Written in Partnership with Amir Bakian
In recent years, online trading has become increasingly popular as trading apps and commission-free brokers have made it easier for the average person to partake in the short-term buying and selling of assets, commodities, currency-pairs, and so on. But more than ever, the mental aspect of trading is a huge factor in determining success or failure. At its core, trading is more than just reading charts and making predictions; it’s a game of psychology. You need to acquire the right skills to be successful, which includes controlling your emotions while you trade. Yvan Byeajee, aka Trading Composure, has been a successful trader for over 20 years and knows what it takes to become a consistently profitable trader. According to Yvan, anyone can succeed in trading if they acquire the right skills, which means learning how to trade with confidence and composure whether or not one wins or loses in the short-term. That’s where Yvan comes in.
A veteran in the financial markets, Yvan has seen the good, the bad, and the ugly in the trading space. In his pre-trading days, he tried everything he knew to make it big. The son of a single mother, Yvan doesn’t come from money. His family lived on welfare and food stamps, and as a child, he also had a learning difficulty that made it hard for him to excel at school. Yvan discovered trading and its potential to change his life for the better during his teens when he stumbled on the book, How I Made 2 Million Dollars in the Stock Market, by Nicolas Darvas.
After reading the book from cover to cover, Yvan wanted to replicate Darvas’ success in the stock market. Although he didn’t fully grasp what the financial markets entailed, the idea of making money from taking calculated risks inspired the young man. Yvan eventually dropped out of high school and took up a series of odd jobs to save enough money and open a trading account. That dream came true in 2006 when he plunged full-time into trading, but the path wasn’t as smooth as he expected.
Despite his winning trading strategy, Yvan lacked a winning trading psychology. As a result, he constantly made shortsighted, emotion-based trading errors like buying or selling against his trading plan. Sometimes, he also hesitated to pull the trigger on what could have been lucrative trades, went into trades with too much size or not enough, or focused more on the outcome instead of the process. Because he didn’t know how to cope with losses or devise a good plan to deal with the setbacks, his winning streaks were always punctuated by crippling losses, and that constant emotional rollercoaster affected his mental health.
Over the years, Yvan consistently worked on his mindset, learned better ways of doing things, and eventually turned his results around. His passion and commitment to continuous improvement have helped him become a profitable trader a managing multi-million dollar fund for himself and his clients. When Yvan is not trading, he spends his time helping other traders experience the same transformational process he did with their trading psychology on his Twitter page Trading Composure. “Trading is a mental game—it’s a game one plays against oneself,” he says. His tradingcomposure.com platform teaches traders probabilistic thinking, acceptance of uncertainty, and maturity in dealing with their emotions. It also helps them develop an empowering life philosophy, ownership, accountability, and a long-term mindset in trading.
If trading is indeed a mental game like Yvan suggests it is, then it stands to reason that that his work behind the moniker Trading Composure is a welcome addition to the trading space.
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