Good morning, traders…
Toward the beginning of my professional basketball career, I played in Uruguay.
When I got there, I thought I’d steamroll everyone.
SPOILER ALERT: I was wrong.
The stadiums were packed. The fans were intense. The style of play was completely different from what I’d experienced in the States.
The players were skilled, experienced, and ruthless. They’d been playing together for years. They knew each other’s tendencies. They communicated in a language I couldn’t follow yet.
My first week was a rude awakening.
I was faced with a decision:
Get discouraged watching other players outperform me…
or…
Use it as motivation to prove myself.
Which do you think I chose?
The second, obviously. And that decision changed my life forever.
These days, as a trading instructor, I watch my students face a similar choice.
They see other traders succeeding and feel inadequate. They want those wins in their account.
So they make emotional decisions in an attempt to catch up. They oversize positions. They chase setups. They abandon their process.
The comparison trap clouds your decision-making, pushes you to chase subpar setups, and destroys your objectivity.
If you’ve ever felt discouraged seeing other traders book wins while you struggle to breakeven, it’s time to pay attention…
Why Comparison Kills Your Edge
My experience in Uruguay differed from your experience in the markets — because basketball is a zero-sum game.
One team wins, one team loses.
But trading doesn’t work like that.
Short-sighted traders think, “If this guy is winning, I must be losing.”
Completely false.
There are trillions of dollars sloshing around the stock market. Plenty of action for everyone.
Another trader crushing it doesn’t prevent you from doing the same.
Stop envying other traders.
Start learning from them.
The Instant Gratification Trap
We live in an era of instant gratification.
You can post a picture and get likes in seconds.
Order food and have it in under an hour.
Stream any movie ever made.
But the stock market doesn’t work like that.
You have to dedicate yourself to mastering the art of trading if you want to rise above the 90% who lose money.
If you want instant gratification, trading isn’t for you.
The hypnotic pull toward “easy money” is one of the biggest reasons traders fail.
The attributes necessary for successful trading are in direct conflict with the current global mindset.
We see shiny objects and want them immediately, but we don’t see the blood, sweat, and tears behind them.
Few are willing to put in the years of work that success requires.
You must be one of them.
What Successful Traders Do Differently
The best traders I know don’t worry about others’ success. They use it.
Great trades inspire them. They take notes, absorb ideas, and use others’ wins as catalysts for their own.
For every one of these success stories, I’ve seen too many tragic tales of traders who let envy cloud their mindset and quit.
When you doom-scroll other people’s wins, you’re zooming into the small picture at the wrong time.
When making intraday trades, zoom in.
When considering long-term goals, zoom out.
Zoom in to act.
Zoom out to endure.
Don’t think about what you’re missing when someone else posts a win. Think about how you can implement their ideas into your own strategy.
The moment you understand that, you’ll stop competing … and start trading.
Happy trading,
Ben Sturgill
*Past performance does not indicate future results
