Trader Performance Masterclass with Mandi R. - #247
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So welcome back to the EdgeWong podcast and today we are very happy to have Mandy here known as MPX Trader on Twitter. We have talked many times over many hours private and off cam and on cam so we are really happy to have you here Mandy. Hello and welcome back. Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here and hang out with you guys.

I always cherish our time together. I still have this photo of us underneath the European Union sign in Frankfurt when we had lunch together. It's just very special. And for those who don't know, Manny is a professional performance coach and a mindset coach. So we have a lot to talk about. And Moritz is also here. Hello, Moritz. Hello.

So I want to get right back in. We already had a very interesting pre-talk and I want to ask you, because you are working so closely with a lot of different traders, who have so many different experiences, challenging and also really exciting.

When it comes to strategies for bouncing back from a streak of long losses or maybe margin calls, big losses, what is a good actionable exercise, a tip, or what can those traders do to recover their mindset? Wow, we are diving right in. Yes, we are. It is a very big question and something that is so important.

I think so important, really career defining. Because also like in sports, we have the Australian Open at the moment and one of our best tennis players, Kokenakis, he didn't win, he was fighting and fighting, but his shoulder was just busted. And he says, you know, I'm working so hard and then my shoulder keeps setting me down. And

So what do you do? How do you bounce back and come back the next competition? And in trading, it's a little bit easier because we can come back the next trade, but we want to get there with a clear mindset, right? And so in my model of the world, there is not one right way on how to bounce back because everyone is different. As you guys know, I'm a really big fan of the DISC profile, the D-I-S-C profile. And

I'm also a disc profiler since 2016. So I use that with every one of my traders and the disc profile is a behavioral test. So I didn't say personality because personality is fixed. Behavior is flexible. And so it's a behavioral test where it shows us how we deal with pressure, how we make decisions.

how we connect with other people or do we connect with other people, right? Then there's the introvert and the extrovert. So for everyone, it's different. So let's say we have an introvert, right?

And an introvert will have to be on their own, maybe with one other person and just really go inside and sort out their feelings and look for what was going on. What is it that I need right now in order to bounce back? And I will go into more detail after I give the overview.

Then if you have someone who is an extrovert, like a high I in the disk profile, they need to be around other people. So let's say we are trading all alone behind our computer. Like last night, for example, I had a trader, or your day, I had a trader who was short like a world champion and then the market rallied up after CPI.

And he just got caught, right? He gave all the profits back that he has made and more, and he was devastated. And so for him, the very first thing he has to do is he has to go out and be amongst other people to get energy back, to just get back to ground zero, right? To level before he can actually start building up again. Because if he would stay on his own, maybe watching Netflix or whatever it would be all alone at home,

It would kill him, right? The thoughts would just keep going crazy and crazy around in his head. So that's why you can already see based on our behavioral profile, how we naturally interact with the world, how we naturally recover. That is already giving us a clue on what to do when we have had a string of losses. So that's number one.

Number two, like with every tennis player, we all need to have a team around us that helps us in those times. But nothing great has ever been achieved alone. I call my team my circle of champions.

And, you know, they're not just traders. They're like my chiropractor who, by the way, treats Djokovic, which I find really epic. And that's actually how I found him because a friend of mine is like, you know, go see this guy. And it's like, I don't like chiropractors. He's like, he's treating Djokovic, you know, like what's good enough for Djokovic would be good enough for you. And it's like, okay, then. And I went and I'm mind blown because he uses kinesiology.

And he doesn't just plunk me on the table and cracks

my spine in place. No, he's testing with kinesiology where my blockages are, where I'm out of alignment and very, very gently. Like for example, my collarbone was out of alignment very, very gently. He adjusts that there's no, no violent cracking how I know it from many chiropractors. So why I mentioned the chiropractor is after I started working with him, he,

wow, my decision-making process improved tremendously because the spine is the highway to the brain. So in order for us to press the mouse button

the impulse comes from the brain through the spine into our index finger. And if that highway is out of alignment, we can't, I shouldn't say we can't, but that will impact our ability to make really quick and solid decisions in the heat of the moment. Like when the market rallies right back after having had an impulse move or the other way around, we had an impulse move to the upside and then drops, right? Whatever it is. So,

We need to have our circle of champions, which also I have a coach myself, because we can't see ourselves from the back of our eyeballs, can we? And my coach is like pointing out certain behaviors or patterns. I'm like, really? Wow. You know, I wasn't even aware of it. And it's really hard to gain confidence.

awareness for the things that are hidden to us because also our unconscious tries to keep them hidden from us so that it can operate really openly sorry not openly so that it can operate behind our back and sneakily trying to keep us safe but as we know that's what we call the ego right the ego is trying to keep us safe but whatever the ego uses to keep us safe is

is from when we were children. So it's not really applicable anymore as adults and definitely not when we are trading in the markets. So for example, holding on to losses, that is the ego trying to keep you safe. What is it trying to keep you safe from? To uncover that is very, very difficult on your own. So that's why it's really helpful to have a coach or at least a trading buddy to talk these things through.

So that's my starting point, right? Who is your circle of champions? Who is there when things get tough? Who keeps you grounded? I have one trader, he's very, very successful. I don't do much talking. He talks most of the time because when he talks, that's how he processes information. He knows how to trade. He knows what to do, but...

He just needs, we call it witnessing and coaching, by the way. He just needs someone that he can talk to, to bounce the energy off. And so it comes actually out of his brain and doesn't get stuck in endless loops. So that's another thing.

team member that you can maybe find in your circle of champion teams when things have been tough that just have someone who listens to you and whilst you talk you gain clarity it's also very healing when we talk about trauma I don't know if you guys have seen movies where someone is really freaked out and then a person says look at me look at me look me in the eye

That is actually what we should do in trauma. So I do that also over Zoom when I work with people who have been in trauma. Because guys, you know what, when you have a losing streak, when you have a big loss, a drawdown, when you get margin calls, that is traumatic.

And we really underestimate that. And nowadays with MRI scans, there is so much that can be uncovered that we weren't previously aware of. You know, how much it impacts our nervous system, how much it impacts our adrenal glands, our cortisol levels and so on.

So that is also something that I would really recommend in that moment that you have someone who looks you in the eye, has to be a trusted person, someone who doesn't judge, someone who knows how freaking hard trading is.

And so when you do with babies, you will have experienced that. When you have a baby and that is stressed, look the baby in the eye because it's a biological thing. When you look someone deep in the eye, the nervous system calms down.

Now talking about the nervous system, there's also some really cool tricks that we can do. When we have had a massive drawdown or we have a losing streak and we are still in it and we start losing faith, we start doubting ourselves. We start thinking, oh my God, what if I lost my edge? What if the markets are just never suited for my style of trading anymore? What if, what if, what if? What if I get too old? What if, you know...

I don't have enough sleep. Like all these fears start coming in.

And it's really useful that we know what to do in terms of calming down our nervous system, the parasympathetic system. So using, if you Google the vagus nerve, there's so much work that can be done with the vagus nerve. So here's one example, right? So you tilt your head a little to the right, put your hand very gently on the side, because putting your hand on the head is very calming,

And you do that with babies as well, right? You put it on the top of the head. That's calming. It's biological. And then you look up to the right. And that, I don't know exactly what it does, but it does something with the vagus nerve and it calms you down because it's what controls the parasympathetic nervous system. Then you do that, of course, the other side. I have to do it now. Otherwise, I'm one-sided.

So my Cairo has taught me how to deal with my nervous system because, yeah, when we know how to deal with anxiety, now to calm anxiety down, then we will

be able to deal better with these stresses in trading and then we don't need to be afraid of. Another really cool thing that he did with me, I don't know if it's possible to do it on your own, but if you find a kinesiologist who is really good, can do that with you or if you have a partner who knows how to do that, really amazing. So I had a presentation, a little hedge fund here in Melbourne. I don't do much live presentations anymore. Everything's behind Zoom or behind the camera where you can hide, right?

So I was incredibly nervous. And I had my chiropractic session with him. And he's like, what's up with you? You're just not focused, right? And it's like, oh, I'm sorry. I'm just...

freaking out because of tonight and he said what is it you're worried about and I said well you know English is obviously my first language so I'm worried about forgetting words I've prepared myself really well and I want to express myself on a very high level because these are high level people and I'm worried that I forget my words

He said, what else are you worried about? And I said, well, I forget. I'm worried about getting a blank mind because that's something that happens to me quite a lot. And that's trauma, right? I know it's trauma, but when I'm standing on stage and I forget what to say, it's not helpful to know that it's trauma, right? It's like, so what? Like, what do I do with it?

And so it was so amazing. He did the kinesiology test with me and I tested really, really weak. I know you guys know what tests are. He did a leg test with me. So he pressed my leg down and just gave in. And then I had to put my hand on my forehead and

And think about the things that I was worried about. Then I took my hand off and then he did a reframe with me and he said, okay, so what would happen if you forget what to say? I'm like, I have no idea. And he said, you could make it a meaningful pause and make them sit on the edge of their seat. I was like, I can do that. And he said, what else? I said, well, what happens if you get a blank mind? What can you do? And he's like, I have a blank mind now. And he's like, you can't.

you could prepare one or two questions that help you that you can just tap into ask them until so they can answer the questions and then you find your feet again so to speak and then you can continue with your presentation who has a question does it resonate

what have you learned so far? Write three questions that help you to just gain your composure again. They wouldn't even know because they don't know your presentation. I'm like, oh yeah, that's true. So again, I had to put my hand on the forehead. Again, that's something nervous system. And then say to myself six times these reframes. And here's the cool thing. He was standing behind me and he was using those two fingers and tap,

150 times. I didn't have to do anything. He was just tapping and then he tested me again. I could not tap into that fear again. It was gone. Now it doesn't mean that I didn't have the concern that it would happen. The concern was still there because it's a valid concern, but the fear that is paralyzing is gone. And that is a place of power that we can operate from that then opens new doors of opportunity.

That we maybe get stuck and then we become creative and think of something completely new, a new topic or a new way of interacting. It's like, wow, this is so cool. So there's so many things that we can do in order to deal with those moments of stress. And of course, now the very practical part, we have to go back and retrade the losing traits that we had.

Even if they were according to our system, it is always helpful to find out what is it that's not working in this market. I mean, currently we have a little bit of volatility, right? Or do I have a system that is more trend following and that's why I don't deal with the volatility? Well, what can I do? In 2016, when Trump was...

inaugurated, we had the Trump rally, right? And I was more of a reversal pattern trader and I got killed, right? Boy, I lost so much money because I didn't have the tools to trade on trend. I wasn't a trend follower. So the big news was for me, learn how to have additionally to the reversal pattern system,

a trend following system, become more versatile or stay out of the market. Doesn't matter, but you can't trade reversal patterns in a market that started in 2016 that is so impulsive. So we can always learn something

Again, the tricky part here is that we don't know what we don't know. And I see that a lot with my traders. So my traders, they go on live market replay and they replay their trades. But there's something that they weren't aware of. For example, I was working with a trader. He's relatively new. He has been practicing a certain style of trading, but he hasn't been practicing Fibonacci levels. And I said to him, look,

It came all the way down to the 61% retracement and then it rallied up. So that was the guy from this morning who got killed yesterday. And he's like, wow, I never worked with Fibonacci. So there was a piece of information that he wasn't aware of that was missing for him that is helpful for him. And that's why when we do market replays,

It's very important to get someone who helps us to fill in those blanks. And guys, I see the work that you do with Edgewonk. When you look at the statistics, the videos that you put out, phenomenal. I send so many of my traders to your videos because that's exactly now the practical work that has to be added to all the mindset and emotional work. Yeah, that's a huge answer. Yes, we like that.

I want to dig in because I'm really intrigued when you mentioned the vagus nerve for traders. Because two years ago, roughly two years ago, I had a crazy episode where after 20 years of trading, I suddenly started feeling dizzy all the time, had panic attacks, etc., etc. It was insane. No one could help me. The doctors didn't find anything. And then I started Googling, etc., and I came to the vagus nerve.

Yeah, wow. It was crazy. I was in bed, the world was spinning totally nuts. And I came to the vagus nerve and since I found those exercises to calm down the vagus nerve, this has noticeably reduced. I still sometimes feel dizzy, especially in stressful situations, but then I do my exercises.

yeah reduces so for me it's the parasympathetic nervous system it was completely out of control it was insane yeah so it's it's amazing that you work with the vagus nerve as well because so far i haven't found any other coach that in trading that does that yeah wow i'm so sorry to hear that because um it was crazy this is this is crazy feeling so

out of control and it renders us helpless when we don't find anyone to help us. So I'm so glad you found something. You have to come to Melbourne and work with my dude, Mr. Mia. I should. I should. Dr. D. Yeah. He's just, you know, one of those guys, he's also been through so much shit in his life. And I think anyone who has experienced challenges before,

they have a different feeling for what is going on with people who have these experiences that you have. That's what we call compassion, right? I'll fly over to Melbourne finally. Yeah, yeah. Amazing. Tax deductible trip. We're going to do some work together. Sounds good. Yeah. Wow. So do you have anything specific that you could share that would also help traders understand

Because again, you know, when we are in a drawdown and then exactly what you say, suddenly the fear kicks in and that's when we can't make good decisions anymore.

for me it was 100 percent uh physical in the sense that when i started doing these vagus nerve exercises which some of them are breathing exercises some of them are actually massaging like putting your hands in here and massaging the vagus nerve together with breathing um when i do that in the morning plus some meditation where i actually have to hum like um

Yeah, the energy vibration. Yes, it stimulates the vagus nerve, calms it down. All of that together, it made me feel much more safe in my own body again. And also it made me see the world in a more

from a more relaxed state as opposed to yeah i saw everything as a danger or an adversary everything yeah i think everything was a threat from everywhere like classic anxiety disorder i guess and did you also have this heart pumping and shivering and sweating yeah yeah i've only read about it so

i went to the to the er twice because my my heart i had chest pain like someone was stabbing me in the chest with a knife but the doctor they found absolutely nothing so it was all the vagus nerve it was crazy right or this parasympathetic system so yeah for me it's qigong as well helps really well

Like chakras, energies, all that stuff. I'm so happy for you that you found a solution. You know, I did Wim Hof 2021 during COVID and he explains also when you do the ice baths that it actually calms down the nervous, the parasympathetic nervous system.

So that might also be an option for you. I love Ice Bath. So I think it's something that you have done as well, haven't you? Yeah, I tried to find, I mean, I found Ice subscription. It's not so easy in Hong Kong to, especially in Sao A. I know, it's a cool place. But

But I actually found someone who brought me ice every morning for two months. And I did an ice bath every morning as well. Amazing. And it was very helpful as well. Yeah. So isn't it amazing how powerful the mind is? Absolutely. Would you say it was your mind that caused the anxiety because the doctors couldn't find anything? Yes. Or would you say it was more like a physical thing?

Yeah, it was definitely in my mind. I think after 17 years of doing this thing, betting for a living, and I never really took care well of me, like with exercise. So I did some sports, but always sporadic, etc. I think eventually my nervous system... And I know you went hard, like you went at night and

yes right yes so everything went into overdrive eventually right and i didn't see the warning signs now with hindsight i see the warning signs um but back then i just ignored them and i went on as usual and then eventually just collapsed it was all in my mind might have been yeah might have been a case of you didn't know what you didn't know and now you know the warning signs at the time you didn't

um you know that's what you call wisdom i think or experience yes yes now i know how to slow down and regulate myself better when uh when the feelings come back up but back then it was insane oh wow and this is what you call emotional regulation in the end right so yeah so i read this really interesting book about this topic uh the art of learning from josh wadeskin

Ah yes, he is cool. He was like a top world class chess player and one thing that I found really interesting when he said when he's at a tournament playing chess you get very excited, aroused, very emotional. It's like a battle between your opponent and then he said sometimes you just need a circuit breaker so he would get up from the board run up and down a flight of stairs a few times to completely wipe his mind get his heart beating, get out of his head

Then he would come back to his chess board to see everything much, much clearer afterwards and can make decisions much more objectively. And I think for trading, it's very, very similar. I've told this to many people as well. When you're in front of your charts, you are so locked in. You don't see anything. You often cannot make objective decisions anymore. I see it so often.

in the trading journals that I review, traders know exactly what they should not be doing. They write it in their trade notes. I'm doing this again. I have to stop this. But then you look at the next two or three trades and it's just the same story over again. So I think those circuit breaker moments, stepping away from the screen, finding balance, and I think also just exercise, something to get your heart pumping, get out of your head

is so so helpful for traders as well important and you know linda rashki she also she had a whole year of chronic fatigue she couldn't get out of bed and it was the same thing or not same but similar to your experience just working so so hard and not getting the warning signs

And her adrenals are completely shot, so they're not producing any hormones anymore. So she has to take adrenal hormones now for the rest of her life. Because, yeah, that's what happened when she was running her hedge fund. People underestimate the impact our job has on our lives.

on our health. And so I love the idea, what you say, Rolf, like we have the privilege, we can get up from our screens and run around. When you're working, I don't know, at the checkout in a shopping center, you can't, you're stuck behind the cash out, right? So we do have the privilege and really need to use it. Right, totally.

You mentioned Linda, and I want to ask you one thing, but I'm so curious. So Linda Rushdie, for those who don't know, one of the market wizards, high world-class trader. When you look at how she approaches the market versus a normal trader, was there like an aha moment where you said, oh, wow, that's why she is the market wizards? Is there anything that stood out?

Oh my God, it's still, you know, now since 2018 and I still sometimes like, oh my God, it's just unbelievable. And I learned so much from her in not only like, oh, now I know why you are so amazing, was also like, oh, now I know why certain things in my life don't work. And again, it's this mirror thing where,

You get feedback and you know something is not working. So you get feedback from life or you get feedback from the markets. You know something is not working, but you don't know what it is. What specifically is that thing that's not working? So Linda, for example, I'm just trying to think of something really, really, really useful that changed it for me. Her way of thinking in context changed.

So she one of her trading strategies is the ABC pattern. Everybody trades an ABC pattern. And I started talking about an ABC pattern. Linda, it's like, well, you can't really talk about it like that. It's not linear. It's so dependent on context.

I was like, okay, you know, I didn't even notice. It's like, oh, now I know why I misread some ABC patterns because I didn't take the context into consideration. Like I know about context. I mean, we all know about context in trading. It did not occur to me. I thought the ABC pattern is just a simple ABC. No, it's context dependent on how deep it goes or how, you know, sometimes the ABC patterns are almost like a double bottom pattern.

The context is telling us already in advance how that is going to unfold. So the whole context conversation was a game changer for me. You mean like the little nuances of the pattern or where it occurs or all of that together? More so context is, for example, timing. If we have an ABC pattern in the morning, they usually unfold differently than ABC pattern in the afternoon.

So what's the time of day function the pattern is unfolding? I'm just trying to think of the name she used. So how much money is on the sidelines? There were several times over the last few years where on a big picture, on the S&P, also the bigger or the NASDAQ, there were ABC patterns setting up.

And Linda said, it's not going to play out because there's so much money on the sidelines. It will be bought up immediately. So because we had an uptrend, the ABC pattern would have been the correction. She said, it's not going to happen because of the breadth of the market, so much money on the sidelines and a few other, I can't remember, you know, with interest rates and so on.

So that's the context that she would take a little ABC pattern on a daily, of course, right? Not on a five minute chart. A five minute chart is a different story. But really trading the bigger picture patterns. That really helped me as well to then look at when do my patterns fail and what's the context of failure here. And then being able to ask Linda and say, you know, I was trying to trade this. It didn't work out.

what do you think from your perspective was the impact that made it fail? And then she, the first thing she then says, well, a pattern that fails is a new entry to the other side, isn't it? Okay. So her flexibility in thinking, um,

Another context conversation is she's got like, I don't know, 20 markets up. She's got oil and net gas and copper and wheat and beef and of course the futures markets. So she has all these markets up because she understands how they interrelate.

And that's also often where I have no knowledge and I would then ask, why didn't it work? Well, because that market has to do something first before this market can do whatever it does. It's like, oh my God, too much information because I am not a big picture visionary thinker, right? It's the high Ds in the disk profile. I'm more of a detailed person.

And it's incredibly hard for me to think in these bigger picture linear interdependencies, not linear, the multilinear interdependencies. She has it. So I just ask her, but it goes back to your circle of champions. Who do you have who can compensate for what you're not good at? So you don't need to force yourself to do the things that you're not good at, but you can focus on what you're really good at.

When it comes to taking losses, Linda is so self-assured that she might get annoyed taking a loss, but she's not worried about it because she knows she can make it back. She has no doubt. She has this unshakable faith. Why? Because she's done the work. She has done so much modeling. So she's not a big fan of backtesting. She's a big fan of modeling.

So modeling means that she says, "Oh, what happens every day after the first 15 minute bar?" And she's gone through and tested that so many times, she knows now. And so we need to remember she has a 40 year career. That's how she started, right? With this simple, "Oh, what happens if this, what happens if we change that variable? What happens if we add this variable?"

And because she's done all the probabilistic work, the statistics work, the mathematical work, she is not too caught up in her feels and emotions because she knows how the statistics of the market of the trading systems work. That's super interesting. Do you think then that like normal, like the retail traders,

often have systems that are, or they try to make it too simple. You often hear the slogan, keep it simple in your trading strategy, but there is a lot of high level thinking as well. And a lot of nuances in the way you described the trading of, of her. And I'm sure other high profile traders would say as well, that there's much more to it than a moving average crossover or hitting a supply zone or looking at those very simple, simplistic approaches. Do you think,

Keeping it too simple is a problem for a lot of traders? I think it's not the simplicity. It's the not understanding when it works and when it doesn't work. Moving average crossover system works, but only in trending markets. It doesn't work in a sideways market. So how do you know in advance if you have a sideways market? That's in context, right? Because there's something with a breadth or there's something that it's waiting for

a number to come out or, you know, we know OPEX week is always volatile. So moving average crossover strategies don't really work so well during OPEX week. So options expiry week for those who think OPEX is oil. No, it's options expiry. So what I see with many of my traders who come to me and think they have mindset problem, they have a lack of understanding problem.

lack of understanding what is the difference between a retracement and a reversal. They think the trade is going to reverse, they jump out, but the trade just did a retracement into the 20 moving average or middle Bollinger or into Fibonacci level and then took off again without them. And that was then the really big like three using Elliott Wave. And then they got frustrated and then they're like, that's not fair.

I was in this trade, I got out too early and then I missed all this move. Instead of making $1,000, I could have made $10,000. And then they get angry and then all the insecurities get triggered and then they start going revenge trading and so on. I love this. I love this answer so much. Sorry to interrupt you. I...

I reviewed so many journals and I keep seeing this that traders they track their trades and they said okay I'm following the

rules and I'm executing it according to the plan. Everything looks good. But then you look at all the trades and then between those trades where everything is going well, they take those trades that they know they shouldn't be in. They might look good, but then they're missing the context. They don't know when they should sit out. So it's news, it's off hours, it's just unfavorable conditions. And often that makes the difference between profitable and not profitable.

avoiding those trades when you know you should sit out and knowing when your system is is not in the right context i think that's so important for traders to understand yeah that's why i want to highlight it yeah and and you know i was with a trader and he wanted to he we had some fmc or something and he wanted to go short whatever reason before fomc i'm like dude

It's FMC, like, don't go now, right? Wait for the number to come out. And he's like, but there's a short entry according to my system. I have to follow my rules, you know. Peter Brent said, you have to follow your rule, you know, no matter what. And it's like, no. See, that's the context conversation you're referring to, Rolf, where there's moments when you don't just blindly follow your strategy, right?

Or you pay for it. Sometimes we get lucky, we follow our strategy blindly and then we're on the right side of the trade and sometimes we are not. That is definitely something that I see a lot as well where they say, no, I don't want to follow news. I'm not a news trader.

But again, we have to take this information into consideration to give our trade the highest probability. So they maybe don't understand probabilities and statistics, everything that we need to do. Under which circumstances does my strategy work? When does my strategy not work? That's the work that most traders don't do. And again, in EdgeWomp, you can see that.

But I just love your edge wonk there. Yeah, we always recommend to have like, we have those custom stats where you can set up your tags and we recommend set up one tag for the environment. Is it a trending market? Is it a range market? Is there news around your trades? And then very often you will see, okay, I've been following the system. The trade looks perfect on paper. But then there was something else going on that

made the trade not work out. And if you keep seeing this over a good sample size, then you realize, okay, the system, the setup looks perfect, but the context is not right. And once you start seeing this, then you can unlock those things where those things you previously didn't know, you didn't know. And then slowly you can cue in your system or just

know when you should not trade those things. I think it's very important. I so love that. And again, this is going back to 2016 when I was desperately trying to trade double tops, but all the double tops turned into triangle continuation patterns. And if I had known Linda then, I would have had her words in my ear. Well, if the double top fails, it's a triangle continuation pattern, you go long.

like easy, but it was just not in my, in my world and my map of the world. And I'm like, why was I not even thinking about this? But it doesn't matter. You know, it's like, so many things that I think nowadays are common sense that I didn't see as common sense, you know, 20 years ago. So I think it's just experience as well. Yeah. But really how Linda deals with us. You go. Yeah, sorry, sorry. You go, you go first.

I think what really amazes me is how Linda deals with losses and setbacks also in her personal life.

But she doesn't dwell on it. But it's not that she's like, I can't dwell on my setbacks and mistakes. She's naturally like this. You know, she would write something in Skype to me like, oh, you know, something that annoyed her, upset her, and I'm busy. And then I come back three hours later and it's like, oh, no, what happened? And she's like, what do you mean what happened? She already forgot about it.

Because she's so focused on where are the next doors of opportunities. There's so much happening that I can do. So many strategies, so many markets. I don't need to worry about this one trade because look at my 20 markets that I can trade. And she trades setups. If she sees a short skirt setup or a pinball setup, it doesn't matter which market she

And that's why she does need to worry about missing out because she knows the next setup is just around the corner.

Talking about that mindset, that's exactly what I wanted to get into because journaling is maybe one of the more tedious tasks of your trading career. And I always see that people, especially when they go into a drawdown and things are not going that well, then all their routines fall apart. They stop journaling and they just don't follow their trading plans anymore, etc. But obviously, that is exactly the time when you have to journal and dig deeper

figure out what's not working or in which context, as you said, to then come back out of that drawdown stronger. So if you are not a natural like Linda that doesn't get frustrated or doesn't dwell on past mistakes or drawdowns, how do you get that, cultivate that mindset that you push through, keep journaling and dig yourself out of that hole? I believe it's learned behavior.

So Linda's mother, and I have permission to talk about these things. We talked about it really in detail. And I met her mother and we talked with her mother as well. She's a psychologist who studied at Stanford University. Very, very interesting, you know. And so I can ask her these questions about Linda from a different perspective. And so Linda's mother,

is someone who already trained Linda to look forward and to keep going. So they would go hiking on the weekends and the kids were like, oh, how far is it? Just up to that summit, not far to go. Okay. And then, oh, wow, look, there is another summit. Let's take that as well. Yeah, but we are so tired. You can do it, you know? So her mother was very motivational and

pushing them to always do more the next top of the mountain, the next top of the mountain. And they also played games a lot. So there were four siblings that played board games a lot. So Linda learned how to lose and feel really bad and annoyed about it, but to not lose her head about it and to just like, you know,

That's it. It's annoying. But next time I'm going to beat you. So, you know, have this mindset of competitiveness almost that was then already implanted in her. So we can definitely train ourselves to do that.

And I trained myself. I always listened to, in my mind, you know, what would Linda say in a year or so. I can even ask her. And we all have friends who are like that, who are forward-looking. And then look at how is it that they think. It's just a programming, nothing else. So we reprogram ourselves. When we...

are in a drawdown so deep that we stop journaling and we are in survival mode, which that's essentially survival mode. Then we have let it go far too deep. And it's not the journaling or the stopping the journaling that is the situation here. It is actually the where was the optimal time to stop the spiraling down so that you can actually dig your way out of it.

Does it make sense? Should I rephrase that? It makes sense. So you're basically saying that the trader maybe should have a hard stop, say, five hours on the day and then just cut it and come back the next day stronger? So the problem is not the stock journaling the trader. The problem is that the trader didn't stop the avalanche of losses that got him into this mess.

so deep that he can't he's now in survival mode and stops journaling it's like when we get in stressful situations that's when we should eat really healthy vegetables drink water what do we do we have the craving for sugar and salt and coca-cola right i love coca-cola but i try not to drink it but i know when i'm stressed and i drink a coke it's like whoa right but um

It's about what you said before, knowing the warning signs. Someone who stops journaling, they don't just have one or two losses. They're really deep in the mess. Would you see that, Rolf, when you look at the statistics? Totally, yeah. It's not like you just stop journaling out of nowhere because you just don't feel like it. But it's so frustrating to look at what you've just done over the last 10 trades and you don't want to confront us, I think. That's a very big part.

So what we want to do here is we want to use the wellness approach, kind of what you said, Moritz, if I had known the warning signs, I would have taken care of myself much earlier. So what I personally use, and also for my traders, number of losing trades in a row, number of profitable trades in a row. So I know when I have seven or eight profitable trades in a row, something happens and I start making mistakes.

So I get to trade number six or seven, I'm already alert because I know that now there might be losing coming on. What is that one trade that breaks my losing streak? Was it that I was tired? Did the market change? Did the time of day change? That my strategy didn't work during that time? And so what was it?

Now, see, I took the first trade and I immediately looked at what is it? Why did my winning streak get interrupted? I deal with it straight away. I don't let it accumulate into frustration and overwhelm. And I use journaling to do that for my trade. So once you're so deep under, of course, you can't journal anymore because you're in trauma, your brain is in trauma. And then we can't do these things anymore. Yeah.

It might be a big of a question, but how do you get out of trauma? If you're completely devastated by the biggest drawdown of your trading career, how the hell do you make out of it? So I have a trader and he works for a professional prop firm in New York. He was trading really well and then I'm just trying to

to remember which one it was. I think it was Beto. So they're not allowed to trade coins. They can only trade ETFs. So he traded Beto instead of Bitcoin. And he was long and good position. He had done really well for the year. So he's top end seven figures. So he's trying to crack the eight figure mark.

And that's why we were working together. And he had this, so beta was dropping overnight. Bitcoin was just collapsing overnight. It was last year sometime. I'm sure you guys remember what it was. And it was a $450,000 loss. That is massive, right? So all the profits gone overnight. And again, what we know about trauma, and there's so much that we can read about it,

The first thing you need to do is call someone you trust, ask them to look you in the eyes and you just tell them about it. The first being a guy as well, and you know, one of those tough guys, he wanted to play tough dude and not deal with the emotion and say, "I'll be fine." It's like, no.

I know you'll be fine, but we can speed up the process of getting fine when you just talk and tell me what is going on. Because what they want to do is avoid that feeling. In order to heal, we must feel. And I mean, what is going on tilt? That is trying to avoid the feeling of having lost or having made unforced errors or whatever happened before the going on tilt.

but it's it's just trying to regulate the emotion that was triggered by something else when we missed out on a trade or something and then of course that's a spiral down then but when we face that feeling so let's um in that moment it was something that wasn't his mistake but he faced that feeling and i was there holding the space for him and he could go through the emotion and feel really crap and tell me how crap he felt

and how disappointed and how angry and it's like, I really get it. I didn't try to make him feel better. I didn't try to make it sound better. Anytime you try to tell someone they're trying to make you feel better, it's because they can't deal with the emotions. In that moment, there is nothing to make you feel better because it's just,

Like when we have experiences in life that are painful because we lost a loved one or something, there's nothing we can say to make it better. But we can be there for the other person and hold the space for them so that they can be with the emotion. Because when we're with the emotion, that's when we heal. In order to heal, we must feel. And that's all the John Bradshaw work says.

I don't know if you know John Bradshaw. I just love all his work in terms of how to deal with the emotions. It's a lot of what we read and learn nowadays from other professionals who are deep in the emotional regulation field have built their work on John Bradshaw's work or Gabor Mate. And also it's the vagus nerve work.

In that moment, do the tapping. There's a tapping sequence that you can do. There is anything, qigong, because what is that emotion? It's blocked energy in our body. Qigong is bringing the energy in motion and releasing it out. That's where I would start. And then, of course, you go and you look for new...

you look for new opportunities and um I can tell you did so well he he had a million dollar day nice recovery well done yeah yeah so that's what we always have to keep in mind this one trade it sucks and it hurts and but we have a future in front of us and it'll be fine love it amazing

Just one thing I wanted to throw in because when we talk about people stop journaling or it's anything where you stop doing a routine, you get off the track. I think to get back on track, you should make it very easy for yourself. So don't look at your journal and say, oh, wow, I have to journal now 100 trades that I've not journaled. Just make a fresh cut, journal the next trade, keep the journaling to a very, very minimum area where it just takes a few minutes.

Just like when you want to get back on a, on a routine for fitness or eating out, just make it or eating better. Just make it very simple for you. Just listen to a Tim Ferriss podcast. He said as well,

He was a meditator for years, then he got off meditation. To make it easy for him, he just did five minutes in the morning in the beginning. Then eventually, as you start to feel better, as you get the routine better built in, you go to six, seven, eight, ten minutes, and sooner or later, you're back to where you wanted to be. So make it easy for yourself in the beginning. Don't overwhelm yourself. I think very helpful here in that context.

Because isn't it that once you have done it long enough and repeated often enough, you get addicted to it again because it actually feels good to journal. It feels good to know where your numbers are. It feels good to let it all out. Yeah. And you start seeing the benefits as well. And then once you start seeing the benefits, then you naturally want to do a little bit more to see how far you can push this. Yeah, absolutely. And, and, you know, that's a really good point. I always use this example. When you have a kid,

and that kid is playing with the scissors and you say to the kid don't play with the scissors the kid's like

I don't know what else to do, so I keep playing with the scissors. But if you say to the kid, don't play with the scissors, he is a teddy bear, play with the teddy bear, the kid plays with the teddy bear. And we have to do the same for our mind to say, don't feel bad or don't get slack with your journaling. It's not helpful.

But what you said, like to give them a strategy on what to do in that moment when we fall off our horse, that is super helpful. I did a, I used to be a ski instructor, you know, like decades ago. And the very first thing that we learned was how to fall.

and how to stop in the tracks. And it was really fun. So we had to ski and then we had to throw our weight over the tip of our skis, make 180 degree return. That was fun. And we have to do the same practice in trading. We have to learn how to fall. We have to practice how to take losses and many don't do that.

Many they just visualize on how to have great trades, how to have profits. No, visualize how to take losses. Visualize how you deal with your mistakes. And what you said, Rolf, it's very similar to what Damir did with me when I was freaking out with my presentation in the evening. When that happens, what are you going to do?

He didn't say to me, don't worry, it's not going to happen. Because then he would immediately, he would have disregarded me, disrespected me, not acknowledged my needs and my emotions. No, he was like really getting it and say, yeah, I get it. You know, it can happen. But here's your teddy bear, what you do instead in that moment.

It's also something that I think works beautifully with the journaling. Also, don't be too rigid. Sometimes there's just nothing to be said. You know, I always had this conversation with one of my traders because he also stopped journaling. He said, my mind was just so tired. I just didn't want to journal. And I said,

You need to listen to your mind. Your mind didn't need journaling in that moment. It needed something else, another activity to help it recover first. So you skip the journaling today because there's just so many hours in the day and you go and you do something for your mind to replenish, to refresh. What would that be? He said, I really hang out. I really want to play with my kids. I haven't seen them all week. And it's like, you go do that. Skip the journaling. Who cares?

But then on Monday, you come back and you start again with your journey, right? Also acknowledging what are our needs in that very moment, not getting too rigid with these things. Yeah, I think a lot of people miss this balanced lifestyle, especially in this performance, money-driven world of trading. They completely neglect it in so many different ways, be it physically, emotionally, social circle. And I think the more you try to balance it,

You have other outlets where you get joy, happiness, where you have connections. I think the better it will be for your trading. Even it means you're spending a little bit less time on your trading, but the benefits that you will have from this balancing out and having those other activities that you really enjoy are going to pay off a thousand fold.

Oh, absolutely. And you know, number one, we don't need to seek joy and connection and love and acknowledgement in the markets, number one. But also, we can use these other times and practice our trading. For example, go to a birthday party and say, I'm not going to have any cake. Practice your discipline, right? Or, you know, you have to talk to people. That's a tough one, yeah.

Yeah, but it's the same in trading, isn't it? You go and you say, I'm taking my loss. Practice your discipline. You hang out with people that you know trigger you and emotionally, like I have this friend and I love her dearly, but she starts a sentence and in the middle of the sentence she says, anyway, and then she changes topic. It's such a joy because I'm so kinesthetic. It really triggers me.

And then I can practice managing my emotions, right? Regulating myself. Yeah.

We should have said this three weeks ago before Christmas and everybody was spending time with their families. There was a lot of opportunity to practice that. Yeah, because the emotions that we experience around other people are not the other people triggering us. They're our mirror image, very much like the market is our mirror image of our mindset, of our values, of our beliefs, of our emotions.

So it's really interesting. I have two traders, right? So this big guy, the dollar guy, he's like, I hate, I hate losses. I hate them so much. You don't know how much I hate them. Like, okay, I got it. And I have another trader. He's like, I hate losses. You know, F word. And I don't know what the trader number one, he takes his losses because he hates them so much.

You know how in Edgewonk you have this distribution with a bars of profits and losses? He has like tiny losses and then these big bars, these big spikes in between. And the other trader, he hates losses so much that he doesn't want to take them. And he lets them run. He tries to avoid them.

Now my big trader, he also avoids losses by taking them so quick. Linda, for example, she's very, very clear on, she wants to create beautiful environments. Like when you're at her place, there's flowers, there's candles, everything's so beautiful. The garden is beautiful. She does not want to get, finish up the trading day with baggage. She gets out of stupid losses.

She doesn't want to take them, carry them into the next day because she says, if I already go with tainted energy into the next trading day, how am I going to make really good trading decisions? I can't. So that's one of the ways how she thinks. And she's like, you know, I need to have my sleep. Sleep is number one. And there is no arguing. There is no TV. There is nothing in the bedroom. It's all...

created to sleep well and to have peace of mind so that's that's um just something else i just remembered in answer to your question more of it but um yeah very interesting yeah so i think we have now hit the hour mark and there's i have so much written down here but i know whenever we sit down it's uh

You never run out of topics. So I want to thank you for your time, Mandy. It's been, again, such a big pleasure. Always so much fun to talk. Everything about you where people can connect, website, Twitter, it will be all linked in the podcast and the YouTube description. Thank you so much. If they want to connect, highly recommend it. You're doing coachings as well. Highly recommend it for anyone to check out if you're serious about

Again, thank you, Mandy, so much. It's always so fun to spend time with you and talk about anything, pretty much. Thank you. I love hanging out with you guys as well. So I'm sure we will make another podcast eventually, and I look forward to that. But first of all, thank you for today, for your time, and also thank you for Moritz for being here.