2 Bulls Trader Mindset Podcast Series
Measuring What Matters with Mind Metrics
Join 2 Bulls in a China Shop as they measure their progress for all to see using Rich Friesen's Mind Metrics app, on their journey to consistently profitable trading!
There will be HOMEWORK :)
What is Mind Metrics?
Mind Metrics is an app that measures and tracks your Trader Mindset.
Using Mind Metrics gives you a clear and concise visual picture of the step-by-step process to manage your trading. You can instantly see how much progress you've made, and which areas need improvement!
Tracking your data will also help you to know how you are likely to perform before your trading day even begins. You can use this information to determine when to trade, when to sit out, trade lighter or adjust your internal trader mindset before trading.
How do I see your results?
We will be posting a link to each episode along with the corresponding Mind Metrics results in the toggle below. You will be able to see our progress in real time.
What is each episode about?
Toggle the dropdowns below to read more details on each topic.
Episode 1 distills our trading behaviors down to the issues that really matter. By reframing these issues, we can create metrics on our trading behaviors and see how they impact our profits. As retail traders, our greatest edge lies in our ability to filter an almost infinite amount of information and variables down to the information that gives us feedback to adjust the trading behaviors that really matter. This episode shows how you can measure your trading behaviors in a meaningful way.
Using Mind Metrics, you can start to reduce these variables from your trading performance by tracking and eliminating hidden elements that have a negative impact on your trading.
Watch Episode 1 - Measuring What Matters:
Homework Assignment for Episode 1:
- Take inventory and track our trading preparedness by using S.E.T. (Sensations, Emotions and Thoughts) scores
- Make sure you clearly understand the difference between lousy and lucrative trades, and why the latter are very important
- Start filling in your Mind Metrics spreadsheet.
Traders are asking for their strategies to perform feats that they cannot do. As a result, most traders report a lack of confidence in their strategies. And there is a good reason! Watch this episode address the elephant in the room with three words that shock most traders.
Consider:
- What if we looked at trading strategies from a new framework?
- What if we stopped asking them to do what they can’t do?
- What if traders concentrated on the real issue of trading?
This episode will turn your relationship to trading strategies on its head and replace it with a new challenging problem, but the RIGHT challenging problem.
"In the second installment of our limited series with Rich Friesen of Mind Muscles Academy, we’re looking at how to gain confidence in our trading strategies. Join us as Rich explains the confidence circle and blows our minds at the idea that we have been searching for confidence in the wrong place… Rich expounds on the concept of market moods and challenges the listeners to spend the next month defining/identifying them and figuring out which strategies work best for those different moods.
We welcome everyone to check out Kyle's Mind Metrics results updates and follow along with the homework assignment below, and look forward to the opportunity to learn from one of the best! If you have a question to submit for next month’s episode, email it to 2bulls@financialineptitude.com or post it in our Discord."
Homework Assignment for Episode 2:
- Define the different market moods
- Study charts to find examples of each type of market mood, and determine how often each occurs
- What mood is the Market Hell for each strategy? What mood is the Market Heaven?
- What are the attributes of your Market Heaven?
Do you repeat the same trading mistake time and time again? Do you swear you will never have that reaction again...only to repeat it in the heat of the moment? And then listen to that critical voice in your head scolding you for your behavior?
What if you understood how the brain creates repeated trading errors and how you can create an exercise to make more intentional trading decisions? This episode will demonstrate the neuroscience of brain activity and how repeated trading behaviors are created. You will experience an exercise in neural programming that will give you a new way to manage your trading reactions.
Episode 3 has been posted! You can listen at the link below.
Homework Assignments for Episode 3:
- Make all persistent trading mistakes their own strategy and track their results
- Generalize the positive intent of those behaviors that do not serve our trading
- The goal is to generate awareness of those behaviors, not judgement.
Kyle's Tracking Spreadsheets:
- NEW: Here a link to Kyle's trading log that he has been using in conjunction with the Mind Metrics app.
- Here is the link to Kyle's Mind Metrics app.
This episode creates an awareness of our brain’s unconscious biases, filters and trading traps. It starts with a real-time assessment that creates an awareness of the major mind traps that are common to many independent traders. With this assessment, you can visually see the graphic that demonstrates the gap between your rational understanding of trading success and your own trading reactions, biases, filter, and trading traps. We then proceed to the Mind Muscles model for behavioral, change (the “Golden Keys”) and learn how every trader can lay the foundation to trade like the master trader they desire to be. You will leave with an expanded awareness of the mind traps that produce repeated trading errors and are dragging down your profits.
Episode 4 has been posted! You can listen at the link below:
Homework Assignments for Episode 4:
- Complete the downloadable Trading Traps Assessment (Lesson included here)
- Build awareness of our own biases, filters and tendencies
- Invite ourselves to step into new behaviors that better match the traders we desire to become
- Acknowledge and accept any resistance with curiosity
Kyle's Tracking Spreadsheets:
- Here a link to Kyle's trading log that he has been using in conjunction with the Mind Metrics app.
- Here is the link to Kyle's Mind Metrics app.
Almost every trader I talk to denies he or she is afraid of success. However, in private coaching and hot seat work in our Boot Camp, together with the student we discover that success can create a negative experience that has the power to sabotage our success.
Marianne Williamson sums this fear up beautifully. “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.” -Marianne Williamson
When I ask traders to vision their success, many cannot do this. As they try, many become very uncomfortable. If just visualizing success creates discomfort, imagine how your brain reacts when you approach success in the real world! This episode gives you the tool you need to evaluate the impact of success on your trading and an exercise to create a new framework for success.
In this episode, you can grab a full set of Guided Visualizations, especially recorded for traders. Use the code 2BULLS50 to get the set for half price. Limited time, limited quantity, so get them while you can.
Homework:
"I have never had a trader join our membership who says they have a problem with handling financial success as a trader. Yet, most of the traders who work with me and start seeing growing consistent profits will find a way to sabotage their success. Most traders don’t believe this but about 70% of my clients hit a “success ceiling.” -Rich Friesen
This process creates a negative asymmetrical risk to reward experience. As traders, we spend years learning our craft, resolving our issues, risking our capital, giving up many other options in our lives and careers to build success. Yet, in our brains, our survival mechanisms find consistent success threatening. Very few traders believe this when they start their trading careers. This episode focuses on the eventual experience of managing wealth and success as a trader. We look at our relationship with money, our historical beliefs, our family history. This episode includes an assessment and exercises to create awareness of subconscious routines that limit our growth and open doors to creating new behaviors and beliefs that serve us better.
In the Sixth and Penultimate (yes, that is the correct use of the word!) episode of our limited series, Money is the focal point of the conversation, and our relationship with it. Diving deeper into the topics covered in Rich’s recent book, Rich helps Kyle better understand his view of money and the ways that view directly impacts his trading. This month’s homework assignment is an exercise to practice visualizing the future we wish to have, so be sure to visit Conversations.Money/2Bulls to take advantage of the guided visualizations bundle to assist with the assignment!
You can watch this episode below or go here to watch on Spotify.
Here's the homework assignment for this month:
- Practice stepping into the broader future of the trader you wish to become (the house, cars, money, etc.) and notice any voices, guilt, shame or parts of you that resist the change.
- Negotiate with those parts in order to better understand what about those changes is scary to your subconscious.
- Keep practicing until you can step into that mindset without any stress or resistance from yourself.
In this episode, you can grab a full set of Guided Visualizations, especially recorded for traders. Use the code 2BULLS50 to get the set for half price. Limited time, limited quantity, so get them while you can.
What will I learn from this Podcast Series?
You will learn how to build awareness of your trader psychology, how it affects your trading, how to develop beneficial habits to improve your trader mindset and by extension, your bottom line.
Imagine how good it will feel to know exactly what your trading challenges are, and exactly how to correct them.
Your Hosts:
Self-Employed Trader
Kyle is a self-employed trader, and co-host of the 2 Bulls in a China Shop podcast. His trading strategies include futures, swing and options trades, with a focus on chart analysis. He began his journey to becoming a full-time trader with an investment mindset and the goal of early retirement from his career. Kyle started his career in the US Navy, excelling in the academically demanding Naval Nuclear Power School program.
Very early in adulthood, while serving in the Navy, Kyle developed a plan for early retirement, with the goal of retiring before the age of 40. He began and maintained long-term investments, created passive income with rental properties, and maintained a debt-free lifestyle.
Click the image below to see Kyle's Mind Metrics progress.
Retired Trader - Trading Coach
Founder of the Mind Muscles Academy, Rich has worked as a broker, floor trader, financial software developer and entrepreneur. He built one of the most consistently profitable options and equities trading firms on the Pacific exchange, training traders to trade for his firm.
Rich holds a Masters degree in Clinical Psychology and is a graduate of the Gestalt Institute in San Francisco, along with Masters certification in Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP). His background in psychology has been instrumental in developing Mind Metrics as well as the Mind Muscles courses for traders.
If you don't have your own copy of Mind Metrics but would like to participate, you can use the code 2BULLS197 to purchase the Mind Metrics app for 2/3 off the regular price and have Rich set it up for you. This includes a complete course on trader mindset and how to implement Mind Metrics to jumpstart your progress.
Get the full set of 5 Guided Visualizations for half the price:
Use coupon code 2BULLS50 to get the discount!
"I have done all of them. The introduction with Wendi (she has such a great voice) I did the first time in 2013 in Paris, I remember it VERY well, to this day I remember the spot on the wall. I especially like the Trading Temple and the Master Traders Home. They clearly address two of my issues and allow for a great experience that can be shaped and re-lived over and over again. I will definitely use these recordings in my journey. Thank you so much!!"
Martin S., USA