Episode 4: Brian Lund Doesn't Have Time For Your BS
If there’s one thing Brian Lund learned about himself over the past 30 years in the markets, he must write. Without a doubt, without even thinking about it, he knows that to express himself and to complete his thoughts into productive trading, he needs to sit down and start writing. And this makes sense. We hear this a lot from our smart friends. Barry Ritholtz once wrote: “I write to find out what I’m thinking.”
In this conversation with Brian, we get into the importance of sleep hygiene and how it’s so important for us to be at our best. Not just in trading, but in living. We dig into challenges Brian has overcome along the way, including an ADHD diagnosis, and morphing from an always-on entrepreneur who constants has problems to solve to a trader who must sit on his hands and wait for things to happen. We also cover his hacks like therapy, meditation, and a CPAP machine to help him maintain his sharpness.
Like all of us, Brian has suffered from the market honing in on his biggest weaknesses. He’s got the battle scars to prove it. But learning from these mistakes and fighting the urge to revenge trade have been evolutions that took time. Brian discusses how many of the trading problems we experience are simply contrived. They aren’t real. We make them up in our heads. The market doesn’t care that we lost money in this stock the last time we traded it, and it doesn’t owe us any money on our next trade. Brian is a former night owl who now has a hot take on spousal sleeping arrangements. You don’t want to miss this! We hope you enjoy me and Steve Strazza’s wide-ranging chat with our friend Brian Lund.
We talk to a lot of traders. Not just on this podcast, but across everything we do. And one thing that is common to most of them is some level of stress which must be routinely navigated. And it’s often a real struggle.
From an early age, David Hale had hustle in his DNA. At just 10 years old, he was sneaking into casinos to play slot machines. By 11, he was betting on horse races. And before long, he was hunting for arbitrage opportunities in baseball card values.
It’s hard to believe Denise Shull is a product of parents and grandparents who believed in “buy and hold” and wouldn’t even know how to sell a share of stock if asked to.
“I would not give a fig for the simplicity on this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.” ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes
Reinventing your career after 20 years is no small feat. Now, imagine trying to do that by becoming an active trader. That’s exactly what Andrew Moss is doing—but he isn’t going in blind.
Among the many things that stood out during our conversation with David Lundgren, it was this quote: “I want to find a way to listen, and learn, and get a little bit better every day.”
