This week Steve Goldstein and Mark Randall are joined by Lance Breitstein, one of the traders featured in Jack Schwager’s Market Wizards: The Next Generation.

Lance first read the Market Wizards series as a student, and years later he became one of the traders in it. Before that, though, he spent two years at Trillium Trading losing money, including a whole month when he lost every single day, and had the head of HR come down to ask what was going wrong. He talks openly about nearly quitting, setting himself a six-month “stop loss” on his career, and then breaking through to months where he made a year’s salary in a week.

This isn’t an episode about secret indicators. It’s about the human side of trading: what it really takes to make it, why most people never do, and why, for those with realistic expectations and a powerful reason to keep going, it can still be one of the most rewarding careers there is.

In this episode:

• The three pillars of performance: natural talent, how hard you work, and how effective those hours are
• Why hard work means something very different to most people, and the trap of doing the “comfortable” work
• Finding your powerful why, the reason that keeps you going when every sign says quit
• Why retail success rates fall well below 1% once influencers and funded-trader programmes get involved
• Delayed gratification, and why trading’s learning curve is better than most performance careers
• “Reality is undefeated”: making career decisions on expected value
• How sleep, drinking and lifestyle show up directly in your P&L

About Lance Breitstein

Lance Breitstein is a professional trader and educator with more than 15 years of experience in the markets. He became one of Trillium Trading’s top performers, setting the firm’s all-time annual P&L record with roughly $17 million in profits in 2020, and has generated more than $100 million in verified trading profits over his career. Lance was recently featured in Jack Schwager’s Market Wizards: The Next Generation.

Find Lance

• X (Twitter): @TheOneLanceB
• YouTube: youtube.com/@TheOneLanceB
• Website: theonelanceb.com

AlphaMind: Powering Performance in Global Markets
AlphaMind brings powerful change, growth and development to people and businesses within global markets.

Driven by a deep understanding of how markets work, and how people and businesses function within them, we partner with clients to create personal performance improvements that elevate returns across their trading activities.

Go to the AlphaMind website to know more.

In this episode of the AlphaMind podcast, we sit down with Thor Young, who took the long way round into trading, starting out in IT before making the leap. Thor's refreshingly honest about the early days, blowing up more than one account before he finally scrapped his original strategy and built a systematic approach that actually suited who he is, not who he thought he should be. He talks about how meditation and a good community helped him get through the mental side of it, and why the real battle isn't the market, it's sticking to your own system when a drawdown is testing your nerve.

He also opens up about juggling trading with a full-time job and family life, including raising a neurodivergent child. It's a warm, honest part of the conversation, and one we think a lot of people will see themselves in, whether they trade or not.

Thor is the author of A Complete Day Trading System (2021) and has personally mentored hundreds of traders, helping them build greater discipline, consistency, and confidence in their execution. Today he trades live daily while mentoring alongside his partner, Dr. Vanessa Charland, through Market Alchemists, where together they continue developing systematic approaches and tools designed to bring clarity and structure to the trading process.

To learn more about Thor and his work:

Market Alchemists: https://marketalchemists.org/

Book: A Complete Day Trading System

X: @thoryoung

Instagram: @thoryoungMA

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheMarketAlchemists

AlphaMind: Powering Performance in Global Markets
AlphaMind brings powerful change, growth and development to people and businesses within global markets.

Driven by a deep understanding of how markets work, and how people and businesses function within them, we partner with clients to create personal performance improvements that elevate returns across their trading activities.

Go to the AlphaMind website to know more.

What Trading Can Learn From The Body Keeps the Score

with Steven Goldstein and Mark Randall

A trader knows the right move — and physically can’t make it. This episode is about why, and what trauma research reveals about performing under financial risk.

Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score has become required reading in trading circles — not because trading is trauma, but because the same nervous system mechanics trauma research has mapped in detail also govern how traders behave under pressure. Steven Goldstein and Mark Randall break down five lessons from the book and translate each one directly into the language of risk, drawdowns, and decision-making under threat.

What you’ll learn

• Why the rational, decision-making part of the brain goes offline under perceived threat — and why “just follow the plan” fails in the moment

• How neuroception, the nervous system’s unconscious scanning for danger, shows up as physical sensation before a trade goes wrong

• Why a single catastrophic loss can fragment a trader’s whole sense of self, not just their P&L

• Why journaling and post-mortem analysis alone rarely change behavior — and what bottom-up, body-based work adds

• Why co-regulation with another person, not solo reflection, is often what lets a dysregulated nervous system reset

“The market doesn’t care about your story, but your body is keeping score whether you’re listening to it or not.”

Timestamps

0:07 — Cold open — welcome back

1:00 — Setting up the book & Lesson 1: The rational brain goes offline under threat

13:38 — Lesson 2: The body knows before you do

30:13 — Lesson 3: One bad hit can fragment the whole story

41:20 — Lesson 4: Talking about it isn't enough on its own

50:53 — Lesson 5: Safety in relationship is what lets the system recalibrate

1:02:54 — Close & sign-off

Resources mentioned

• The Body Keeps the Score: Mind, Brain and Body in the Transformation of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk

• thealphamindpodcast.com — full back catalog and where to subscribe

The AlphaMind Podcast explores the behavioral and human side of taking and managing risk, hosted by Steven Goldstein with Mark Randall. New episodes and the full back catalog at thealphamindpodcast.com.

AlphaMind: Powering Performance in Global Markets
AlphaMind brings powerful change, growth and development to people and businesses within global markets.

Driven by a deep understanding of how markets work, and how people and businesses function within them, we partner with clients to create personal performance improvements that elevate returns across their trading activities.

Go to the AlphaMind website to know more.