Wendy The Trading Psychologist

I’m sure a lot of us are familiar with Wendy Rhoades, the in-house therapist at a fund called Axe Capital from the TV series Billions.

What a brilliant idea to have a high-performance coach available to any trader who needs support or guidance when experiencing hardship.

Sure Wendy in this instance is fictional, but many trading firms have a Wendy. And allegedly HBO got the character idea from Denise Shull, performance coach to hedge funds…) 

Anyway… the common issue that the traders in the show bring to Wendy is that they are sitting in a mess and have lost sight of the path.

Their confidence is down and probably don’t have the internal mechanism to get themselves back up and into attack mode again.

Wendy knows exactly how to genuinely make them feel understood and then reminds them of who they are.

• She removes them from their tendency to over-identify with the problem as a reflection of their self-worth.
• She reminds them of their level of competency.
• She assures them that this rough patch will pass and they can work themselves out of it.

Ok, this is great if you have an in-house psychology coach however, for most of us, we don’t have a Wendy in our office giving us that kind of support…

So how can you create this for yourself?

1. Remember that a recent run of poor performance is not a reflection of your self-worth.
2. I’m sure you’ve done a lot of tough things in your life that you can be proud of. Take strength from your ability to do tough things.
3. Nothing stays the same forever. A lot can happen in a week or two of trading.
4. Join Traders Mastermind (kidding, kinda…)

Just reminding yourself of these 3 main points can give you the “Wendy” boost you need to you out of the rut and get going once more…

Oh and if you find these things too tough to visit in the heat of the moment, write them down now and seal them in an envelope.

When you need a Wendy moment, open it and read 1, 2 and 3 for a quick mindset shift.