Jamie: [00:04] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Hedge Fund Huddle or to be more specific this is actually episode three in our trilogy of episodes on psychology of trading. As usual, I'm your host, Jamie McDonald. So yes, if you haven't heard the previous two episodes in this series, firstly please do. But secondly, I wanted to give you a quick recap of what we talked about in the first two. So, in episode one, which was with Alden and Richard, what we really did is focus on the holistic approach to hedge fund management. So that's not just about being in the right psychological frame of mind. It's about being physically in the right place when making decisions too. If you're making decisions emotionally or recklessly or when you're tired, then that, of course, increases the chance of you undoing so much good work, so be wary of that. In the second episode with Claire and Richard, we spent a little more time on biases. But the real crux of the episode, and to be honest, much of Claire's work is to focus on your results and back test them to see how much luck was involved.
And if luck is playing a large part in your performance and that's either positively or negatively, then you do need to remove that to give yourself a more honest summary of your performance. And there are several implications in and around that to do with confidence, etc. And then episode three, well, that's today and we are going to focus on how to make yourself the best version of yourself as a trader. We're trying to set aside biases as usual but be really honest about what your strengths are and your weaknesses are, etc.
Just a quick note before we begin that any examples or scenarios mentioned in this episode are intended purely for explanation and illustrative purposes.
So on to today's episode and our guests. Firstly, we have Peter Burditt, who is, simply put, one of the most experienced performance coaches in finance. I won't say how many decades he's been doing this, but it's more than one. He's worked with some of the top managers and business leaders all over the world, so we're thrilled to have him. Our second guest today is Steven Goldstein of Alpha R Cubed, also one of the industry's most experienced performance coaches, himself having been a trader for 20 years prior. Peter and Steven, welcome to the show.
Steven: [02:17] Thank you very much.
Peter: [02:18] Thank you.
Jamie: [02:19] Peter. So perhaps we'll start with you. If you could give us a brief synopsis of your career and what really, you're focusing on now.
Peter: [02:26] Thank you for that introduction. It's a pleasure and a privilege to be here. I actually coached Steve years ago when he was a trader. And it's a testimony, I think, to our friendship that we're here today. I don't want to ramble on too much, but I combine pragmatic trading principles with a psycho dynamic approach to holism. Now, there's an awful lot of bullshit spoken in the sort of psychotherapy world, but I'm very much a pragmatist. I've had my own journey. Personal journey, professional journey. I came across Gestalt when my first wife died. I'm an accountant by background. I'd been a banker, and I was very much a transaction junkie which was an addiction. Being a transaction junkie. I was always on a plane. I went to Australia for the day 26 times. And when my wife died, I really had to get to grips with who I was. And I came across Gestalt. If you're interested, I can give you a broad definition of that. And that transformed my life. And I took it into Bar Cap where I was the global head of strategy, working with the seven business lines from swaps, options, derivatives short term interest rate group, fixed income, DCM and so on. And even though I wasn't an expert in any of those products, somehow my questioning technique and my unconditional positive regard for the individual traders transformed a lot of those businesses. In those days I sat in an atrium overlooking the trading pit. I was there when we came out of the ERM. And you could see the energy from the interest rate guys going right the way up to the equity guys in an hour. It was one of the most poignant, colourful experiences of my whole life. But I could see when that wasn't happening. When George Soros wasn't shorting the sterling. Individual traders’ mannerisms. In those days we had a phone, if you remember, with an earpiece and a mouthpiece, they were slamming them down, the number of broken phones at the end of the day was palpable. But I used to go down and see them when I'd noticed that and said, what's going on? And they'd tell me. So much so that I then had a queue outside of my office. All the traders that had had a bad day wanting to see me and Jamie and those that are listening, I actually don't know what I do. What I think I do is to be and be authentic and to listen and to pick up in their face, their voice, their body language, certain things that I can point out and say, what's happening now? What are you feeling? And that creation of bonding, trust, empathy is really what I bring. And I know Steve brings to the work that we do as coaches in this very elite marketplace.
Jamie: [05:21] But, Peter, talking a little bit more about your background, why do you think you were that kind of transaction junkie? What kind of, you know person were you that that that wanted that that adrenaline and how has that influenced you know, how you are as a coach?
Peter: [05:35] And Jamie, that's such a great question. You probably know the phrase fear and greed. I was driven. I wasn't driving, and I think that transformation of me as a human being from being driven by inadequacy to learning who I was as a human being, as a difference between being a human doing and a human being, was as a result of the Gestalt experience I had. I was sent to a seaman's orphanage for my education when I was eight down in Devon. And that was character building. I wasn't particularly good at school. I was actually left-handed in those days, we had to write with a pen and ink, and I used to smudge my essays. But there was something in me which was I knew what I was doing, I knew what I was saying, I knew what I could see. So, my first job was with quite a prestigious merchant bank in those days, and most of my colleagues were baronets or been to Oxbridge. I had nothing, I didn't go to university. I was put into the accounts department because I was training to be an accountant. And one weekend there was a big presentation that had to be made, and they were looking for all hands on deck. So, I took my Hewlett Packard home for the weekend and did some spreadsheets. And as a result of that, I was promoted to the corporate finance department. And, you know, Bob's your auntie. My career took off, but I suffered a lot for the first part of my career of imposter syndrome.
Jamie: [07:00] How do you equate the following two things? So, you just you just mentioned there your addiction to transactions or money or being involved in these deals. If you look at people who are at the top of their industry and that's including sportsmen, and they strike me as addicts themselves. I mean, whether it's tennis players or the people who are titans of industry, they've had to sacrifice a lot. They've had to really focus all of their energy into whatever it is they want to be fantastic at. How do you, for young people who are looking for role models, how do you try and tell people like not to have for those people not to be their role models because they're out there are people out there who put the rest of their life to one side so that they can be the best that they want to be. Do you try and introduce balance as a big part of success?
Peter: [07:44] Your questions are extremely insightful, so it's making my job much easier. I don't tell anybody to do anything, and I don't want to be a purist about it. But you may see from my notes that I've been elected as chair for the Academy of Executive Coaching, which I co-founded some 30 years ago. And we were very much pioneers of our time. But to be a purist, there are four types of coaching. There's performance coaching, developmental coaching, skill based coaching and transformational coaching. And Steve's been a trader much more recently than me. So, he does a lot of discipline and structure stuff as well as the transformational stuff. But people tend to come to me for the more holistic stuff. So, I don't advertise. All of my work comes word of mouth. I've had a full order book for 30 years. I've done over 36,000 hours of coaching. But if someone has got something from working with me, they tend to tell their friends. But I don't always know what it is. But there has to be a connection and it's not about telling. But I also have to work out what sort of person, what sort of trader they want to be. One of the tools we use that Steve introduced me to is the risk type compass, and we can normally tell by the Mandela that this particular psychometric produces, whether they're a short term trader, intraday trader, foreign exchange trader. And there's a evolution to being a macro trader. So intraday FX or money markets trader will probably do 100 transactions a day. A macro trader may do 4 or 5 trades a year.
And I think one of the big things and Steve will talk about it more when he presents. I think the biggest thing we do is to make sure that the psychology of the individual trader is akin and congruent to the asset class they're trading. Now, your point about sportsman, that's very much a performance based intensity for a sprint. It is not a marathon. So, Steve and I tend to work with a range of traders, but I particularly work at the marathon end. So, I've been with one hedge fund for 17 years. 17 years, I've been coaching at this hedge fund, and I've seen people evolve and emerge, and I've seen the organisation evolve and emerge, and some of the great names in the hedge fund industry will say that hedge funds normally make a loss every five years. And one of the founders of one of the hedge funds, has said to me, when he sends me people, if that guy hasn't had a drawdown, he's no good. A lot of traders learn when they've had a drawdown and probably off the question now. So, let's remind me what the question was.
Jamie: [10:27] Well, actually what we're going to do is we're going to move on to Steven, if you don't mind. I want to bring him into the show. So, Steven, if you could give us a little bit about your background when you were trading your move into performance coaching and obviously being a pupil of Peter, tell us what that was like.
Steven: [10:42] Yeah, sure. Well again, thank you for having me. And it's great to be a guest on this podcast. And I've heard some of the fantastic discussions you've had already. I was a trader for nearly 25 years, started in mid 1980s in a very different time, a very different age. Everything was very new. I think sometimes we feel we were making it up as we went along. Nearly all the traders were very young, especially here in the UK. And it was a little bit of sort of sink or swim world in those days. And I started at a Japanese bank in the mid-1980s, moved on to Credit Suisse in the early 1990s, where I would say I really started to develop as a trader moving across styles from more of a sort of, I would say sell side type trading style, although I was in a sell side firm to more of a buy side prop type trading style within a sell side firm. And that became my major focus trading as a prop trader, probably as most people would do in a hedge fund now. But within a sell side firm. I moved on to the German bank, Commerzbank in the late 90s, and then onto a role within the banking arm of American Express, again, in a prop trading role in the noughties up till 2010. And you know, it was a brilliant career. There were days where I either didn't love it or didn't hate it. It was either one of those. You know, it could be the greatest job in the world, or it could rip your heart out. So, it was a tough existence at times, but also very rewarding one. You know, obviously financially but personally in terms of how fascinating the job was, and there were days where you think, wow, and they pay me for this. You know, it was a wonderful existence. I was fortunate to be offered into a trial coaching program at the company I worked at in the year 2000, where the individual who came into the firm had worked with Peter in his previous firm, and he wanted to bring him in to work with the traders. And he thought he'd ask me because he had a sense that I would probably be the most amenable to that in a trading environment. And being a trader, I immediately was cynical and sceptical of it and said, no but he twisted my arm a little bit and convinced me of the benefits of it. And again, I went into it again with a high degree of scepticism and cynicism about what it could do for me. And it revolutionised my trading. That just time talking about what you do, we don't really do that. Talking about it with somebody who was neutral, objective, not holding opinion, questioning you, challenging you, bringing you to awareness about yourself, who you are, getting you to turn your focus back onto you rather than out there, which is something that we don't really do.
It really provokes reflection. And that in itself becomes the start of a journey where you start to, I suppose you could say, develop greater responsibility for yourself and what you're doing. And that was the catalyst for a whole journey of self-improvement I went through over the next ten years. It started that process. And at the time, I wouldn't say, wow, this is going to change my life. I enjoyed it, but did I think it was going to be catalytic to my career? I certainly didn't feel like that. But I came out of it very different to the person that I went into it and my trading, and I was in a difficult point at that time. Trading is a series of ups and downs and sometimes that's environmental as much as it's market related. And I was in that place, and I was possibly looking at that point in my life and saying, well, if I could just keep my career going another 1 or 2 years and hope I get some luck. And, things might turn around and I didn't really have ownership of my future at that point. If I'm honest, as a trader. And that gave me ownership and for the next ten years, I just traded at a different level. And it was really at the end of that period, the bank I worked at was sold to another business just during that financial crisis period. I found myself at a crossroads of, I was actually thinking of going to the hedge fund world. That was where I was looking. And I had a conversation with Peter, and he just threw out almost off the cuff, have you thought of doing coaching? Which, of course I hadn't. And I don't think he realised what an impression it had on me. I couldn't let go of that. It just stayed in my head. And he actually did connect me to a couple of people in hedge funds that I had conversations with. But you know that once he'd mentioned that I decided that's where I want to go. Almost within seconds of him mentioning it. And that's what I've been doing for the last 15 years. And it's a big change. And it's something I love doing. It's helping other people, empowering other people helping them really develop themselves and overcome their own resistances to high performance. And having experienced that myself as well.
Jamie: [15:54] So, Steven, going back to the moment of self-reflection, which I completely agree with, when I was a hedge fund manager, we didn't spend too much time on that at all. We spent much more time on fundamental evaluation, looking at charts like performance, that kind of thing. Much less on were we using a process which suited us? So, when you talk to clients, how important is it to try and impress on your client that they're honest with themselves about what they're good at and what they're not good at? Do some of your clients have a process, but it's the wrong one for them? To some people not have a process at all. I just want to understand a little better from your point of view, when you sit down with somebody and you want to try and finesse their approach to trading, what's the what's the what are the steps you go through?
Steven: [16:39] It's interesting because it's not a structured process. It's more of a dialogical process, an evolving conversation. And we're trying to work with the client exploring their work, exploring what they're doing, how they're thinking, how they are. All with a purpose of helping them meet some need. I mean, everyone comes to you with a slightly different need, but generally it's for personal transformation. Behavioural change. Tightening up some aspect of their process, finding the resistances. Trying to discover what is the ceiling that they're imposing on themselves, and how can they break through it. In summary, that's what a lot of the work is. Now people come to these conversations wanting to do that, but they do have a lot of resistance. I think myself and Peter, we both use this Gestalt approach.
Jamie: [17:25] Let's talk a little bit about that, actually. Can you unpack a bit what the Gestalt approach is?
Steven: [17:30] Okay. So let me just sort of explain what happened when I was a student at the Academy of Executive Coaching when I decided to learn coaching, which is the organisation Peter mentioned. And that was 15 years ago. And I always remember what they do as part of that is they show you all the different coaching philosophies and approaches, and you learn a little bit of them all. And you study them all and it gives you a sense of where you want to go, what you want to do. And the most mystifying one for us was Gestalt, because it was very hard to describe, which is part of our problem. How do we describe something that's almost indescribable? So, in a way, you have to go deep inside, you know, a lot of people say, well, Gestalt is about present moment awareness. It provokes self-discovery. It does provoke that responsibility. And it helps individuals gain insights into their thoughts and behaviours that they weren't aware of before. So, it's very hard to actually describe what Gestalt is, which is part of the mystery of it. But when we saw the practice sessions happening at this coaching academy, the one that really you could see was getting into people that was actually there and then immediately having an impact and making change was Gestalt, even though we didn't really know to any high degree what we were doing. And I saw that, and I thought, that's powerful. And then I went on a whole learning journey, which I'm still going on. I don't think Peter would admit you never stopped this learning journey in Gestalt. In fact, I'm going over to the next three days to a program in Oxford to continue my studies in this area because you go ever deeper, you never stop learning. I would almost describe it as what you see isn't what you get. You see one level, but you don't see the complete picture. So, you start exploring around, you start asking questions you don't accept ever what you see as what it is.
Jamie: [19:28] Is it slightly akin to trying to find patterns where patterns may not exist? And what Gestalt does is try to, well, it seems like it will expose any biases you have. Is that one way of looking at it?
Steven: [19:43] It will expose you completely, expose everything about you, your world, your foreground, your background, the connections between the two. Yeah, you do pick up on patterns. That's a very big part of it. And you pick up on the intuitions and the senses you feel as a coach, and then you share those with the client to help them have their awareness moments. But pattern recognition is a big part of it. And I it was really strange because when I was learning Gestalt, I was realising that as a trader, that's often how I practised. I was really looking for patterns in the market, confirming patterns, disconfirming patterns. And, to me as a trader, the glory in the markets, the opportunities always existed in the gaps between what is known. And that's where the value was. And we do the same thing as coaches. And I know from having experienced it as a, I would say as a, maybe as a client of Peter’s. And then seeing it in my own clients exactly what this can do for you. And in a way, like Peter said, we don't always know what it does for people because it triggers something that is almost mysterious, but it triggers this entire process of self-connection, of people thinking about how they relate to the world around them, how they relate to themselves, how they relate to markets, how they relate to uncertainty, how they relate to stress and anxiety. It almost raises your senses to a hyper level, and then you start examining that, or at least becoming aware of it.
Jamie: [21:12] Peter, I saw you nodding your head there. What are the practical implications of Gestalt psychology for you.
Peter: [21:19] Vigorously agreeing with Steve's description and experiences. Could I tell you two anecdotes, Jamie? I have a lovely son-in-law who actually works for Citibank, but that's quite separate. But his dad has the largest collection of vintage cars in Lisbon. And when I go down to Portugal, he's about 80. So, he's a lot older than me. I'm 75 now. And I go into the garage, and I see all these bits. And he took me out in a Bugatti just before Christmas. But over the months, I'd seen it in bits. I'd seen a chassis, I'd seen a steering wheel, and I thought I knew what it was going to look like when he'd finished it. And I can't tell you the experience, but having seen pictures of it, having seen it in bits, when he put it together, I was stunned about the beauty of this yellow Bugatti, the way it smelt, the way it looked, the way it felt. And Gestalt is a bit like that. Gestalt is something which is bigger than its subsidiary parts.
And a lot of the traders that Steve and I work with, of course, are highly educated, and their brains work, their intellect works, but they're quite binary and they don't accommodate and integrate into the whole all the other things that are going on. The mind, the body are all part of the same system. And what they don't get is that the market is emotional. Now, something you said in your opening remarks, Jamie, you talked about emotions, and I play with that word because to me, an emotion is a derivative. Of course, traders love the word derivative and emotion is a derivative. It's not cash. The only three feelings which are cash are grief, joy, and fear. And if I can get a trader to integrate, I feel, I think, I imagine, then that becomes exponential, A, in the way they trade. You've talked quite a lot about decisions as well, Jamie and I think Steve has as well about making the right decision. We try and coach people through the closed mind of having to make the right decision to be big enough to make choices. And just because something worked last week, it doesn't mean it's going to work this week. Something that worked five minutes ago isn't necessarily going to work now, but because people have been so trained with their PhDs in this or their MBAs in that, or their quantum physics in that, they need something else. The other anecdote was, I was very privileged to be invited to a client's 60th birthday party at the weekend. It was quite a big do. Now he's a self-made billionaire, and there are lots of people there that have known him from Oxford. Some hadn't been quite as successful as him, but he put down his success to being controversial at Oxford and playing the drums. He said if he hadn't been a musician, he wouldn't have been as successful as a hedge fund guy.
Jamie: [24:35] You might have to unpack that for me. How does that work?
Peter: [24:38] Because, when I say he's a bit eccentric. Yes, he got the maths right. But there was something else going on for him. I don't know what. You've got some nice art in the background, I can see. But if you think about it, a classical dancer, a jazz musician.
Jamie: [24:52] Do you mean. he basically seemed to, he had an edge because he sort of thought differently. Most people who approach finance have done the PhDs, have done the maths courses. They all think the same way.
Peter: [25:03] Felt. Jamie, felt differently.
Jamie: Felt differently.
Peter: [25:07] You said thought differently. And that's what they're all about. They've got to feel. And someone who’s got rhythm. Someone who’s got soul. Someone who's got some extraneous DNA going through their body. And he gave a lovely speech, actually. It moved everybody. But it was about the fact that he was different, slightly eccentric, and had rhythm, not just PhD maths.
Jamie: [25:29] So if we can go focus a little bit more on the practical side of things. Imagine someone listening is in their 20s, wants to get into hedge funds, wants to get into investing, trading themselves. What kind of advice are you giving young men and women now who want to get into finance, want to get into investing in terms of trying to find out what kind of investor they are. You talked about the sprinter versus the marathon. What kind of self-reflection they can do on themselves. I mean, I remember when I was back running a portfolio, I remember one thing was never let a trade become an investment. And this was something that happened to me, which was like, I'm doing this for a week because I think it's going to work. And two weeks later it still hasn't work. And then you convince yourself that it's a brilliant six month idea because so all these biases as you, pointed out, sit in your head. But for someone listening who's who may be younger, what kind of advice are you giving people to work out what kind of investor they are?
Steven: [26:25] Yeah, just to sort of echo something which Peter said earlier, we don't really give advice.
Jamie: Ah, that’s interesting.
Steven: We're not advisors. And even if we could, why should we know any better than anyone else? At the same time, everyone's different and everyone comes from a different place. And the advice we give to one person may not suit another person. So, we have to be very careful. We like to encourage them to think openly. If there was something I was going to push around, I think a lot of people really struggle to take risk. They over focus on analysis. Now, analysis is one of the pillars of trading. I call it the market pillar. I have a framework of where I try to look at what people do through three lenses, really, or three pillars, one being the analysis pillar, the markets pillar, the market understanding. And you need to have that one. You need to have a strong pillar there. And most people, to be quite frank, do, you go into this world if it's not well developed you develop it, but normally you learn it. So, most people will be putting a lot of effort into learning about markets and how markets work and the products and the asset classes even before they go to a job. The second pillar is risk. Now, most people are massively underdeveloped in that.
The ability to take risk, the ability to manage risk, the ability to, to have a strong risk process. I've told quite a lot of young people, play poker, learn poker. I'm not encouraging them to be gamblers. I'm encourage them to understand their relationship with money, their relationship with risk, their relationship with uncertainty, their relationship with other people playing the game, their relationship with the game. Trading is, you have tons of relationships going on all the time that are really key to you, that are related to risk. And, I reflect a lot on what happened when I was coached with Peter all those years ago. Now I've been doing the job 13 years by then, and I was a senior trader, so I thought I knew it all and I thought I had it all, which was really my ability to analyse markets and understand them and find value. But what I really realised, and I've realised this with more and more reflection over the years, is I was suboptimal as a risk taker. I was very suboptimal as a risk taker. I just was not good at it. And somehow, I'd managed to get to some senior positions and hold a job down. So, I suppose, you know I was good enough in n the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king, right?
Jamie: [28:56] If I can ask just about that, being a risk taker. You spoke just before about one of the pillars being analysis. And one thing we used to talk about a lot is conviction. So, if you have high conviction then if the price is going against you double up. But without that conviction, it's very hard to take the extra risk. So, when you said you weren't a great risk taker, can you talk a little bit about why that was? I mean, we're all naturally risk averse, I think, as people. But what about this idea of conviction and like how do you get conviction if it's not through analysis?
Steven: [29:29] This is going to the third pillar now because this is a self-pillar. This is the person doing the trading, the person doing the transaction, the person doing the analysis, the person running the risk. And you are only as strong as your weakest pillar. And usually, our weakest pillar is our self-pillar. Okay. You're not going to have much conviction if you don't believe in yourself, if you don't back yourself. So just having the analysis, you still have to believe in yourself at the same time. It's a complex world. You have to believe in your risk process, which is the risk pillar and really the great performance in trading is that crossover between them all.
Peter: [00:36:06] Can I come in here, Steve? Just for a second. So, you used the word conviction, Jamie. And absolutely agree with what Steve has said about the three pillars. Some Fridays a couple of years ago, I had a team of traders in the States who would zoom in and I would go through the lines on their book, and I'd say, what's your level of conviction for line two? And I could tell in their eyes; I could tell in the way they were nodding. I could tell the err or the mmm in their voice whether they were really convicted. And I challenged them, and I'd say, I'm not hearing your conviction on line two. Hearing it on line one. I'm not hearing it. So why did you call? Well, I wasn't sure about line two and line five. I said, well, I think you've got your answer. Anyway, they’d come back to me at 7:00 on Friday evening, say, oh, Peter got rid of that five minutes after the market tanked. Now, when you say, what do we do? And both Steve and I have said we're not always sure what we do. And Steve said at the very beginning of his talk, people are so busy, who can they trust? Who can they talk to? And I think we provide a very safe space, hopefully calm space as an outside observer, as a witness to their life, as to what their truth is.
Jamie: [00:30:30] It sounds like a big part of it is and maybe I'm generalising here, but people kid themselves too much like I just needed someone like you guys to come in and really ask me, do I believe in this? Because too often we have things on the sheet. We get lazy. We convince ourselves that Oh, it'll work out in the end. Sorry Steven, jump in.
Steven: [00:31:51] I am because I’m loving what you’re saying. You said two things there that really talk about this relationship we have with ourselves. We kid ourselves, we convince ourselves. The most important relationship you have …
Jamie: [00:32:01] Maybe, it's because we don't like what's underneath it.
Steven: [00:32:05] We don't like ourselves. This market, the market will make you not like yourself.
Jamie: Yeah.
Steven: [00:32:11] Okay. I was having a conversation.
Jamie: It's not nice to be wrong.
Steven: No, Exactly it's not nice to fail. It's not nice to be wrong. And yet, to do this job well, you have to embrace both failing and being wrong. So, for me, at the core of what we do, I think, or at least of what I do, and I think Peter does the same, is helping people understand themselves, helping people learning to like themselves, helping people really develop a better relationship with themselves so they can back themselves and trust themselves and not have to fool themselves. Because at the end of it, the person doing this job is yourself.
Jamie: [00:32:52] Embrace their own strengths but also recognise their weaknesses. Not be embarrassed about them. Just recognise them. Yeah.
Steven: [00:32:59] You know, we are constantly in this battle against ourselves and yet our self is our biggest ally.
Peter: [00:33:09] I wouldn't say weaknesses, Jamie, I'd say blind spots. And bits that haven't been fully integrated into the whole.
Jamie: [00:33:17] Well, could you expand on that, Peter? Because I think that's a really interesting point to make the differences between weakness and blind spots.
Peter: [00:33:23] Yeah. Oh, my goodness, that's a long one. That may have to be session four!
Jamie: Well, we I mean, we can come back to that.
Peter: [00:33:32] I had a lady trader whose parents, they drove her when she was a dancer in her young days. And she got brittle bone disease and fractured her legs in thousands of parts because the you're not good enough. You're not good enough. You're not good enough. We want you to be better. We want you to be better. It was instilled in her. She came from quite a wealthy family. And it took her years to heal. She was in a wheelchair for many years. That's a very extreme example. But parents, schools, whatever sometimes instil in us, they pick on our weak points. Now, the difference between classical, Jungian Freudian therapy. I hope this isn't too controversial. They've learned on people that aren't well. Gestalt was actually modelling people that are doing unhealthy. And how can we replicate what someone is doing in a way that instils and fortifies the winning bits to give them the energy to work on the other bits? This is a true story. There was a big bank. They asked me to run offsite for two days, and there was a bit of rest and recuperation. And they were going to give some tennis coaching. Everybody signed up the tennis coaching. And Jamie, there weren't enough tennis coaches around in Switzerland.
So, we got some skiing instructors to come in. And the feedback we got from those that were with the skiing instructors was they got a better rapport than the tennis instructors because the tennis instructor would say, oh watch your backhand, watch your forehand. So, they were too busy looking at their backhand or their forehand. The skiing instructor said, wow, that was an amazing shot. Now somehow the wow, the noise, the sound, the appreciation, the affirmation cascades down the down the body. And they remember that there's a phrase in our work which is the muscles hold the memory of the trespass that first wounded us. The muscles hold the memory of the trespass that first wounded us. There's a wonderful program on Prime Video called Jung on Alchemy. And somehow, we hold memories which are negative memories in our body. And what Steve and I do is to exorcise and allow someone to express some of that memory. Fixed memory. But that fixed memory isn't the now. So, the Jung on Alchemy was taking base metals and making it into gold. What we do, I think, is to take some of those snapshots of history, melt them, to allow people to reach, be, embrace and work with the now.
Jamie: [00:36:16] So, gentlemen, we've got a little bit more time. I wanted to talk about the environment today, looking into the future. In the world of executive coaching, what are the trends you are seeing? Are there more people looking to bring in performance coaches like yourself? I mean, it sounds like for you two, your dance cards are pretty full, so you can't really take on more people. But it surprises me that so many sportsmen have nutritionists, performance coaches you know, physical therapists, etc. but when it comes to the world of business, you know, top executives don't have or don't seem to have performance coaches, do you think that is happening more and more? What kind of areas of business are you seeing it crop up in?
Steven: [00:36:56] I would actually disagree. I'd say in the world of what we would call standard business outside the markets and outside trading. most businesses, the seniors, especially at C-suite level and senior management have executive coaches. It's probably just not talked about. It's often something that's I suppose in a way their dirty little secret. And companies don't necessarily want to publicise it largely because they I suppose they fear everyone's going to want it. And and they often reserve it for senior management. In the world of trading and investing it, there's still a reluctance to it or it's seen as something that is up to the individual to go and do if they want to do it, rather than seen as something of strategic importance. There are exceptions to that. Both myself and Peter are retained by certain firms who use our services with their PMs. But there again, it becomes up to them to, to whether they want to use them or not. It's definitely growing in the trading world. I think my book, Mastering the Mental Game of Trading has definitely had an impact out there, getting a lot of people who are reading it who are starting to realise the value of it. But there's still a kind of almost like I'm a man. And most people in the trading world are men. And I should be able to do this on my own, and I don't need outside help. It may be seen as a sign of weakness, but the younger generation are changing. I'm definitely seeing that. It's more acceptable. It's more normal. It's more seen as almost a requirement by some younger people to have a performance coach. They'll They look at sports people and they'll think, what I'm doing is it's a performance activity. It's akin to sport and anything I can use to get ahead and get an advantage I will use. But it's definitely something that is starting to permeate. But I would say that younger level. Peter?
Peter: [00:38:52] Yeah. Various trends. A lot of corporate organisations are now employing their own internal coaches. And at the Academy of Executive Coaching, we actually train senior managers in coaching skills, or we facilitate and select help, select in-house coaches. One trend interestingly, Jamie, this year is I've had nine new personal clients who are employed by organisations. Three of them have then gone to the organisation and said, Will you pay for it? And the answer has been yes, but it may come out of their pass through in whatever fund, sub fund they're working with. When I started this 30 years ago sports coaching was known and the sort of coaching we do was seen as remedial. Those days are long gone. And as Steve says, I think younger people in some ways depends what side of the line they are. If they're into growth and abundance in their psyche they want to be the best human beings they can be, sadly, with ADHD and Asperger's and self-harm, that's another conversation. But some of the questions that a 32 year old will ask now are mind blowing. In terms of for some people, money is the runners up prize. And they don't want to burn out. They don't want to have heart attacks at a young age. They want to create value. And a lot of them become philanthropists as well. So, I happen to coach the head of philanthropy at a big bank. And it's interesting to see the demographics of the new wealthy young people and what they want. They not only want their investments managed ethically but they also want to make sure that the donations they make to charities are ethically invested.
Jamie: [00:40:54] No, that is interesting. Well, guys, this has been fantastically useful. I've had a great time chatting with you. What I like to do towards the end of the episode is do a little bit of a summary ask people to get in touch with you if they want to. So, summary wise, what really struck me is that, holding up a mirror to yourself and being honest with yourself is so important to being a better trader, but maybe better in whatever profession you are. And it's not so much pointing out weaknesses as you said, Peter. It's more pointing out blind spots. But guys, if there's anything we haven't talked about or any comments you'd like to make as we conclude, jump right in.
Steven: [00:41:28] Yeah. I just want to really emphasise that, and it's a point which I mentioned along earlier. And this idea of the mirror is so important for this is, you need to own your space in this job. You need to own your space in the markets. The markets are always working to undermine you so you can turn in on yourself. If they do that, they win, and you lose. So, owning your space is about developing a better relationship with yourself and with the aspects of this job that will help you undermine yourself. Your engagement with the radical uncertainty that is the markets and developing that relationship is key. You will become more centred, more grounded, more balanced. You'll be more objective. You'll be better attuned to the markets. You'll sync with the markets far better. You will be more comfortable making decisions. You will own your own decisions. There'll be less what ifs and should haves and more accumulation of wins and the balance between wins and losses over time in the right direction. And that will all stem from that. And that is a journey of personal transformation, behavioural change. And that's very much the emphasis of the work myself and Peter do. And really, I suppose our message today is to really sort of start zooming in on that, because the answer is not out there in the markets. It's in here.
Peter: [00:43:03] You can see Steve is the articulate one and has written the book. And all the wisdom is in there. I think it’s a dance. It's not dancing around your handbag. It's very much like a tango. I think my last comment would be Einstein's comment, which is the only truth is experience. And I think to support people in an unconditional positive regard way for them to understand that a screen is one thing. The news is something else. Their mind is part of that. But to somehow embrace holistically all the data points that are bombarding them. But I'm not in the detail, and I can sometimes, believe it or not, astound someone and say you know what's going on in Mauritius? Oh yeah, I'm an emerging market trader. And I went long on that, and I could just hold six facts and say, you know what's what is it? Is it inflation? Is it Trumpism? Is it interest rate probability? Is it wars? What are the most important drivers to your long short view? But because they're so into the detail, they don't ask themselves those questions. And I'm not particularly bright, but I just ask, as you have Jamie, great questions to stimulate conversation.
Jamie: [00:44:33] There we go. Peter and Steven, this has been great. Steven, obviously your book Mastering the Mental Game of Trading is out there. And if people want to get in touch, what's the best way for people to get in touch on LinkedIn or your emails or on websites?
Steven: [00:44:45] Yeah. Yeah, I've I'm available on LinkedIn. I've got a website, Alpharcubed.com. You can always email me Steven.Goldstein@alpharcubed.com - If anyone's curious, Peter?
Peter: [00:45:02] Yes, I prefer old fashioned email, which is pburditt@strategicdevelopment.co.uk.
Jamie: Fantastic. Gentlemen, thank you so much for your time, I really appreciate it.
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