Mercedes van Essen is now a successful Futures trader but it didn’t come easy. She eventually made it there after years of studying virtually every mindset and psychology improvement technique known to man.
At a very young age, she was very fascinated by the stock market. She worked in a bank which involved going to the stock market however, she quickly realized that banking wasn’t what she wanted to do. Mercedes has since pursued a career in personal development including coaching for military personnel in Germany before she eventually jumped into full-time trading.
She’s studied Buddhism, self-awareness, and has been coaching new and experienced traders for more than 11 years.
Podcast Interview
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Interview Links
MentalStrategiesForTraders.com
facebook – @TheBuddhistTrader
Recommended Books
The Buddhist Trader by Mercedes van Essen
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NinjaTrader
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Mercedes’ Strategy of the Week
- She identifies the areas where 2-sided trades are taking place in the support and resistance levels on the candlestick charts
- She develops a strategy around them and only trades the breakouts either way up or down on a pullback in the direction of the breakout.
Exclusive “Trading Nut” Listener Offer
I’ve teamed up with Mercedes to put together a 10% discount for Trading Nut listeners. Take your pick:
Improve Your Trading Mind – Course
(10% OFF Coupon: Mercedes)
Key Lessons
[10:54] I found out that everybody I have worked with from professional traders to new traders to independent traders with experience, they all have the same problem because ultimately traders are human beings.
[11:17] The coaching side of things was very enlightening for me because I realized I did not need to take my issues personal.
[17:10] We needed to take that intellectual understanding and find a way to pull that understanding out of the intellect into the physical area of trading.
[17:55] I devised a very simple strategy which is very physical and it involves seeing a figure eight.
[18:14] I developed various visionary strategies around the figure eight and each of these meditations was only about six, seven minutes long.
[19:07] The brain harmonization meditation is a very physical thing that pulls the brain into harmony very quickly and you can feel it.
[22:58] If a brain is in coherence, there is no fear. If a brain is in coherence, it sees much more of the bigger picture.
[24:02] Brain incoherence is our habitual state of mind. Why? Because we tend to use the mind which is just one side of the brain rather than the whole brain to operate.
[24:28] The mind can only think in the past. The mind cannot think in the future because it has got no reference points for the future.
[24:39] Backtesting only serves one purpose and that is to see if a strategy can potentially make you money or not.
[24:52] In order to be able to trade successfully, you need to find a methodology that allows you to be comfortable in the unknown and that is the right side of the chart.
[31:26] Most people trade way, way too big for their account.
[37:17] Learn to meditate, learn to not any old meditation, learn to meditate correctly.
[37:52] Meditation should be part of everybody’s trading plan.
[39:06] Learning to trade correctly takes time.
[40:55] Technical precedes the fundamental every time no matter what you trade.
[44:44] Meditation is not about becoming the best meditator in the world rather it is becoming good at trading life.
Mercedes’ Trading
- She trades the Futures market
- She uses a unique range charts strategy
- She’s also a pattern trader and uses candlestick charts
- She has a risk-reward ratio of an absolute minimum of 1 to 1.5
- She has a lot of patience waiting for the setups to trade
- She has an 80% winning rate
- She looks for a breakout/pullback
- Her strategy works in all timeframes
- She only trades for about an hour
- She spends a lot of time doing courses and working one-on-one with her clients
- She trades mainly the Indices and her favorite one is ES
- Sometimes she also trades some of the currencies, Gold, and Crude
- She doesn’t trade Cryptocurrency
Exclusive “Trading Nut” Listener Offer
I’ve teamed up with Mercedes to put together a 10% discount for Trading Nut listeners. Take your pick:
Improve Your Trading Mind – Course
(10% OFF Coupon: Mercedes)
