How Performance Coaching helps Power Trading Success

“The finance industry talks too much about what to do, and not enough about what happens in your head when you try to do it.”- Morgan Housel – Author of the Psychology of Money

Coaching helps people to develop themselves to perform at peak levels in complex, challenging and highly competitive environments. It is common in most areas of high performance, however within the world of trading, using coaches remains at the periphery of the industry. At AlphaMind, we are seeking to address this by raising awareness of how coaching can and does make a significant impact on trading performance.

In its purest form, Coaching helps people by enhancing their ability to bring the best of themselves to their work. At the more advanced levels, it empowers them to be highly effective in the delivery of high performance on a consistent basis in their work activities.

When it comes to trading, performance coaching helps people by improving their personal behaviours, self-management, and ability to direct their emotional energies in the most constructive way forward (optimisation of self). This enables them to be more productive in how they conduct their risk processes (risk craft), enabling them to more effectively leverage the system or (risk method) they use to find value in the markets. 

Effectively they are addressing the three cornerstone pillars which combine to create a successful trading approach. These three pillars are the platform for a successful approach.

The 3 Pillars of a successful trading approach:

• Risk Method (System) for Finding Value/Generating Ideas: Market/product technical knowhow, analytical abilities and idea generation skills.
• Risk Craft: Robust application risk process, trade playbook and money management practices
• Optimisation of Self: Ability to act optimally in the face of extreme volatility and heightened uncertainty that provides a formidable edge when engaged in market-facing activities.

Whilst all three pillars are equally vital and all rely on the strength of each other, the ability of a trader to master both Risk Method and Risk Craft are relatively high, however mastering the Optimisation of “Self” is a significant challenge for almost all traders.

‘Risk Method’, being the easiest pillar to learn, is often the most well-developed pillar. ‘Risk Craft’ abilities are usually less well defined and highly personal and are thus usually less well-developed. Working on bolstering ‘Risk Craft’ can provide significant opportunities for growth. However, it is the ‘Self’ pillar which is the toughest one to master and thus where the most significant developmental benefit exists. It is the potential to optimise your Mindset and configure how your “Self” behaves that represents the greatest opportunity to build your trading edge.

Developing one’s “Self”, by oneself, is one of the toughest elements of trading to achieve. This is where coaching becomes a tool of enormous value. In essence coaching becomes the trader’s ally and becomes integral to their ongoing development and their strive for success.

Coaching works predominantly by developing the critical qualities that drive the realisation and management of “Self”. In a nutshell, they help by:

• Showing a trader, a more realistic reflection of who they are
• Illuminating the situations and context they exist within
• Working in partnership with them to help them direct their energies, capabilities and focus in the most productive manner that will underpin their performance
• Supporting the development of enhanced ‘Risk Craft’, thus enabling them to optimally leverage opportunities opened up by their ‘Risk Method’ opens up for them.

By doing this, coaching catalyses growth and development for the trader to help elevate them to higher levels of capability. One word best sums up coaching: ‘Power’.

• Power to effect positive change
• Power to enable the overcoming of hurdles and personal challenges
• Power to reveal what is hidden in the darkness and the shadows.
• Power to take control of the levers of success.
• Power to drive people forward to help fulfil ones potential.

Coaching helps in harnessing the power of the human spirit which we are all are born with, but which can wither away with time and experience.

If you want to know more about our powerful coaching programmes, which are available to private individuals and organisations, please email info@alpha-mind.net. 

We offer coaching in the following areas.

• Performance Coaching for Trader and Investors.
• Trader Mental Strength Coaching Programmes.
• Executive Coaching for Leaders and Managers.
• Performance Coaching for analysts, salespeople, brokers, and others involved in market businesses
• Team Coaching Programmes for Leadership, Trading, Investing and Sales Teams.

The AlphaMind Podcast 

The AlphaMind podcast is co-hosted by Steven Goldstein and Mark Randall, market veterans with over seven decades between them in the financial markets. The podcast delves into the lives and stories of extraordinary guests whose experiences provide a fresh and powerful lens through which to understand the mental, emotional, psychological and behavioural challenges people face when encountering risk and uncertainty in financial markets. To find out more visit the AlphaMind podcast website. 

The AlphaMind Podcast is produced in partnership with 'The Society of Technical Analysts'.

The Sign-Up for the AlphaMind Newsletter

The AlphaMind Newsletter is a free bi-weekly email, that explores how people develop, cultivate and grow optimal mindsets, behaviours and attitude for better and more productive performance when engaged in risk taking activities in Financial Markets.

Sign-up here.

The AlphaMind Trader Performance Coaching Programme

Our powerful Trader Performance Coaching Programme focuses on helping people develop and improve the key risk skills, abilities and mindsets which contribute to trading performance mastery.

This programme makes use of our unique and powerful ‘Human Alpha Performance Model’ which helps illuminate the human aspects of the risk process as people navigate their way through the Financial Markets. The model helps people make sense of their behaviours when taking and managing risk in the financial markets, whilst the coaching helps people to make key changes and adjustments which drives growth in risk capability and personal performance.

This programme has been delivered over the past 10 years to people at many of the world’s leading trading and investment firms.

Click here to find our more about the programme, or email info@alpharcubed.com or steven.goldstein@alpharcubed.com.

AlphaMind is a collaborative project between Steven Goldstein of AlphaRCubed Ltd and Mark Randall of The Mark Randall Consultancy.