Why I Named My Business TradingBeliefs

An idea from Van Tharp that stayed with me, and eventually became the name of my trader performance coaching business.

*VTP 3L is where I share lessons learned through trading. The Wallace Brief gives me room to explore their wider implications for performance, decision-making and human behaviour.*

A name with a reason behind it

TradingBeliefs wasn't a name I picked simply because I thought it sounded good. It came from an idea that made sense to me early in my trading journey and has continued to make sense through more than two decades in financial markets.

I was fortunate to come across the work of Dr Van Tharp right at the beginning. One of his observations particularly resonated with me: we don't trade markets, we trade our beliefs about markets.

That idea eventually became the inspiration for TradingBeliefs.

Looking back, I suspect it helped me more than I realised at the time. It gave me a way of thinking about the relationship between what happens in a market and what I then choose to do about it. Those two things can feel inseparable when you're watching a trade unfold, but there is a great deal going on between the price moving and your hand reaching for the mouse.

What do you think that movement means? What were you expecting? What are you afraid might happen next? And what do you believe a good trader should do in that situation?

The market provides the event. We bring our interpretation, along with all the experience, expectations and assumptions behind it.

We bring ourselves into the market

One of the things I've noticed through trading, coaching and mentoring is that people don't arrive in financial markets as a blank canvas.

That becomes particularly interesting when someone has already been successful in another career. Hard work, preparation and the ability to influence an outcome may have served them very well. It's understandable that they expect those qualities to serve them just as well in trading.

Often they do help. But the market can still deliver a loss after you've prepared properly and followed your plan.

That's a difficult adjustment if you've come to associate a good decision with a successful outcome, or being wrong with having failed. A losing trade can start to feel like something you need to correct immediately. Before long, you're taking another trade because you want to recover the loss, rather than because the opportunity meets your criteria.

The belief behind that decision matters. So does recognising it before it takes charge of the next one.

For me, that's a large part of what the name TradingBeliefs represents: a willingness to examine the assumptions behind our choices, rather than looking only at the choices themselves.

Beliefs show up in ordinary decisions

This doesn't have to become an abstract discussion about mindset. You can see beliefs at work in quite ordinary trading decisions.

If you believe a successful trader should make money every day, a quiet session may feel like a problem that needs solving. If you believe working harder means taking more trades, sitting on your hands can feel like a lack of effort. If being right matters too much, accepting a loss may become harder than it needs to be.

Beliefs can also influence the method you choose. Someone who feels they need constant activity may gravitate towards very short-term trading. Someone who struggles with uncertainty may keep adding indicators in the hope of finally feeling certain.

None of that automatically makes the person a poor trader. It does give them something useful to examine.

Why have I chosen this approach? Does it suit me and the market I'm trading? Or am I asking it to satisfy an expectation that the market has no obligation to meet?

Those are the kinds of questions I think are worth asking before searching for another strategy.

The person operating the method

Van Tharp's attention to mental state and position sizing also stayed with me. They are closely connected to the beliefs we bring to trading, and to whether we can put a reasonable plan into practice.

My earlier career in the RAF gave me an interest in situational awareness, decision-making and performance under pressure. Having a plan and being able to carry it out when you're tired, frustrated or emotionally involved are not necessarily the same thing.

Trading provides plenty of opportunities to discover that for yourself.

After several losses, a trader may hesitate over a trade that meets their criteria. Or they may increase their size because they want to win the money back. The method may be unchanged, but the person operating it is responding differently.

I don't think the answer is to expect people to stop feeling fear or frustration. What matters is recognising how those feelings affect behaviour and having a process that helps you respond.

Position sizing belongs in that conversation too. Risking an amount you cannot comfortably tolerate can create pressure that makes it much harder to follow your plan. Protecting capital and creating the conditions for sound decisions are closely related.

A business name isn't a claim that mindset solves everything

Naming the business TradingBeliefs doesn't mean I think every trading problem is psychological.

A method still needs a demonstrable edge. Understanding yourself cannot turn a method with no positive expectancy into a profitable one. Equally, a reasonable method can be undermined by excessive risk, poor execution or a refusal to accept losses.

These are different problems. It helps to establish which one you're dealing with.

That's why I use the 4Ms — Markets, Method, Money and Myself — within the Veterans Trader Project. They give us a way to look across the different elements of performance. Sometimes the method needs attention. Sometimes market conditions don't suit it. Sometimes the issue is risk, and sometimes it's how the trader responds to what is happening.

The name TradingBeliefs reflects an important influence on my work. The work itself still needs to consider the whole trader and the way they operate.

What the name means to me now

I'm grateful that I encountered Van Tharp's work so early. It didn't make trading easy or spare me the mistakes. It did encourage me to look at my own part in the results I was getting.

That remains central to how I think about trader development. Financial markets can expose impatience, a need to be right or an appetite for risk that changes when real money is involved. They can also reveal strengths: an ability to stay calm, follow a process or make a considered decision when the outcome is uncertain.

The point is to understand those characteristics well enough to work with them.

If you're reviewing your own trading, a useful place to start is with a decision you found difficult. What did you believe at the time? What did you expect the market to do? And how did that expectation influence your response?

You may find a belief worth keeping. You may find one that needs challenging. Either way, you've learned something about the person making the decisions.

That's why I called the business TradingBeliefs. The name acknowledges an idea I learned from Van Tharp, and a lesson that continues to shape my own trading and coaching: understanding the markets matters, and so does understanding yourself.