, and do. Experience, review, conclude, do. And that's how you get that sort of growth in ability. Now, everyone can experience something,

We can review. We know what we then did right or did wrong. And as a trader, you might say, well, I won't do that again or next time I'm going to. But the hardest one is that link between conclude and do. Do you then act in that way the next time? Are you able to implement what you concluded? Because at the time that it's most important to do so, we want to do the exact opposite.

And that's where habit stacking comes in. And it's so important. I have this type of thing, not just in trading or markets, but let's say even with phones, right? I mean, the phones are so addictive and I would found myself checking my phone just because I'd go through a routine, check, check, check. So at my home, there's now what we call a phone home, which is like a mat where mobile phones go in, like rest on. And this happens because my son's got a phone now, he's 11. So we wanted to bring in some sort of

control or help so it didn't become a thing, it didn't become an addictive thing. And just by the habit of putting my phone on the charging mat or phone home and not carrying it around with me when I'm in the house, that changes my behavior. So I think the conclude to do is really hard, but you can think about it in a way like habit stacking, something that's easier that leads then to a change in behavior.

Yeah, I think this habit stacking idea is so powerful because a lot of people are just looking for that instant result, an instant thing. But actually, it's these small things that compound and accumulate. So that's really interesting. And just going back to some of the questions here, one of the other ones I had was, you know, whether you're trading or in business, decision making under uncertainty is a key skill. So how do you approach making tough calls when you're

Like in both situations, it's very rarely you have a complete set of information. You have to just go with what you have at that time. You're never 100% sure. And so how do you approach that process? It's really, it's a great question. I think I would answer it probably a bit differently. I would say the worst thing is to not make a decision, for sure. And to procrastinate and to...

delay and then the decision that you should have made and there was then a clear outcome and now then often I found it becomes much more complicated now and so first things first yeah make a decision and what I found in certainly my experience of Amplify over the last 15 years is being optimistic expecting a positive outcome and it's been amazed what we can achieve just by

being available and being present and saying yes. So I'd always have that. I would lean to action for sure, you know, make a decision and make it confidently. Knowing that if it turns out not to be the correct decision,

Very rarely is that the end of the world, right? It's not nearly as critical as you can. And you can then move if needed. And I think that comes from confidence and experience, right? You know, seeing a decision perhaps not work out as you'd expected and then seeing how it can be recovered and then continued. So yeah, don't see big, big decisions as too much pressure. Just make one, stick to it. Always know that

If needed, things can change and very often you can't predict what's going to happen anyway. It's so interesting how opportunities or events change. So make a quick decision, but then be flexible. Move to opportunities where they come. Perhaps then that idea of you can't predict the future, you can't have everything under your control. For a lot of the students that you and I interact with, obviously landing a role, super intense, high stress,

And so what's really important is resilience and mental toughness. But for young people who are still early, not just in the career, in their life at this point, and some may might not have had the opportunities to, you know, have failure come throughout their life. So what ways and conversations have you have that you think have resonated with young people that would be

Just steps that they can take where they can start to build up that skill set. The best, I mean, we had the fortune to work with, you know, well over 100,000 young students, right? And I've got to know some of them incredibly well over years. And in fact, some of our students are now some of the most successful people in the industry, which makes me feel old. The ones that have really done incredibly well, I think, have the yes button.

It's just yes when something comes up. If there's an event, if there's a networking session, if there's a job offer that isn't exactly what they wanted, but it's an offer, they...

They go for it. So I think it's that positive proactivity, eyes open. Even when that student obviously, you know, young, hasn't had all of these experiences yet. Just by being putting yourself in those positions opens up so many different opportunities, you

You really never know. As you've seen now, Anthony, in some events, you say yes to go and help, let's say, with a charity event or a networking event or a social mobility event. And it turns out that there's someone there that knows someone there that then leads to another opportunity. So I think just my advice would be that energy, enthusiasm, and even if it's not what you thought you wanted to do or the perfect outcome,

Just do it. Just do it. See what happens. What's the worst that can happen? You maybe spent a day doing something that wasn't as productive as it could have been. But that's fine.

You mentioned networking then, and also you mentioned networking to me the other day because you were listening to a conversation about it. I just wondered, just briefly, could you just describe to me some, because your job, you have a lot of client-facing conversations, things like that, something that you are very natural at, very good at.

how do you what advice can you give to people where that's not their natural dna and they haven't really been in that professional setting before and they're self-conscious and things like that i think the the most common lesson i could sort of share with with any young person is to try and get to to feel the person that's speaking to you let them talk look at them listen to them and

whatever you say, try and make it about them or relevant or interesting to them. I think what some students do is, and out of nerves, for sure, I want to tell you everything that I've done and everything I know as quickly as I can. And if you do that, it's like the worst ever sales pitch is where you just share a hundred deck slide deck, right? And just talk and talk and talk at someone because you've not got to

There's no bond. There's nothing that's been created between you. Ultimately, people buy people. It's all an interview as a sales pitch, right? And if you're going to sell something, it needs to matter to that person. It needs to feel personal. And the only way it can feel personal is if you're listening to them. It's a light conversation. You create some sort of connection. And I think that type of personal connection is important.

Again, if you're trying to force it, it's almost impossible. But it's just about my big advice would be listen, take some time, share some information about yourself, but then try and see if they can interact better.

during your discussion. So if someone asks you about your CV, absolutely, tell them about it. But if you can bring in, well, you know, do you think that would be an, you know, you could say, oh, so I had an experience here and did this, which I think would be relevant to the role because of one, two, three. And then you could say to the interviewer, is that right? You know, is that aligned? Do you think in your experience, those sorts of traits are relevant to the role? I'd be interested to know what you think.

And they might say, well, yeah, and then they start talking and they might say, but then you get to, then it's a one and then it's a to and fro, which is much better than just a one dimensional. Yeah, really sound advice. So being proactive listener and really hearing their side and their problems and their desires and working with them. All right, final question. I did mention at the top of the show that you are, our business is growing particularly in the quantitative space.

space. Naturally, that's a long way in which the direction of markets are moving. A couple of things here, a couple of angles on this. For one, you spend a lot of time both with students in that domain, but also clients. One question students ask a lot is,

How is traditional trading changing and what skill sets should I have to be best positioned? And will the more traditional roles like sales trading still exist? And then also, just how has the game changed just more broadly? I mean, when you were trading, we kind of used that blunt description of point-click human discretionary trader.

What does the world look like now and the role of technology and data? So interesting. So I would say, I mean, when I started trading, the two years before I started, futures were still traded on the life floor, the futures exchange with hands and arm movements, open outcry.

So when I started trading, it was when these things called computers started to be used for the first time. So although it feels rudimentary to us now to go back and say, point and click on a mouse, even how I mean, I remember those pit traders that were there, you know, like looking at a mouse. And it's like, what do I do with this?

You know, that was a huge change in technology, right? And everyone was saying, well, that's it. You know, this is going back 20 years now. That's it. Trading's, you know, manual trading's over. And it's not. You know, we're helping source more traders than ever before now. How, though, the role has changed is the skill sets are different.

so now absolutely having uh you know a quantitative approach to both research and trading is really important what does that mean for a student it means you know fundamentally you should be able to code you know that that that is important and if you really don't know just have it in your mindset just to do some practical elements of it just have an interest in that um

I think an interest in markets is still very important as well, but it's just much more technical. So whereas before I was trading the relationship between, you know, two, five and 10 year German government bonds, I was trading that the relative value changes between them and adjusting my size to be neutral according to their volatility. We were doing that all manually.

And it wasn't perfect by a long ways. Now it's all quantitative. You know, the deep mathematical formula that goes into recognizing these relationships and changing these relationships and then automating strategies. So there's a huge demand for trading talent now. It is more quantitative.

That's the big change. Will there still be roles for salespeople? Absolutely. 100%. I think I'm more confident than ever that the skill sets are sort of going a bit like this. You're either really, really good at sales, you're a people person, and that's not something that can be automated automatically.

well, people still buy people, or you're more quantitative on the algorithmic side. Interestingly enough, does it change the pressures that, you know, I felt we talked about stress, we talked about pressure? No, I think because even if you're, let's say, babysitting an algorithm that's been written, you still need to make those judgment calls when the algorithm needs changing. Is it

we've lost money three days in a row now from this arbitrage strategy. Do we change it now? Do we not change it? So still those behavioral elements, I would say, are still there. But yeah, absolutely got more technical, which is a good thing because it means these trading roles are continuing to exist. And in fact, the trading firms and some of our clients are making more money than ever before, which is all a good news story.

All right. Excellent. Well, that concludes our episode. So thank you so much, Will. We won't make it so long. Thanks for letting me on. I mean, well, what we'll do is anyone listening, particularly on the Spotify platform can ask questions. So

So if anything that Will's mentioned has just sparked a question in your mind that you'd like to ask, just drop a comment and we'll do our best to respond. But thank you, Will, and thank you everyone for listening. Thanks, Anthony.

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