TRADING & DEVELOPMENT | OCTOBER 7, 2026

Wanting to become a successful trader and believing you’re capable of becoming one are not necessarily the same thing.

I was watching an interview with entrepreneur Codie Sanchez recently when she made an argument that stuck with me.

She was talking about wealth and the importance of believing that becoming wealthy is actually possible for you.

To illustrate the point, she referenced research involving people who described themselves as either lucky or unlucky.

In Codie’s retelling, both groups were given the same newspaper-style task. She remembered the participants being asked to find a particular word hundreds of times—roughly 217—and said the people who considered themselves lucky completed the task dramatically faster because they noticed information in the newspaper that gave away the answer.

The underlying experiment was a little different.

Psychologist Richard Wiseman asked self-described lucky and unlucky participants to count the photographs in a newspaper. On the second page was an enormous message telling them to stop counting because there were 43 photographs. The lucky participants tended to notice it and finish within seconds. The unlucky participants tended to remain focused on counting and took much longer.

That experiment doesn’t prove that simply believing something causes success.

But Codie’s interpretation raised a question I found much more interesting:

What if what you believe about yourself changes how you operate while pursuing an outcome?

And that made me think about traders.

Most people who spend years learning to trade obviously want something from it.

Maybe you want to become consistently competent.

Generate additional income.

Pass an evaluation.

Build something for retirement.

Create more financial independence.

Eventually leave your job.

Maybe you want to become a professional trader.

Whatever the outcome is, there’s an important distinction between:

“Successful trading is possible.”

and:

“Successful trading is possible for me.”

There’s plenty of external evidence for the first statement.

You can find profitable traders.

Professional traders.

P&Ls.

Strategies.

Trade reviews.

Educational programs.

People explaining how they developed.

All of that can establish:

Someone can do this.

But it doesn’t automatically establish:

I can do this.

And I’m interested in what happens in that gap.

Imagine two traders who want exactly the same outcome.

Both are struggling.

Both have losing periods.

Both make execution mistakes.

Both have plenty left to learn.

But one encounters another loss and thinks:

“What can I learn from this?”

The other sees the loss and thinks:

“I knew I couldn’t do this.”

Same with a missed execution.

One trader reviews it.

What did I miss? Why did I hesitate? What needs to change next time?

Another experiences it as confirmation:

“I can’t execute live.”

Over enough time, traders can accumulate conclusions about themselves:

I always get out too early.

I can’t execute.

I don’t trust myself.

I always ruin good trades.

I know what to do, but I can’t do it live.

Maybe I can’t become consistent.

I’m not suggesting belief is the only thing producing those behaviors.

Trading development is more complicated than that.

But I do think there’s a worthwhile question underneath them:

Does what you believe about your own capability influence how you engage with the process of becoming better?

I think it can.

But there’s another side to this.

When I started trading, I didn’t suffer from a lack of confidence for very long.

My first trade was extremely successful.

And you can probably imagine what that did to someone who was brand new.

I started doing the math.

If I can do this again...

And then again...

And I only need to repeat something like this a few times per year...

Suddenly, making millions didn’t seem unreasonable.

I believed.

A lot.

There was just one problem.

I didn’t have the experience to support that belief.

I hadn’t demonstrated repeatability.

I didn’t have mature risk management.

I didn’t have a tested process.

I hadn’t experienced enough market environments.

I had an extraordinary result and extrapolated it into an extraordinary future.

That’s an important counterpoint to the idea that belief itself is the answer.

Belief can exist without competence.

And eventually, the market made that very clear to me.

Losses came.

Accounts were blown.

And the psychological pendulum began moving in the opposite direction.

EARLY SUCCESS
→ OVERCONFIDENCE

Then:

LOSSES
→ DAMAGED BELIEF

The problem wasn’t simply whether I had confidence.

The problem was whether the confidence I had was justified.

This is where I’ve landed.

I don’t think a developing trader needs to wake up every morning completely convinced:

“I know I’m going to become a successful professional trader.”

How could you know that?

You don’t know exactly how long your development will take.

You don’t know whether your original expectations are realistic.

You don’t know how you’ll respond to a significant drawdown.

You don’t know which weaknesses you’ll uncover.

You don’t even know whether the version of trading success you currently imagine will still be the goal several years from now.

So maybe absolute belief isn’t required.

Maybe the minimum is much smaller:

“Maybe I can become better at this.”

That’s a very different statement.

It doesn’t guarantee the destination.

It gives you a reason to continue engaging intelligently with the process.

To review the loss instead of treating it as a verdict.

To investigate the mistake.

To practice.

To adjust.

To see what happens when you try again.

You don’t need certainty that you’ll become the trader you want to be.

You need enough belief to keep becoming a better one.

But eventually, belief needs evidence.

Because if blind confidence isn’t the answer, the next question becomes:

What should a trader actually base their confidence on?

— Theo
Founder, Tribe Trades