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Curtin Call is Kim's weekly newsletter that explores the world of finance, trading, investing & leadership through thought-provoking questions.
Excerpts from The Five Practices to Become a Better Trader
“Self-Responsibility is very important to have as a trader because without it you can spiral into trading destruction, therefore becoming an unprofitable trader. Obviously, that is not good and it’s why some people fail — because they don’t have that self-responsibility. It’s just being responsible for your actions. If you take a loss, you gotta be responsible, you can’t hide from it. Some people do hide from it and that’s why they continue to struggle.”
– Jack Kellogg
Practice One: Self Responsibility, The Five Practices to Become a Better Trader
“Self-Empathy allows me to deal with difficult situations and outcomes without imploding. I lean on my wisdom or the wisdom of others to coach myself into a positive mindset. One key mindset I adopt during tough times, like a drawdown, is reminding myself that “if I were a better trader, I wouldn’t be in this situation”, so I must grow. Another mantra I like is, “You are exactly where you need to be.” This helps me deal with feelings of inadequacy and focus on attacking the present.”
– Brian Lee
Practice Two: Self/Other Empathy and Trading, The Five Practices to Become a Better Trader
“The hardest thing to understand as a new trader is that it is your failures that will ultimately define your success in the future. Everyone I know who has started off being profitable has eventually lost it all and then had to really decide if trading was the journey for them. I personally ran accounts up a lot on more than one occasion before losing it all. My trading life changed when I decided I needed to change what I was doing, become more focused and build and follow a defined process in order to make money trading over time. I learned this from the lessons of losing money. It is really the only way.”
– Jason Shapiro,
Practice Four: The Internal and External Journey of Trading, The Five Practices to Become a Better Trader
“Along with emotional non-resistance, being emotionally self-aware really resonates with me. One of the most important parts of my trading day is checking in with myself. How and what am I feeling? Am I calm and focused, or tired and angry? Those are two very different environments for a trader to be in. Being self-aware of not only how you are feeling, but also how you tend to react and trade in those states, and developing a process around that, will take your trading consistency and risk-management to the next level.”
– Jeremy Aguiar
Practice Five: Self-Awareness and Mindfulness, The Five Practices to Become a Better Trader
“Self-empathy is being open with the mistakes we’ve made. For example, the trading mistakes I made early in my career… They caused me, at the time, a lack of empathy for myself. But when I shared openly I was able to move past them. Through sharing, my hope is that others don’t repeat the same mistakes.”
– Mari Hincapie
Practice Two: Self/Other Empathy and Trading, The Five Practices to Become a Better Trader
“Something my mom taught me from a very young age was: you can’t control what happens to you or in your life, but you can control how you respond. You are responsible for your own actions and your own feelings. You can’t control your feelings, you’re gonna feel sad when bad stuff happens. But, at the end of the day, you have control over it to some degree. Even if it happens, you can control how you want to respond to it.”
– Kyle Williams,
Practice One: Self Responsibility, The Five Practices to Become a Better Trader