Steven Goldstein

40 years in markets — 25 years as an investment‑bank trader, 15 years coaching top traders (hedge funds, sell‑side, retail). I help traders move from good to great through sustainable behavioural transformation. Email to inquire: info@alpharcubed.com

@okpiliya_1 @Crowded_Mkt_Rpt its availabeo to everyone - or at least the analysis of it is,

@AlphaMind101 @Crowded_Mkt_Rpt Wow ,what a privilege it must have been to have access to this type of data

Jason Shapiro (@Crowded_Mkt_Rpt) is spot-on. I recently spent time dissecting data from a landmark study of the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TSE). It wasn't an easy task—there are plenty of analytical tripwires and the data is incredibly dense—but the conclusions are a massive reality check for anyone in this game. The dataset covered the entire market’s transaction history over a 15-year period (1992–2006), analyzing the performance of roughly 450,000 individual day traders. - check out the work of Brad Barber, Yi-Tsiu Lee, Yu-Jane Liu, and Terrance Odean for this. - “Do Individual Day Traders Make Money? Evidence from Taiwan” The Reality of the Numbers: The 1%: While about 20% of traders might have a profitable year at some point, only about 1,000 to 4,000 (less than 1%) were able to earn a profit consistently year after year once you factored in commissions and taxes. The Friction Trap: For the majority, any "gross" profits were entirely swallowed by high-frequency transaction costs. They weren't just fighting the market; they were fighting the math. The 0.1% Club: The study did find a tiny group of traders (the top 500) who were incredibly skilled and earned significant, consistent Alpha. We’re talking about people like Jason Shapiro, Mark Minervini, Kristjan Kullamägi, and Peter Brandt. These aren't just "the 1%." We are talking about the 0.1%—roughly 1 in a thousand. The Conclusion:Genuine skill exists, it isn’t luck, but nor it overnight journey. Jason has been on the AlphaMind Podcast several times and has been vocal about the years of pain and "hard yards" required to reach that level. @markminervini told us the exact same thing when he joined us last year. If you expect this to be a quick journey, expect to be part of the 99%. Even if you make it into the 1%, you should still be aiming to be the 10% of that group who truly becomes "special." The path to the 0.1% is paved with persistence. There are no shortcuts.

@shaunie233 all good , how you doing??

@AlphaMind101 It was the job mate…. Hope ur good Steve

I’ve been in Singapore for a week now and the greatest threat to life and limb appears to be the locals. They’re constantly wandering into lampposts, trees, and automatic doors because they’re all staring at their phones. You don’t get that in London. In London, if you walk down the street staring at your phone, someone will nick it. Street crime has its upsides 😉😜

@ewytang No - was just Singapore

@AlphaMind101 Will you be popping around Hong Kong too?

@shaunie233 talk about a long lunch

@AlphaMind101 Sing’s great, went to lunch with dave leung credit suisse, went just outside city to pure jungle locale with a restaurant in it, only went for lunch - then back!!!

@ChanceAllison15 👍👍👍

@AlphaMind101 It’s why Nick Saban won all those national championships.

The words of a client who has achieved a level of performance and consistency he never thought he’d ever attain : "The real breakthrough happens when you stop trading for the result and start trading for the process."

@CountBlum Fantastic - AI is an Amazing addition to the ‘process’ process.

Steven, Claude has been helping me massively with consistency. I’m wired for high dopamine and probably a bit ADHD, so repetitive tasks are genuinely uncomfortable for me — I feel it physically. But with Claude, I’ve built a more interactive way of doing things, and I actually look forward to it now. On top of that, it helps me interpret my data — spotting patterns I miss and giving me clarity on what they actually mean.

@paribius I was really focusing on the excerpt on Europe, not the article .

@AlphaMind101 There are some big assumptions made in the article. An example being because Iran has slowed its missile and drone launches by 90% that it’s degraded. Except they specifically don’t need to launch as many now as they did at the start given the strait closure which was their aim.

Whilst western media’s reporting of the war remains framed by obstinate rebelliousness to all things Donald Trump, which seems to shape the way our ‘wee-minded’ government in the U.K. communicate and act, an Al-Jazeera journalist is able to produce a far more honest and nuanced assessment of the current Middle-Eastern war. 👇

Both. My view is that AQ develops anyway, as in development of AQ in sport with experience, but structural development catalyses it. Self directed learning, journaling, mapping, feedback, reflection and reviewing, monitoring and holding self accountable, this is further advanced with mentoring and coaching.

Adaptation is real, but I've found it's dangerous when it stays purely intuitive. For a long time I thought I was "adapting" to the market when really I was just reacting to my last few trades — recency bias dressed up as flexibility. What changed was turning adaptation into something I could actually measure. I started tracking how my setups performed across different regimes — trending vs ranging, volatile vs quiet — and let the data tell me when to adjust instead of my gut. The shift wasn't about being smarter in the moment. It was about having enough historical context that the right adjustment became obvious. Do you see AQ as something that improves with raw experience, or does it need structured feedback loops to develop reliably?

Following yesterday’s post, (copied below) what is the intelligence most needed to succeed in the markets? The answer: Adaptive Intelligence (AQ). To add some colour, let's use a boat analogy: 1. The Design: Intellectual Intelligence (IQ) IQ is the mental capacity for reasoning and learning complex information. * The Role: I want my boat designed by an IQ specialist. * The Result: They use advanced physics and material science to optimize speed and stability. 2. The Crew: Emotional Intelligence (EQ) EQ is the ability to manage emotions and navigate social complexities. * The Role: I want a crew high in EQ. * The Result: They understand passenger needs and provide reassurance to everyone on board during the journey. 3. The Captain: Adaptive Intelligence (AQ) AQ is the capacity to modify actions and strategies during unpredictable and uncertain circumstances. * The Role: I want a Captain with high AQ at the helm. * The Result: They succeed by adjusting maneuvers and routes based on shifting tides and changing weather. The Bottom Line: While being competent in all three is helpful in trading, Adaptive Intelligence is what truly matters in the markets. It is the "Street Smarts": the ability to remain open to emergent realities and change course when the situation becomes complex and unpredictable.

I saw this excerpt in a post from an Arab account, and it made me think, this just might be true! “Europe is powerless; its role has vanished on the global stage, whether in Ukraine or the Middle East. Its social welfare programs consumes all its budgets and attracts non-Western populations whose votes further paralyze European foreign policy and make it as useless as the UN” Any thoughts !!! Full post below : x.com/hahussain/stat…

@HoodedClaw1974 This must have been the greatest ever ‘you’re not going to believe what just happened to me on the way to the pub’ story!

The word hero is thrown about too often, but when you get sent flying 20 yards after getting hit by a bus, and then dust yourself off and walk straight in the pub, you are my hero.🤣🤣 This happened around 9 years ago in Reading and his name is Simon Smith . Take a bow son😎

@MycoMinisterKY 👍👍👍

@AlphaMind101 Just starting this journey. And what Iblove most is what it's doing for my discipline.

The type of intelligence you need in trading is not the same type of intelligence needed to build a rocket 🚀, which is why I love this quote so much: “Investing is not a game where the guy with the 160 IQ beats the guy with the 130 IQ. Once you have ordinary intelligence, what you need is the temperament to control the urges that get other people into trouble.” Warren Buffett

Nice post 👇 If you’re going to learn, you might as we study the best and learn from them.

This is going to sound crazy to all the new traders who got into the game to make money: "Trading in the early years isn’t about making money." You see, you aren’t good enough to make money in the early years—unless you think trading is just about luck and that you have some God-given right to be the luckiest person in the room. You don’t play a few games of tennis at the local courts with friends and then think, “Okay, I’m ready—how do I sign up for the next Grand Slam?” But some of you are going to say, “Dude, WTF are you talking about? I’ve been buying and holding and making money for two years now.” Right there is the little trick the market plays: it allows you to think you’re good enough. It rewards you; it makes you feel good. It does the old casino trick of laying out the red carpet each time you turn up at the door—and we all know how that ends for everyone except the house. You’re not stupid if that’s you—we’ve all been there; it’s human nature. Some of us actually got lucky by failing catastrophically in the early days. That is the sort of luck you actually want. Me? I started trading in mid-1987; my lesson arrived a short three to four months later. Being “good enough” at anything requires practice. Trading is no different. So, let’s rephrase my original comment: “Trading in the early years isn’t about making money; it’s about practicing.”

@baynkr Thanks Ryan. Looking forward to reading it

@AlphaMind101 Thank you, Steven. Means a lot coming from you. Love your stuff

My book went to print today. The Art and Business of Professional Trading (Wiley). It's not a setup guide. No buy signals, no take profit levels, no "10 rules for consistent profits." It's more like... here's a bunch of stuff we think about at the professional level that nobody really talks about publicly. Psychology, process, how edges actually work, why most people blow up, what the survivors do differently. People who've read it early seem to like it. If you're into Alpha Trader, Fooled by Randomness, The Laws of Trading, this is in that family. In bookstores April 30. You can preorder through Wiley or find it on Amazon, wherever you buy books. Link below.