About

In this episode I had the pleasure of speaking with Zach Rubin, an accomplished entrepreneur, and devoted family man who found his passion for trading during the Covid-19 pandemic. Zach shared with us the first steps of the journey, including the pivotal decision all traders face - whether or not to take the plunge into the trading world. The episode is full of twists and turns that will keep you on the edge of your seat!

Delve into the fascinating world of trading psychology, learn to embrace failure, witness the transformative power of mindset, and discover the key become a Confident Trader.

Beginner's Journey Episode #1 of Confidence in Trading Podcast

In this Episode

Trading Psychology:

Building a strong trading mindset is key!

Zach: You don't see a lot of trading coaches that are telling you like how much money they've lost and how terrible it is, and how hard it is and how many nights they cry themselves to sleep and, you know, whatever. But you do. So that, I think and the other thing you're clouded by is your own sheer ambition of just saying, like, I know, I can do this, whatever. And that's a good thing, it's important to have ambition, and it's important to have confidence that you're going to make it because without that, you're not going to make it through the trials and tribulations to get there.

But there was another thing for me, which was that I did not realize even within the first six months, that to become a good trader, I needed to work on my mindset and that it involved far more than just my ability to see patterns and to recognize trends and to understand the charts and the tools on the trading platform. Like it was far more than that. And when I started to realize that was when I ultimately hired my second coach, which was you, to work on that mindset, because I came to the conclusion like, Okay, I've hired a professional trader, he's given me all the tools, and I'm still not getting it. The only other answer here is that I'm the problem, right? And so, or at least what's in between the ears is the problem. So that's when I started to look for additional support. 

 

The Power of Failure:

Building a resilient trading mindset

Agnieszka: There is also another part to being successful, which I think is, comes to light very strongly in trading, and that's failing. Because successful people, they are successful because after they fail, they get up. If you fail and never get up, you will not have success. And that's where I think that big difference comes in where you know how to deal with your failure. And it's being triggered every single day during your trading routine, right? Because every time you take a loss, if you don't know how to deal with that, if you really do not take it in and accept the losses, you just feel like you're failing every single time over and over again.

Zach: Well, that's one of the things about trading that I think I've learned to love about it, is that it is a constant practice of failure; it's constant, you fail every day, every you know what, like, maybe 1/3 of every trade you take is a loss is a fail. And, you know, it's like that expression, it's not how hard you fall, it's how fast you get up. Getting up in this sense is not just like getting back on the horse and getting into another trade, which is honestly how it first felt to me, when I first started trading, it's like, okay, like bad trade, lost money, get back in and jump back in. But that's actually wrong.

You don't want to just jump back in automatically. It's not about it's not a matter of how fast you get up. It's how well you get up and to maintain that sense of clarity and get back to your rules and your trading strategy and doing your best to focus on that and stay calm and collected as you proceed. And it's no different really, than in any failure in life. You know, in any failure in life, you're going to encounter that same desire to want to just get back up and get running again. But sometimes you need that moment of reflection, and you need that moment to get back down to your roots and your baseline principles to know how to get back and get back in the right direction in a way that is not going to lead you back to that same failure, because that's certainly something we're all familiar with, right? That failing over and over and over again, the epitome of insanity, right? Or the definition of insanity to keep repeating the same thing that leads you to the same place. So yeah.

 

Trading Mindset Makeover:

Profitability is a skill, not a consequence of trading!

Agnieszka: At the very beginning of trading, we think that with time it will just get better, right? And then, you have been trading for two years, or some people even for 10 years, and then they see someone else coming into the market and after one year, they have success. And it's a huge confusion, because how is that even possible? What I realized, what was really very important, was that profitability is actually a skill, and not just a consequence of trading. Did you know that when you started, did you know that you actually have to first learn to be profitable, and then repeat what you need to do and repeat your process and put the strategy in, in order to actually have results?

Zach: Yeah, so short answer, no, I did not realize that. But I think I've always been aware of the idea of a money mindset, right? Or at least for—maybe not always, but definitely while I was learning how to trade, and I understood that being profitable, or being a successful, you know, person or an earner is, is a mindset. You know, it's like I was talking to somebody the other day, and we were talking about success. And I said, I stated it this way, I think it's accurate, which is that success is not a destination, success is a mindset.

You have to first understand and believe who you are, what you're capable of. And believe that it's not even about believing, it's about knowing that the success is on its way, that money is coming, right that the the financial security is there, it's within reach, it's just on its way, and you almost have to it's almost a sort of a matter of manifestation in a way. And being able to bring that into you to be the right match as an individual to the type of success you want. Like, when you think of a successful person, you don't see a successful person who's constantly feeling like they're downtrodden and who's constantly feeling like, oh, woe is me, this is terrible. Like, my boss is a jerk, and this sucks over here, and you know, I'm never, I'm never gonna make it like successful people don't do that because they're successful. But they're not doing that because they're successful. They're successful, because they don't do that. And that's the mindset shift that I, I understood, but I didn't fully embody until I really worked on it.

The level of work that was required for that was something I was completely unprepared for. I did not realize how important it was, how in depth it was going to be, how emotional it was going to be, and how much it was going to test me as a person. I mean, to this point, I believed well, I'm a smart person, I've got degrees from, you know, top tier universities. I've, you know, have the capability of earning money. Clearly, I've been earning money for years and had great jobs, and I've always been well liked, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But you know, it did not translate to the kind of financial success that I wanted until I really started focusing on that mindset.

Trading Confidence:

How to tame the ego?

Agnieszka: You said trading can break you down in  pieces, right? And in fact, if you look at it from the psychological perspective, this is what needs to happen for every trader, in order to trade successfully. And let me explain why.

Because we, as people, we have huge egos, we have an ego, I mean, an image that we have created of who we think we want to be. And we are trying to fulfill that image. We are trying to do everything to make sure that people will see us that way. And that we can see us this way. And everything that does not comply with an image, we are not happy about. We call ourselves names. We beat to ourselves up about it and we are very emotional. So what actually trading helps you do is to break that image into pieces. And you need to do that because that image stands you in the way of being present with trading and not putting yourself into the equation. Because in trading, you shouldn't be there. It's just, it's the market, it’s the chart. And whatever you want, whatever dreams you have is irrelevant. The moment that you are trading, your dreams are irrelevant. The moment you start to think about them, it's done. It's done because now you are not trading, you're dreaming.

And that causes a lot of problems. If you're not aware of it, you will be taking everything personal. And that's where your confidence suffers. And it is good to, indeed, have someone who is going to help you through the journey and help you not take things personal, because it feels personal, right? When you're sitting there and you're losing money and it's your money, you're, you know, you worked hard to make it, to earn it or you maybe took it from your savings and it's very personal, it becomes very personal. So it is not always easy to step outside of yourself or outside to take yourself outside of the equation and actually start looking at trading impersonally. It's not about me. I know we think we are the center of the world.

Zach: Yeah, 100%, you talk about ego—I think that the key there is that as you-with every trade that you take, a little bit of your ego goes into that trade, right? Because it's like, you're only taking a trade because you believe that you're right, first off, right. So there's already embedded within each trade is a little piece of your ego that's going in there and every single time that that trade comes back wrong, and you lose money, which is a double whammy, because that hurts even more than just having your ego shocked a bit.Now you're losing money on top of it. And there's like, you know, this actual proof of your failure with a negative balance on a trade, it really the ego element of it is challenging. 

I've never perceived myself as being an egotistical person, but I know what you mean by it's more of the ego and that we all carry, right? It's the it's the the part of our personality of our person, that whether you have a big ego or not, it's you we all have something that's there that informs who we are, and you know, our stasis, our status, our confidence, all of that. Yeah, you know, trading has a lot to do with that. And it has a tendency to, to really hit areas of your ego that you hadn't previously maybe experienced. But I think that what ends up happening is just like weight training, or any other kind of physical activity, that repetition of constantly working through it, and going through those steps and feeling that that constant attack on your ego ultimately has the potential to strengthen your ego, and to help you have balance with it, right? So that it's not just all about, "Well, I'm better, I'm right." It's not that kind of ego, it's more of like, a sense of calm and collected control over yourself, confidence of who you are, what you're capable of. It's like the, I used to think that the image of a real trader was somebody who is very successful and confident and wealthy and, you know, kind of walked into a room and everyone was like, Oh, there he is, you know, kind of like that kind of thing. And that's the wrong kind of ego. 

It's a real kind of trader that I've now understood, like, the real image of a trader is somebody who's just extremely quiet, collected, and calm in any circumstance and is basically able to, like, analyze and be thorough and thoughtful without kind of allowing their emotions to go either to the extreme in either direction [...].

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