One of the main points I wanted to make was that passing a prop firm challenge and successfully managing a funded trading account are two very different things.
It’s something I’ve discussed with traders for years, but the Expo reinforced just how relevant that distinction remains.
There’s still a great deal of interest in funded trading, and understandably so. The opportunity to access trading capital without having to provide all of it yourself is attractive, particularly for traders who have developed some competence but don’t yet have sufficient personal capital to generate meaningful returns.
However, the opportunity comes with its own challenges.
Passing a challenge is essentially demonstrating that you can meet a particular set of performance criteria within the rules imposed by a prop firm. Managing a funded account is about demonstrating that you can continue operating within those rules while dealing with the uncertainty, frustration and inevitable setbacks that come with trading.
Those are not necessarily the same skills.
Why I’ve Decided to Bring Stage 5 Back
I originally created VTP Stage 5 – Becoming a Funded Trader to help traders understand the prop trading industry, the different business models and the practical considerations involved in pursuing funded accounts.
The original educational programme remains useful, but the industry has changed considerably since I recorded it in 2023.
New firms have entered the market, platforms have evolved, and traders face an increasingly varied set of rules, restrictions and commercial arrangements.
I could simply update the recordings, but I think there’s an opportunity to do something more useful.
Rather than concentrating exclusively on explaining the industry, I want to give traders the opportunity to observe what happens when someone actually attempts to operate within it.
That’s why I’m bringing back Stage 5 in November as a four-week Prop Trading Experience.
Trading in Front of Other Traders
From 9 November to 4 December, I’ll be combining the original Stage 5 educational material with live FX and indices trading sessions, alongside weekly trader reviews.
During those sessions I’ll share my market preparation, analysis, trading decisions and risk management.
But I also want participants to see what happens when things don’t go to plan.
Anyone who’s traded for a reasonable length of time knows that understanding a trading method and consistently executing it are two different things.
There are days when the market doesn’t offer anything particularly attractive. There are occasions when you make the right decision and lose money, or make a poor decision and get rewarded.
There are also times when you become frustrated, distracted or simply make a mistake.
How you respond to those situations matters enormously, particularly when you’re operating within the drawdown limits and other restrictions imposed by a funded trading account.
That’s the part of trading I want to explore during this programme.
A New Platform and a Few Unknowns
I’ll also be trading through my own CMC Funded account using Match-Trader.
CMC has entered the funded trading market, and I’m interested in experiencing its offering firsthand.
What makes this particularly interesting is that I’ve never traded on Match-Trader before.
So, alongside the usual challenges of trading, I’ll be learning a new platform, understanding its functionality and adapting my existing processes.
I’m quite sure there will be a few mistakes along the way. There may also be the occasional frustration and a few choice words when something doesn’t work as expected!
But that’s part of the point.
I’ve spent much of my professional life interested in how people perform under pressure, whether that’s in military operations, business or financial markets.
Preparation, discipline and self-awareness matter, but they’re tested when the environment changes or something unexpected happens.
Working with an unfamiliar platform while trading in front of other people should provide a few opportunities to demonstrate that in practice.
I don’t intend to pretend that every session will be smooth, every trade will work, or that I’ll have an answer to everything.
I’d much rather share the reality of the experience and use it to help other traders develop their own processes.
What I Hope Traders Will Take Away
The programme isn’t intended to be a demonstration of how quickly someone can pass a prop firm challenge.
It’s about understanding what it takes to operate as a trader within a funded environment.
That includes having a trading process, understanding risk, managing your own behaviour and reviewing performance properly.
We’ll have live FX sessions on Tuesday mornings, live indices sessions on Thursday afternoons, and a trader review every Friday.
The first week will give participants access to the educational recordings and preparation materials, with our first live group review taking place on Friday 13 November.
Across the four weeks, there will be ten live sessions and approximately thirteen hours of trading and reviews.
My hope is that participants finish with a clearer understanding of the opportunities and challenges involved in funded trading, and a better appreciation of the standards they need to develop for themselves.
Joining the November Experience
VTP Stage 5 – November 2026 Prop Trading Experience
Dates: 9 November – 4 December 2026 Format: Four weeks of education, live trading and weekly reviews Price: £147
You can find the complete programme details and enrol here:
I spent a couple of interesting days in London last week, working with traders at different stages of their development and having some worthwhile conversations about what it takes to build a sustainable trading business.
On Friday, I delivered our VTP Stage 4 Trader Performance Programme to six traders who were working on improving their performance and developing a more structured approach to their trading. Then on Saturday, I was speaking at the London Prop Trading Expo, where my presentation was titled Beyond Passing: What Comes Next for You?
My thanks to Simon for inviting me to speak, to everyone who attended the Expo and my presentation, and to those who came over for a chat during the day. I enjoyed hearing about your experiences and ambitions, and it was good to see so much enthusiasm for trading.
Simon had suggested the theme of the presentation, encouraging a few of us older, more experienced traders to share some of what we’d learned over the years. The idea was to help people think beyond passing their first prop trading challenge and consider what comes afterwards. Having spent more than twenty years involved in the markets, I thought that was a conversation worth having.
Passing a Challenge Is Only the Beginning
One of the things that struck me about the Expo was the amount of attention given to passing challenges, securing funded accounts and achieving payouts. There’s nothing wrong with celebrating those achievements, and prop trading has certainly created opportunities that weren’t readily available when I first started.
However, there’s a considerable difference between passing an evaluation and developing a trading business that can sustain you over the longer term. The skills and behaviours required to pass a challenge are important, but they’re only part of what you’ll need if you’re planning to make trading a significant part of your future.
One question I encouraged people to ask was what they actually wanted trading to provide. For some, it might be an additional source of income, whilst others may want to build their own capital, become full-time independent traders or eventually explore opportunities within professional trading.
The answer will be different for everyone, and it may change as your experience develops. What matters is recognising that trading can involve more than one account, one firm or one way of generating income.
Learning to Manage the Reality of Trading
Something I’ve learned over the years is that trading income is rarely linear. You can have an excellent period followed by several weeks when the opportunities are limited, or when your trading simply isn’t producing the results you’d hoped for.
That becomes particularly challenging when you’re relying on those results to meet your everyday financial commitments. The pressure to make money can easily influence your decisions, encouraging you to take trades you wouldn’t normally consider, increase your exposure or interfere with positions that should have been left alone.
During the presentation, I described independent traders as EWOKs, which stands for Eat What yOu Kill. It’s a slightly irreverent reminder that, unlike somebody receiving a regular salary, we’re largely responsible for generating our own income. That’s why I believe building financial resilience, maintaining a strategic reserve and having a sensible plan for income and capital growth are essential parts of developing a trading business.
But resilience isn’t simply about money. Trading can also be an isolating occupation, particularly when you’re spending long periods working alone. Over time, it’s easy to become so absorbed in the markets that your health, relationships and interests outside trading begin to suffer.
I’ve always believed that how we live outside the markets influences how we perform within them. If we’re serious about improving our trading, we need to pay attention to the person making the decisions, not just the trades appearing on the screen.
Developing Yourself as a Trader
What made those two days in London particularly interesting was the connection between the work we were doing on Friday and the conversations I was having on Saturday.
The six traders attending VTP Stage 4 were taking time to examine their preparation, decision-making, execution, risk management and the personal behaviours that influence their performance. They were also thinking about the sort of trading businesses they wanted to build.
At the Expo, I was encouraging people to consider those same issues, perhaps at an earlier stage of their development. Whether you’re working towards your first funded account or have been trading for years, there’s value in regularly examining how you operate and whether your approach is helping you achieve what you want.
It’s also worth remembering that you don’t have to work through every challenge on your own. Having access to experienced traders, coaches, mentors and other professionals who can challenge your thinking and help you recognise what you might be missing can make a considerable difference.
Getting the Right Support for Your Trading
This is much of the thinking behind the performance coaching I provide through TradingBeliefs, although the support someone needs will depend on where they are in their trading development.
For traders who recognise that something isn’t working and want help addressing it now, I’ve developed Turnaround Your Trading (TYT). It’s a focused six-hour coaching programme, beginning with a detailed two-hour examination of your current trading, followed by four individual one-hour sessions where we work on the main areas identified.
The objective is to understand what’s happening, identify the changes that matter most and begin implementing them over a relatively short period.
For experienced traders who already have their own methodology and want to invest in their development over a longer period, I’m also introducing DECS 27 Trader Performance Mentorship.
This is a twelve-month programme providing individual performance coaching, experienced mentoring and accountability throughout 2027. We’ll work with your existing trading approach rather than trying to replace it with mine, examining how you prepare, make decisions, execute, manage risk and respond to pressure.
Both programmes reflect the same underlying philosophy that has guided much of my work over the years. Improving trading performance isn’t always about acquiring more market knowledge or finding another strategy. Often, it’s about understanding how you operate, recognising where your behaviour and decision-making can improve, and then doing the work required to make those changes.
If you’re unsure which approach might be appropriate, or simply want to discuss your circumstances, you’re welcome to arrange a complimentary 15-minute Trader Performance Conversation. We can explore where you are in your trading, what you’re trying to achieve and whether working together would be useful.
I enjoyed the opportunity to speak at the Expo and meet so many people who are enthusiastic about trading. My thanks again to everyone who attended and took the time to have a conversation.
If there’s one thing I’d encourage traders to think about following the presentation, it’s the bigger picture of what they’re trying to achieve. Passing a challenge or receiving a payout can be an important milestone, but building a trading business that supports the life you want to lead requires a much broader approach.
I’ve explored these ideas in more detail in a longer article on the TradingBeliefs website, including the importance of financial and personal resilience, developing the right support around you, and the different ways traders can approach their ongoing development.
How well do you actually know yourself as a trader? Take 8–10 minutes to complete the VTP Trader Performance Audit across Markets, Method, Money and Myself — and find out.Take the VTP Trader Performance Audit
Hello Traders,
Thanks to those of you who joined us today. I should reiterate that the Monday Market Update is just that. A big picture overview of the markets, with a few ‘charts of interest’ thrown in. There are no trade recommendations, this is not a signal service – just what I am looking at and interested in.
Today we looked at; FX STAM, Magnificent Seven ETF ($MAGS), Meta Platforms ($META), Micron Technology ($MU), Caterpillar Inc ($CAT), Lockheed Martin Corporation ($LMT), GE Aerospace ($GE).
We also covered the usual suspects: $DJIA, $NDX, $SPY, $RTY, $DAX, $FTSE, $N225, $WTI, $XAUUSD, $XAGUSD, $BTCUSD, $USD, $DXY, $JPY, $AUD, $CHF, $NZD and $GBP.
Have a great trading week.
***We return in two weeks on Monday 2nd November.***
If you found this useful, you can subscribe to receive the written Monday Market Update, new trading and performance articles, and occasional VTP news and resources.
The VTP Lessons Learned Legacy (VTP 3L) is where I share some of the lessons I’ve learned through more than two decades of trading financial markets, along with my experiences of coaching and mentoring other traders. Some lessons have come from getting things right, others from getting things wrong, but all have helped shape my understanding of what it takes to become a better trader.
The Wallace Brief takes a wider view, exploring what those experiences can teach us about performance, decision-making and human behaviour, both inside and outside financial markets.
Your Trading Results Are a Reflection of Your Beliefs
The 4Ms — Myself | Understanding how your beliefs, mental state and risk decisions influence your trading performance.
An Early Introduction to Dr Van Tharp
I was very fortunate to come across the work of Dr Van Tharp right at the beginning of my trading journey. Looking back now, with more than two decades of experience in financial markets, I suspect that early introduction to his thinking helped me enormously, probably far more than I realised at the time.
One of his observations particularly resonated with me: we don’t trade markets, we trade our beliefs about markets. That idea made a great deal of sense to me, and over the years I’ve come to appreciate just how much truth there is in it. In fact, I agreed with it so strongly that it eventually became the inspiration for the name of my own trader performance coaching business, TradingBeliefs.
Now, that early exposure didn’t make trading easy. It certainly didn’t remove the challenges, frustrations or mistakes that are part of learning to operate in financial markets. What it did provide was a useful way of thinking about trading, particularly the relationship between what happens in the markets and how we interpret and respond to those events.
Through my own trading, and subsequently through coaching and mentoring traders from a wide range of backgrounds, I’ve seen just how much our beliefs influence the methods we choose, the risks we’re prepared to take and the decisions we make when things don’t go according to plan.
Van Tharp spent decades researching trader performance, and three areas of his work are particularly relevant to anyone trying to develop as a trader: beliefs, mental state and position sizing. They’re worth examining because they tend to receive considerably less attention than the latest trading strategy, indicator or entry technique.
The Beliefs We Bring to Trading
One of the things I’ve noticed over the years is that people don’t arrive in financial markets as a blank canvas. They bring with them a lifetime of experiences, expectations and beliefs about how the world works, what success looks like and how they should go about achieving it.
This is particularly interesting when working with people who have already been successful in other careers or professions.
Many have achieved that success through hard work, discipline, intelligence and the ability to influence or control their environment. They’ve learned that if they work harder, prepare better or apply more effort, they can generally improve the outcome.
Then they arrive in financial markets, where those same assumptions don’t necessarily hold true.
You can do all your preparation, identify what looks like an excellent trading opportunity, execute your plan correctly and still lose money. The market doesn’t know who you are, what qualifications you hold or how successful you’ve been elsewhere. It certainly doesn’t owe you a profitable trade simply because you’ve worked hard.
For some people, that’s a difficult adjustment to make.
I often remind traders that you cannot control the market, but you can always plan your trade, trade your plan and manage your risk. Those are things that remain within your control, regardless of what the market subsequently decides to do.
This is where understanding your beliefs becomes important. If you believe that being right is essential to being a good trader, how will you respond when the market proves you wrong? If you believe that successful traders should make money every day, what happens when you experience a run of losing trades?
And if you believe that working harder means taking more trades, you may find yourself becoming increasingly active precisely when the best decision would be to sit on your hands.
These beliefs don’t just influence how we execute our trading methods. They can also influence which methods we choose in the first place.
A trader who believes that success requires constant activity may gravitate towards very short-term trading. Someone who struggles with uncertainty may continually search for indicators that promise greater certainty. Another trader who believes that small profits aren’t worth the effort may take excessive risks in pursuit of larger returns.
None of this automatically makes someone a poor trader. However, it does mean that we need to understand why we’re making certain choices, rather than assuming those choices are always based on sound market analysis.
Your Mental State Matters
The second area Van Tharp emphasised was the importance of the mental state in which we operate.
This is something that has always interested me, not just in financial markets but through my earlier career in the RAF, where situational awareness, decision-making and performance under pressure were everyday considerations.
One of the lessons I’ve taken from operating in demanding environments is that having a good plan and being capable of executing that plan under pressure are not necessarily the same thing.
We can understand exactly what we’re supposed to do, rehearse it, practise it and even demonstrate that we can do it successfully in relatively comfortable conditions. However, introduce uncertainty, pressure, fatigue or emotional involvement and our decision-making can change considerably.
Trading is no different.
Think about a trader who has just experienced three consecutive losing trades. They may have a perfectly reasonable trading method, with clearly defined entry criteria and risk parameters. However, when the next opportunity appears, they hesitate because they’re afraid of taking another loss.
Alternatively, they may become frustrated and increase their position size because they want to recover the money they’ve lost.
The trading method hasn’t necessarily changed, but the person operating it has.
I don’t believe the answer is to pretend that traders shouldn’t experience fear, frustration, excitement or disappointment. These are normal human emotions, and they’re particularly understandable when our decisions have financial consequences.
What matters is developing sufficient self-awareness to recognise when our emotional state is influencing our behaviour, and having a process that helps us respond appropriately.
Sometimes that might mean taking a short break, reducing our position size or reviewing whether the market conditions still suit our method. On other occasions, it may simply mean recognising that we’re uncomfortable but that the trade still meets our criteria and remains within our agreed risk parameters.
The objective isn’t to become an emotionless trading machine. It’s to become someone who understands how they respond under pressure and can make better decisions as a result.
That requires practice, reflection and a willingness to examine our own behaviour, particularly when things haven’t gone as we’d hoped.
Position Sizing and Staying in the Game
The third area highlighted in Van Tharp’s work is position sizing, something he regarded as a fundamental component of trading performance.
I think this is one of the most underappreciated aspects of trading, particularly amongst people who are relatively new to financial markets.
It’s understandable that traders become fascinated by entries and exits. They’re visible, they’re exciting and they’re often the focus of trading education and social media. However, knowing when to enter a trade is only part of the equation.
You also need to decide how much you’re prepared to risk, what that risk represents in relation to your overall capital and whether you can tolerate the inevitable periods when your trading method isn’t producing the results you’d like.
This is one of the reasons that within the Veterans Trader Project we place such emphasis on our development philosophy of SURVIVE → ACQUIRE → PROSPER.
Before you can acquire the experience and skills necessary to become a competent trader, you need to survive long enough to develop them.
A trader who continually risks too much may never give themselves that opportunity. Even if they have a reasonable method, a normal sequence of losing trades can cause considerable financial damage, or leave them so emotionally affected that they’re no longer capable of following their plan.
There’s also an important relationship between position sizing and mental state.
Imagine two traders taking exactly the same trade. Both have the same entry, stop-loss and profit target, but one is risking a relatively small proportion of their capital whilst the other is risking an amount they really cannot afford to lose.
Although the market opportunity is identical, their experience of managing that trade may be very different.
The first trader may be reasonably comfortable allowing the trade to develop according to their plan. The second may find themselves watching every price movement, worrying about the potential loss and looking for excuses to interfere with the position.
The difference isn’t necessarily their understanding of the market. It may simply be that one trader has chosen a position size that allows them to operate effectively, whilst the other has created unnecessary pressure through their own risk decisions.
This is why I see risk management as more than simply protecting capital. It’s also about creating the conditions in which we can make better trading decisions.
Does That Mean Your Trading Method Doesn’t Matter?
One of the arguments often associated with Van Tharp’s work is that traders devote far too much attention to entry signals and not nearly enough to their beliefs, mental state and position sizing.
I agree with the underlying observation. Spend any time looking at trading discussions online and you’ll find endless conversations about indicators, chart patterns, entries and the latest strategy that supposedly provides an edge.
However, I would be careful about taking that argument too far.
You still need a trading method that has some form of demonstrable positive expectancy. Good beliefs, excellent emotional awareness and sensible position sizing cannot magically turn a method with no genuine edge into a consistently profitable approach.
Equally, having a perfectly reasonable trading method doesn’t guarantee that you’ll make money from it.
I’ve worked with traders who understand their method very well but continually undermine their results through poor execution, excessive risk, overtrading or an inability to accept losses. I’ve also encountered traders who are disciplined and committed but simply haven’t established whether their chosen method provides a genuine advantage.
These are different problems, and they require different solutions.
This is one of the reasons I use the 4Ms — Markets, Method, Money and Myself — within the Veterans Trader Project. They provide a framework for examining the different elements of trading performance rather than assuming that every problem can be solved by finding a better entry signal or improving your psychology.
Sometimes the issue really is the method. Sometimes it’s how the trader manages their money. Sometimes they’re trying to operate in market conditions that don’t suit their approach. And sometimes the greatest challenge is the person looking back at them in the mirror.
The important thing is to establish where the actual problem lies before trying to fix it.
Understanding Yourself as a Trader
One of the things I particularly appreciate about Van Tharp’s work is that it encourages traders to examine themselves rather than continually looking to the markets for answers.
That isn’t always a comfortable process.
Regardless of your age, experience or professional background, financial markets have a remarkable ability to expose the good, the bad and the ugly aspects of our personalities.
You may discover that you’re less patient than you thought, that you struggle to accept being wrong or that your appetite for risk changes considerably when real money is involved. You may also discover strengths that you hadn’t previously recognised, particularly in your ability to remain calm, follow a process or make decisions in uncertain circumstances.
None of this makes you a terrible person or necessarily a terrible trader. It simply means that, like everyone else, you have strengths and weaknesses that need to be understood.
The objective is to recognise those characteristics so that you can leverage your strengths and mitigate your weaknesses.
I’ve always believed that becoming a better trader requires more than simply acquiring additional market knowledge. It also requires developing a better understanding of yourself, how you make decisions and how you respond when the markets challenge your expectations.
That understanding doesn’t arrive automatically with experience either. You can spend years repeating the same mistakes if you’re unwilling to examine what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.
This is why reflection, review and honest self-assessment are such important parts of trader development.
The Lesson I Took From Van Tharp
Looking back, I’m grateful that I encountered Van Tharp’s work so early in my trading journey.
It didn’t provide me with all the answers, and it certainly didn’t prevent me from making mistakes. However, it introduced me to an important idea that has stayed with me throughout my career: the results we achieve in financial markets are influenced not only by what the markets do, but also by what we believe, how we behave and the decisions we make.
That thinking has influenced my own trading, my coaching work and ultimately the philosophy behind TradingBeliefs and the Veterans Trader Project.
I think there’s a useful lesson here for anyone who is struggling with their trading, particularly if they’ve spent considerable time and money searching for a better strategy, another indicator or a different market to trade.
Before you go looking for another solution, it may be worth examining some of the beliefs that are influencing your current approach.
Why do you trade the markets and timeframes you’ve chosen? What do you believe constitutes a successful trading day? How do you respond when you’re wrong, when you lose money or when the market doesn’t provide the opportunities you were expecting?
And perhaps most importantly, are the beliefs that brought you into trading actually helping you become the trader you want to be?
You may find that some of those beliefs have served you very well and deserve to be retained. Others may need to be challenged, adapted or discarded as your understanding and experience develop.
That’s part of the journey of becoming a trader, and it’s one of the reasons I remain convinced that understanding yourself is every bit as important as understanding the markets you choose to trade.
Trade well.
Stay in touch
If you found this useful, you can subscribe to receive the written Monday Market Update, new trading and performance articles, and occasional VTP news and resources.
If you have a question about TradingBeliefs, the Veterans Trader Project or your own development as a trader, you’re welcome to contact me directly. Through the same page, you can also book a focused 40-minute Trader Call or a more detailed two-hour coaching session.
Next Friday, 23 October, I’ll be in London delivering the Veterans Trader Project Stage 4 Trader Performance Programme, and there are just two spaces remaining.
We’ve got a good group of serious, dedicated traders coming together to spend a day talking about trading performance, sharing experiences, challenging our thinking and working out what we need to do to make 2027 our best trading year so far.
And let’s face it, put a group of traders in a room together and there’s unlikely to be a shortage of opinions, trading stories or the occasional disagreement!
But there’s a serious purpose behind the day. We want to take an honest look at where we are as traders, identify what needs to improve and establish a practical direction for our development.
And the work doesn’t stop when we leave London. The programme includes four online group development sessions and four individual 1-to-1 coaching sessions with me.
If you’re an experienced trader who feels there’s more to come from your trading, and you fancy spending a day working alongside others who take their development seriously, you would be very welcome.
I’m closing registrations tomorrow, Friday 16 October, so I can finalise arrangements.
How well do you actually know yourself as a trader? Take 8–10 minutes to complete the VTP Trader Performance Audit across Markets, Method, Money and Myself — and find out.Take the VTP Trader Performance Audit
Hello Traders,
Thanks to those of you who joined us today. I should reiterate that the Monday Market Update is just that. A big picture overview of the markets, with a few ‘charts of interest’ thrown in. There are no trade recommendations, this is not a signal service – just what I am looking at and interested in.
Today we looked at; FX STAM, Ukraine 2 Year Gov’t Bonds Yield ($UA02Y), Goldman Sachs Group Inc ($GS), BlackRock, Inc ($BLK), Bank of America Corporation ($BAC), Financial Sector ETF ($XLF), Dominos Pizza Inc ($DPZ).
We also covered the usual suspects: $DJIA, $NDX, $SPY, $RTY, $DAX, $FTSE, $N225, $WTI, $XAUUSD, $XAGUSD, $BTCUSD, $USD, $DXY, $JPY, $AUD, $CHF, $NZD and $GBP.
Have a great trading week. We return next week at 1230.
If you found this useful, you can subscribe to receive the written Monday Market Update, new trading and performance articles, and occasional VTP news and resources.
How well do you actually know yourself as a trader? Take 8–10 minutes to complete the VTP Trader Performance Audit across Markets, Method, Money and Myself — and find out.Take the VTP Trader Performance Audit
Hello Traders,
Thanks to those of you who joined us today. I should reiterate that the Monday Market Update is just that. A big picture overview of the markets, with a few ‘charts of interest’ thrown in. There are no trade recommendations, this is not a signal service – just what I am looking at and interested in.
Today we looked at; FX STAM, The Boeing Company ($BA), Invesco Aerospace & Defence ETF ($PPA), iShares MSCI Brasil ETF ($EWZ), French CAC 40 Index ($CAC) , France OAT Gov’t Bond 10 YR Yield ($FR10Y), and IG Group Holdings ($IGG).
We also covered the usual suspects: $DJIA, $NDX, $SPY, $RTY, $DAX, $FTSE, $N225, $WTI, $XAUUSD, $XAGUSD, $BTCUSD, $USD, $DXY, $JPY, $AUD, $CHF, $NZD and $GBP.
Have a great trading week. We return next week at 1230.
If you found this useful, you can subscribe to receive the written Monday Market Update, new trading and performance articles, and occasional VTP news and resources.
How well do you actually know yourself as a trader? Take 8–10 minutes to complete the VTP Trader Performance Audit across Markets, Method, Money and Myself — and find out.Take the VTP Trader Performance Audit
Hello Traders,
Thanks to those of you who joined us today. I should reiterate that the Monday Market Update is just that. A big picture overview of the markets, with a few ‘charts of interest’ thrown in. There are no trade recommendations, this is not a signal service – just what I am looking at and interested in.
Today we looked at; FX STAM, Sensex India Stock Exchange ($SENSEX), CostCo Wholesale Corporation ($COST), AutoZone Inc ($AZO), and Manchester United Football Club ($MANU).
We also covered the usual suspects: $DJIA, $NDX, $SPY, $RTY, $DAX, $FTSE, $N225, $WTI, $XAUUSD, $XAGUSD, $BTCUSD, $USD, $DXY, $JPY, $AUD, $CHF, $NZD and $GBP.
Have a great trading week. We return in two weeks on Monday 5th October at 1230.
If you found this useful, you can subscribe to receive the written Monday Market Update, new trading and performance articles, and occasional VTP news and resources.
How the Veterans Trader Project and TradingBeliefs work together—and where you can enter the trader-development pathway.
There has never been more information available to aspiring traders. You can learn about technical analysis, risk management, trading psychology and virtually every trading method imaginable without leaving your desk. Some of it is excellent, much of it is repeated, and a fair proportion of it is complete rubbish.
The problem is no longer finding information. The problem is knowing what matters and then being able to apply it.
Learning about trading and becoming a trader are two different things.
You can learn how markets work. You can learn to read a chart, identify a setup, calculate a position size and place a stop. You can watch hundreds of hours of videos, read all the right books and complete several trading courses. By the end of that process, you may know a considerable amount about trading.
That does not necessarily mean you can trade.
Becoming a trader begins when your knowledge has to survive contact with the market. Can you wait patiently when your setup is not present? Can you act when it is? Can you manage the risk correctly, accept the uncertainty and allow the trade to play out without constantly interfering?
More importantly, can you do it again after a loss? Can you still do it after several losses? Can you maintain the same discipline after a run of winners has made you feel rather clever?
These are no longer questions about what you know. They are questions about what you can repeatedly do.
Over recent months, we have clarified the relationship between the Veterans Trader Project and TradingBeliefs. Both exist to help people develop as traders, but they perform different roles.
The VTP provides structured education and community. TradingBeliefs provides personalised intervention and performance development.
This article explains the thinking behind that pathway, how its different parts work together and where someone might enter it.
When the plan meets reality
There is a well-known military adage that no plan survives first contact with the enemy. I have used it myself many times because it applies equally well to trading. Becoming a trader begins when your knowledge—and your trading plan—has to survive first contact with the market.
The interesting difference is that, in trading, the market is not necessarily the enemy. Nor is the person on the other side of your trade. They may have a different timeframe, objective, position or reason for taking the opposite view. They could even be closing a profitable position at precisely the moment you are opening yours.
More often than many traders would care to admit, the enemy is the trader themselves.
Pogo, Walt Kelly, 1971.
The Pogo cartoon has appeared many times within the VTP because it expresses the point rather well. Traders naturally look outside themselves for explanations. They blame the market, the broker, the method, the news, the person who shared the idea or whichever institution they imagine was hunting their stop that afternoon.
Occasionally there may be a legitimate external problem. More commonly, the damage begins with the trader’s response to perfectly normal uncertainty.
The plan encounters some pressure and suddenly fear, impatience, ego or the need to be right takes control. Stops are moved, profits are snatched, valid trades are avoided and entirely new rules are invented while the position is open. The market provides the pressure, but it is frequently the trader who converts that pressure into an unnecessary mistake.
This is why learning a trading plan is not the same as being able to execute one. A plan does not need to predict every market movement in advance. It needs to provide enough structure for the trader to recognise what is happening, respond when conditions genuinely change and avoid abandoning the process merely because the outcome has become uncomfortable.
That distinction matters.
Adaptation is a considered response to new information or a genuine change in market conditions. Abandonment occurs when discomfort takes control and the trader begins making up the rules as they go along. Both may result in a change of action, but they are not the same thing.
A trader needs sufficient flexibility to respond to reality without using “adaptation” as a convenient description for every frightened or impulsive decision.
The market tests more than your knowledge
Two traders can be taught exactly the same method and still produce very different results.
One may take every reasonable setup but use too much risk. Another may understand risk perfectly well but struggle to pull the trigger. One becomes impatient and overtrades; the other becomes so afraid of making a mistake that good opportunities pass by untouched. Some interfere with every open position, while others refuse to exit after the original reason for entering has disappeared.
The method may be the same. The people applying it are not.
Trading performance is shaped by the interaction between the market being traded, the method being used, the money being risked and the person making the decisions. That is why we use the 4Ms of Markets, Method, Money and Myself. Problems rarely remain neatly contained within only one of them.
A trader may blame their method when the real problem is inappropriate risk. They may blame the market after ignoring the wider context. They may continue changing strategies because it is easier than confronting their own behaviour. Occasionally the method really is poor, but changing it for the ninth time will not correct a problem that sits elsewhere.
Eventually, the market exposes the good, the bad and the ugly in all of us. That does not make someone a terrible person or mean they are incapable of becoming a competent trader. It means they need enough self-awareness to recognise their strengths, understand their weaknesses and manage both appropriately.
You cannot control what the market does next. You can decide how you prepare, which opportunities you take, how much you risk and how you respond to the outcome. Becoming a trader is largely about developing the ability to keep attending to those controllable elements when the market gives you every emotional reason not to.
Mistakes will still happen. What happens next matters.
Does the mistake sink us, or does it steer us?
A mistake sinks us when we deny it, compound it or allow one poor decision to dictate the next. It steers us when we examine it honestly, extract the useful feedback and make an appropriate adjustment.
The aim is not to become a trader who never makes mistakes. Such a trader does not exist. The aim is to become one whose mistakes increasingly improve future decisions rather than repeatedly damage them.
Why education alone is not enough
Trading education is necessary. Nobody arrives with an instinctive understanding of market structure, risk, execution and performance. There are things that need to be taught and skills that need to be practised.
The limitation is not education itself. The limitation comes when completing the education is mistaken for completing the development.
Information is relatively easy to teach, package and sell. It can be recorded, placed inside a course and delivered to a large number of people. The more difficult work begins when someone tries to apply that information to their own trading, with their own money, within the limitations of their own life.
That is where knowledge must become capability.
A competent trader should be able to independently plan, execute, manage and review their trading within a defined risk framework. Reaching that point requires more than recognising a setup on a completed chart. It requires repetition, feedback, honest review and enough time in the arena to discover what happens when uncertainty and pressure enter the equation.
This does not mean everyone needs constant one-to-one mentoring. It means traders need to understand where they are in their development and what form of support is appropriate next.
What the Veterans Trader Project does
The Veterans Trader Project provides a structured education and community pathway for developing traders.
Its five-stage learning journey takes traders through the knowledge, frameworks and practical skills they need. Each stage has a particular purpose, allowing development to build progressively rather than becoming a collection of unrelated courses, indicators and trading ideas.
The intention is not merely to teach people more things about trading. It is to help them understand how Markets, Method, Money and Myself combine in their own performance.
Learning does not stop being necessary simply because a course has ended. Knowledge must be applied, tested, reviewed and refined. That is why the VTP also provides an ongoing development environment through TAG.
TAG gives traders regular opportunities to review their decisions, examine their behaviour and remain accountable to the standards they have established. It helps sustain development after formal learning and makes it more difficult for the trader to quietly return to old habits once the immediate enthusiasm of a course has faded.
The VTP therefore performs two connected functions. Its Stages provide structured learning. TAG and the wider community help traders sustain that learning as they begin turning it into something they can use.
The aim is not to create permanent dependence upon a teacher or community. It is to help traders become increasingly capable of observing, assessing and improving their own performance.
We cannot prevent every mistake. We can create an environment in which those mistakes are more likely to steer development rather than sink it.
Where TradingBeliefs fits
Some traders do not need another course.
They may already possess a reasonable level of trading knowledge but remain unable to convert it into consistent execution. They may understand risk but continue breaking their own limits. They may have a credible method but cannot stop interfering with it. They may be returning after a difficult period, moving towards funded trading or trying to build their trading around the constraints of a demanding career.
In those circumstances, more content is rarely the answer. The trader needs somebody experienced enough to examine the whole picture and honest enough to challenge what they see.
TradingBeliefs provides personalised intervention and performance development. The work begins with the individual trader: their experience, objectives, available capital, time constraints, trading evidence and behaviour. It is not based upon forcing everyone through the same standard solution.
A Trader Development Session provides an opportunity to take stock, identify the principal development area and decide what should happen next. For some traders, that diagnosis and a clear set of actions may be enough.
Turnaround Your Trading is a more concentrated intervention. It is for the trader who recognises that something needs to change and wants structured help identifying the problem, interrupting the existing pattern and establishing a more effective way forward.
Where longer support is appropriate, a Trader Performance Block provides regular one-to-one coaching and accountability as the trader implements those changes and continues developing.
These are not simply more expensive ways to acquire additional trading information. They are different responses to different development needs. Their purpose is to help close the gap between what a trader knows and what they repeatedly do.
Sometimes the most useful thing a coach or mentor provides is not another answer. It is a better question, an outside observation or a degree of accountability that stops the trader conveniently ignoring what they already know.
Personalised support does not remove personal responsibility. It makes it harder to hide from it.
What we will—and will not—promise
We will not guarantee that you will become profitable within 12 months. We will not guarantee that trading will replace your present income, secure you a job on a trading desk or deliver a particular financial return.
Nobody responsible can guarantee what the market will provide. Nor can a coach, educator or mentor guarantee how another person will behave when real money, uncertainty and pressure are involved.
What we can provide is a serious trader-development environment.
We can provide structured education, practical frameworks, honest assessment, experienced feedback and appropriate accountability. We can help traders identify avoidable mistakes before they become expensive ones. We can also say when someone’s ambitions, timeframe or approach to risk need a dose of reality.
The trader will still be expected to think, prepare, practise, execute, review and take responsibility for their own decisions. That responsibility cannot be transferred to a course, community, coach or mentor.
None of this is as exciting as promising instant profitability. It is, however, far more useful.
Where do you enter the pathway?
There is no single entry point because traders do not arrive with the same experience, problems or objectives.
If you are relatively new to trading, or your previous learning has been fragmented, the VTP provides a structured place to begin. Its Stages develop the knowledge and practical understanding required across Markets, Method, Money and Myself.
If you have completed the learning but need an environment that helps you continue applying it, TAG provides ongoing reflection, development and accountability.
If you already possess considerable trading knowledge but something is preventing you from using it effectively, the appropriate starting point may be TradingBeliefs. A Trader Development Session can help establish what is actually happening. Turnaround Your Trading provides a concentrated intervention when meaningful change is required. A Trader Performance Block offers longer support when the work needs to be implemented and sustained.
These are not simply different products at different prices. They are different responses to different trader-development needs.
Nor is this a conveyor belt through which everyone must pass. A newer trader may enter through the VTP, while an experienced but struggling trader may come directly to TradingBeliefs. Someone who completes a piece of work with us should not be retained merely because another programme is available.
The first question is therefore not, “Which programme should I buy?”
It is, “Where am I now, and what kind of help do I genuinely need next?”
You can learn about trading relatively quickly. Becoming a trader takes longer because the market is not merely testing what you know. It is testing whether you can apply it when money, uncertainty and emotion are involved.
That is the difference between learning about trading and becoming capable of doing it.
If you already know a reasonable amount about trading but need personalised diagnosis, intervention or continued development, explore the TradingBeliefs services.
How well do you actually know yourself as a trader? Take 8–10 minutes to complete the VTP Trader Performance Audit across Markets, Method, Money and Myself — and find out.Take the VTP Trader Performance Audit
Hello Traders,
Thanks to those of you who joined us today. I should reiterate that the Monday Market Update is just that. A big picture overview of the markets, with a few ‘charts of interest’ thrown in. There are no trade recommendations, this is not a signal service – just what I am looking at and interested in.
Today we looked at; FX STAM, French CAC Index ($CAC), Thomson Reuters CRB Commodity Index ($TRJEFFCRB), Chevron Corporation ($CVX), Northrop Grumman Corporation ($NOC), Goldman Sachs Group Inc ($GS), Uber Technologies ($UBER), Ethereum/USD ($ETHUSD).
We also covered the usual suspects: $DJIA, $NDX, $SPY, $RTY, $DAX, $FTSE, $N225, $WTI, $XAUUSD, $XAGUSD, $BTCUSD, $USD, $DXY, $JPY, $AUD, $CHF, $NZD and $GBP.
Have a great trading week. We return next week at 1230.
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October 30, 2026
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