Trading is a Mental Game - Trading Composure

Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Yvan Byeajee, Founder of Trading Composure Inc., located in Montreal, QC, Canada.

What's your business, and who are your customers?

I'm a market veteran with almost two decades of experience as a trader.
But I'm not your typical trader. I believe that trading is a mental game and that most people make consistently bad trade decisions, blow up their trading accounts, and walk away because they fail to understand the mental aspect of the trading game.

I've been featured in numerous media—Forbes, Marketwatch, Benzinga, etc.—and I'm also an Entrepreneur.com contributor. As a trader, I've done pretty well for myself over the years, and nowadays, I manage a fund for a small group of investors. I've been fortunate to achieve the level of success that I have in the trading arena, not because of my superior predictive skills but because everything that I do as a trader centers around the embrace of uncertainty. I'm also a trading psychology consultant, and in my work with struggling traders, I help them develop similar trading psychology.

Tell us about yourself

I don’t have a glorious background pre-trading. I was raised by a single mother, and we were very poor. She had four of us at the time and didn’t work, so we lived on welfare, food stamps, and all of that. And since I didn’t do well at school because of a learning difficulty, I didn’t amount to much, professionally speaking. I just took odd jobs here and there, but since I spoke with a stutter, I was chronically unemployed most of the time. That’s my background pre-trading, in a nutshell. Again, it’s not a glorious background, but I wouldn’t change it because it made me the person that I am today.

What got me interested in trading—as a teenager, one day, I was hanging out in my high school’s library during recess. (we’re talking about the years 98-99). There, I discovered the book How I Made 2 Million Dollars in the Stock Market by Nicolas Darvas. I brought it home, studied it, and immediately became fascinated by the man (Darvas) and what he had achieved in the stock market. I didn’t even fully understand what the stock market was back then, but I was fascinated by how one could earn a living by taking calculated risks.

And later, when I dropped out of high school, I took little jobs here and there with one long-term goal in mind: to save enough money for a trading account and to attempt to replicate Darvas’ success. In 2006, I plunged full-time into trading. I wasn’t successful as a trader right from the get-go. It was a very difficult journey for me… lots of ups and downs. But eventually, things got better.

What motivates me every day is just thinking about where I was and I am now. I'm amazed by how lucky I got in life--again, I don't come from money, to begin with. What also motivates me is the difference I'm able to make in people's lives by sharing my hard-earned lessons and helping them develop the qualities and attitudes that produce consistent results in trading. This gives my life great meaning even though my neurotic mind doesn't always see it.

What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?

A short list of things I'm very proud of:

I'm a consistently profitable trader, and that's something that very few people can say they've achieved.
I've created Trading Composure Inc, one of the leading trading psychology resources online.
I've structured my business (Trading Composure Inc.) in a way that I'm not spending all my time trading or even creating content for my followers. I've gotten really good at streamlining the whole process—trading takes me no more than 2 hours per day, the trading education part of my business takes me another 2 hours per day, then I'm free to do whatever I want with my day.

What's one of the hardest things that comes with being a business owner?

In my case, it's the uncertainty. As a trader, you can follow your trading strategy to a T, but you're never sure what the market will hand you. For so many people, the financial pressure this puts on them is deadly. It causes them to make emotions-based trading errors that sabotage their whole performance.

But for me, over the years, I've developed different streams of income that aren't dependent upon market fluctuations. There's the trading education aspect of my business. Trading Composure Inc. also invests in real estate and various small businesses. Those produce income that helps the company better weather the ups and downs of financial markets. So whatever income I get from trading is just the cherry on top—and sometimes it'll be a very big cherry!

What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?

Just start. You'll make mistakes, but you'll learn along the way. But start already.
Don't expect immediate results.
Honesty and integrity. Work on building something that you're proud of.

Where can people find you and your business?

Website: https://tradingcomposure.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tradingcomposure
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tradingcomposure/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TradingComposur
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yvan-byeajee-b97648106/

If you like what you've read here and have your own story as a solo or small business entrepreneur that you'd like to share, then please answer these interview questions. We'd love to feature your journey on these pages.

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