What top traders can teach us about success and happiness | Alpesh Patel OBE | TEDxYouth@HABS

Foreigners will be the reason you do anything in life and those three F's are fun DS or money and satisfaction, those are essentially the reasons why, so

what

do marketers have to

teach

us about

happiness

and

success

Aren't those people us? see on television as in the movie Wall Street like a golden gecko evil and greedy individuals, aren't they people who have nothing to

teach

us about

success

and

happiness

? Well, 26 years ago, for half a lifetime, I interviewed some of the world's leading Traders because I also wanted to be a Trader and I thought it would be best to introduce myself to the world's leading Traders and after having interviewed New York Traders, Chicago, London, I realized that there was much more they had to teach me about the happiness of success.

Wealth in the broadest sense, not just the accumulation of things as you get older, you don't really care about things, you care more about impact and legacy, you're going to leave a more fulfilling third F of your life and I love it. acronyms I'm going to write that down ok and let's do some more I'm going to suggest that

what

they have to teach us is different from what you have heard elsewhere although the destination is the same Success, happiness, wealth in broader terms, but what they have to teach us is not only different from what you have heard, but it also overlaps, like the subject of discipline, it is not the way you were taught before, it is very different from what you were taught.

I've been told that before, so I think it's a different path to the mountain of success that they can teach us and I think it's worth looking at what I want you to do. If you don't write it, I will write it. you, these are going to be the lyrics, okay, this is what we're going to talk about now. I will explain what each of them are, so when I met these people, I will give an example of who these people were. Global head of foreign exchange at Salomon Brothers at the time I met him, that made him one of the biggest Forex

traders

, if not the biggest Forex trader in the world.

There was David Kite. It happened on a school trip to go to the financial futures market and he changed his mind and left school at 16. He is on the rich list, but more important than that, the bigger purpose he serves in life for people the ones he helps, that's what captivates me and makes me interested in what he does now or in Martin Burton, he used to do it. In the days when someone used to fill your gas, you are too young to remember those days, but people used to fill your gas for you, you didn't even need to get out of your car, he used to be one. of those attendants at the petrol pumps and one day filling petrol for a person driving a Rolls-Royce he calculated in his head what the fuel cost to the person in the car that the person in the car was so impressed he gave him a job and Martin never looked back as he was phenomenally successful as a result, so it's not like they all had PhDs, but there was a mix of educational and demographic backgrounds, which is good to know if we're interested in meritocracy, but what was it?

It was the traits they had to teach that were also the first things that stood out to me when I met these leading

traders

and looked back over the last 26 years of living through that book. A book published by the Financial Times and the lessons I would repeat. in my weekly columns in the newspaper and you can imagine you have some of the best brains in finance reading the Ft, so you have to do it right, it's been peer reviewed, you could say the first thing that surprised me about what virtually everyone Just one What one of those traders told me was how risk averse they were, that's the first R, surely if you're in front of some of the richest people, the most successful and they knew why I was there.

I was a student when I met them. They knew I was there and why a student would want to talk to someone who is ridiculously successful and rich or the global head of a major bank or the head of a hedge fund. They knew I wanted to know how to achieve it. big, how to get rich, of course they did, now I'm more interested in a bigger purpose and helping society, but that's what happens with old age, you get a little wiser, so the first thing was risk aversion, why were they so risk averse? to say oh you know how we made it big you know how we were successful we had some shortcuts we had a little bit of insider information we just put it all in black or all in red we're just gamblers in the casino we just got a little bit of an advantage and we just put all the money oh, we are such a big bank that we can move the market, it wasn't that at all and it wasn't just that one of them didn't say that none of them many of them did it and they didn't know each other, it wasn't some kind of global conspiracy that a people love it on social media among straight managers, it wasn't risk aversion at all, how can risk aversion lead you to success? or what they did each of them is a lesson for success in life is that they were very good at risk management uh working out what they should do and what not to do they would wait patiently for the right operation or you could call it the right opportunity, they didn't just dive into anything we'll talk more about once they got in, how they were successful.

Risk aversion is the exact opposite of what they tell you on social media or as a business person, oh, take risks and the rewards will be worth it, not for the trader, it was to take as little risk as possible for the outsized returns and that meant waiting and waiting and waiting, which was the second thing along with that, again it was a bit surprising, they seemed to love to fail. Wait a minute, these are incredibly successful people, surely the secret to accumulating wealth and happiness is simply winning all the time, if only the world was that simple, and consider someone who has a lot less hair than the rest of you , if only the world was like that. gave me victories and nothing more, it won't come like that, I was failing, well what do you mean they are losers, but you just explained that they were at the top of their professions that they burned?

He had already managed billions on his farm or As I said, David Kite Running not only ran one company, but then expanded to create hedge funds and finance others, etc., what was it about failure that they liked? They knew it was coming and they knew they were following their process and cutting. Your losses are short There is an old saying in my industry Losers add to losers In other words, don't throw good money after bad It's a lesson for anything. I used to be a lawyer and I can tell you the number of clients in the legal profession. that simply out of bloody mentality or simply out of principle they will throw good money after the bad losers join the losers, they are capable, it is in trading, they have to do it 100 times a day, they can lose and get out fast, they didn't. double their losing trades, but there was a flip side to losing, of course, they won in Bill's case, he gave me a lecture, he said: you know what our passion is.

I'm going to tell you something. I'm global head of foreign exchange. For this major bank, he was the marriage of the year candidate a few years ago. I have never made money trading the most popular currency pair in my profession. The US dollar never made money on it. I couldn't believe it, he said. He's probably right about 40 of the time, so he waits, you have a person who keeps getting it wrong and can't even make money on the supposedly most popular currency pair that would be the one that you. He would talk to your friends in the pub and say look, I'm so good at this and yet he was willing to admit there was a lack of ego and I told him this isn't true.

I have seen television. I have seen social networks. The media and Tick Tock traders just ride around in Rolls Royces and gold plated teeth. Uh, surely they, they, complain about everything and talk about their jewelry, it's not true, not the ones I'm there, not the ones who are really successful, no. Not at all, what I found with that aspect of failure and with people like Bill was that it's the same thing they said about Edison when they made fun of him and said, "You haven't invented the light bulb, you have 99 ways you can." It failed and he said no.

I found 99 ways the light bulb is not working, you just need to be right once these traders have been able to cut those losses, get out of there, free up the mental space, continue with a trade. where they could make money and let the profits depend on it and a lesson for life in that and a lesson for happiness how many miserable, miserable people have I seen through just one or two mistakes in life and then doubling them down because they want to do it? being proven right I have no problem being proven wrong and they are moving forward instead of doubling down, doubling down, wasting energy, wasting time, what do we find out from that?

They were still brave in two important ways and courage arose among everyone. Of them, each of them kept mentioning courage in two different ways: one was the courage to accept loss and move forward without ego. They don't care if people actually laugh at their profession. People wouldn't laugh because people who knew would. I know that only comes in the profession, the other part of Courage was being contrary in saying when they were right and they believed it in the data they found in the research they did. I am going to hold this conviction with this View and I don't care if I am the only one who believes in it because I have to see that courage was constant among all of them and a key component to their success in life and I suggest success and happiness for any person in life. when I do the newspaper review on the BBC there are around 300 million people and you can imagine and get a few trolls from time to time or God forbid Tick Tock a hundred thousand followers by the way thank you 300 million on the BBC no one cares 100,000 on Tech talk You get it yeah the point is you're going to have some trolls if I'm right in the convictions that I believe in then you gotta stand up you gotta have your voice instead of saying no I just know you know bad people leave. to say things and I am not going to accept them, they had the courage to say this is my opinion.

I'm talking about Finance, but you extrapolate to the big picture the ACT T because I have a big mouth and I said why don't you grow against some of the analysts, the bankers, the fund manager will run a competition over a 12 month period and you'll see what so good you are, luckily, and I'll talk about luck in a second, I won that competition, have that courage if you believe in what you're doing then stand up it counts don't just sit there and say well this is what I think I'm not going to defend that person or that point of view because I will get into a little trouble, it's not worth it. worth those who succeed worth every trader you might think trading and great lives don't go hand in hand the same traits just a different perspective than you've ever had before what was Dean Dee was the detachment once again couldn't believe it, how can they be separated?

They have these people who are stupidly rich. How could they be separated? They were separated from the fruits of their labor for each of them, although the words they used were different. They didn't care about the money, they said, you could say, well, that's easy enough for them, they had tons. I already told you that David Kite left school at 16. Hilton Nathanson, who wasn't in the book, but someone I met later when I heard of Major incredibly successful when he started didn't come from a rich family, would probably admit he wasn't any good Kaviolamutai someone I met for the book earned his employer wouldn't release him because he was the UK's highest paid employee when he first walked into the room I thought he was the cleaner they were detached from the fruits of their labor they weren't showing off in their Ferraris and Lamborghinis I doubt they had them What was clear is that they loved the process that I was absolutely obsessed with the process, the fruits took care of themselves now as a Hindu, that resonated with me because when you think about religion in general, what it is about, it is about developing resilience, Whether it is Christianity, Hinduism or any of the great religions, it is about building hope. and resilience well, they had that resilience through Detachment, good things will come if I do the process right and that was completely the case in what they said L luck, you would think they would say ability, you would think they would say a common bias in Psychology known as bias of self-attribution, you think they would say hey, I'm God in the markets, I know exactly how good I am, I have a Swagger over and over again they said luck, very often luck had a lot to do with their success when we encapsulate all of this in one piece of software to make sure that people did what these guys said because he thinks that if everyone did this naturally, everyone would be rich and successful when we put it in software that people couldn't.

Believe it, they said: wait aminute. You're saying that you're not supposed to be right 100 of the time or 90 or 80 or 70 or even 60 percent of the time. There are people who are right 40 or 50 of the time, but they achieve great success. well that's how you win, the difference between a winner and a loser is that the winner just does one more trial and succeeds, it's that extra thing and if you want to know about losing you have to be an expert at losing, ask a winner because they have done more than the loser, by definition, the loser gives up and stops luck, they kept pushing their luck.

We have a saying in the industry. Winners join Winners when they knew they were on to something good, that's when they double their bet. You know what normal people do and there is a whole area of ​​behavioral economics that has opened up. This area I used to write about in my columns before and this has happened in the last 20 years. Three people won the Nobel Prize in Economics, all specialists in Psychology. Daniel Kahneman Richard Thurman and Eugene Famer. In my opinion their work was more about psychology and these traders understood behavior, if you want to be successful understand your own behavior and how other humans behave, eliminate things like confirmation bias, only look for things that agree with your preconceived points of view, which was clear about the most successful.

The people I've met since that book and those merchants wanted opposing views and you've heard it before from ancient philosophies and wisdoms, they wanted people who disagreed with them. The Roman Emperors used to have people walking behind them into an auditorium and one of those Emperors is being greeted, the person in their ear whispering "you are just a mortal" to remind them that there is another view to what they are hearing in the room. , these people had the opposite vision, that led them to immense success and they didn't do it. I don't have the God complex or that self-attribution bias like I said, they didn't even have an ego, they had to endure so many losses, so many failures, they couldn't afford to have an ego, speaking of which H out of humility, couldn't.

Believe it, they said Carvey walks into the room. I swear to god. I thought he was the cleaner. Where was she? Where was everything? Where was Gecko Gordon's corner office? Where was it? Where was Entourage? Where was all that? Nothing of that. We later found out when we were raising money for my fund. If you want to know where the money is in a room. It's usually the person in the back with the battered shoes. Probably no watch looks more disheveled. Generally it is the money in the room. It's not really the person in the front row with the Rolex and the Louis Vuitton and everything else over and over again.

It's been a good way to raise capital for us too, finally, the final f Focus if you don't pass the four and four rules you're going to give up you're going to lose that resilience it's going to be interesting you'd like the results you like flashcards and nice clothes you don't they will take you where you need to go and these people were testament to that, ultimately and to close what I would say, the one thing that stayed with me and most importantly, they felt like they had a bigger purpose, they had fun, they had funds, of course , which is the main thing most people think about, but the most important thing is that they had satisfaction and that is what will bring true success and happiness.

Thank you.