Table of Contents
In this interview, performance coach and author Jared Tendler—best known for The Mental Game of Trading—sits down in Miami with the Words of Wisdom podcast to dig into why psychology and process matter just as much as setups. With a background in counseling psychology and years of coaching golfers and poker pros before traders, Tendler explains how real edge comes from systems thinking, not placebo “mindset hacks,” and why many traders sabotage viable plans through fear, greed, and FOMO. If you’ve ever felt your emotions hijack a perfectly good playbook, this conversation shows who Jared is, why he’s respected, and what makes his approach different—and immediately useful to your P&L.
You’ll learn how to separate technical problems from mental ones, build a simple “mental game strategy” you can run every session, and use data collection to spot the exact thoughts, emotions, and triggers that lead to rule breaks. Tendler breaks down common traps—overconfidence after wins, revenge trading after losses, prop-firm pressure—and shows practical fixes that help you execute your existing strategy with more consistency. By the end, you’ll have a clearer way to diagnose issues, inject logic in real time, and grow skill deliberately—so your trader strategy is calmer, repeatable, and built to last.
Jared Tendler Playbook & Strategy: How He Actually Trades
Core Philosophy (What he optimizes for)
Jared focuses on turning psychology from vague “mindset” talk into a repeatable system that protects execution. The point isn’t perfect emotions; it’s consistent decisions under stress, so your edge actually shows up in P&L.
- Treat psychology like risk management: define triggers, thresholds, and preplanned responses.
- Separate “technical problems” (strategy flaws) from “mental problems” (execution leaks) before changing setups.
- Build a personal “map” of patterns: thoughts → emotions → physical cues → mistakes → consequences.
- Judge every session by process metrics (rule adherence, quality scores), not just P&L.
- Upgrade skills with reps: diagnose → design drill → run it live → review → iterate.
Pre-Market Routine (Set the conditions before you trade)
The warm-up is about loading your best decision-making state on command. You prime the brain with recency, clarity, and a simple plan for handling the day’s most likely mental traps.
- 5-minute “A-Game snapshot”: write 3 markers of your best focus (e.g., “slow breathing, neutral tone, no outcome talk”).
- List today’s top 2 traps (e.g., chasing breakouts, cutting winners) and your exact counter-scripts.
- Define a micro-goal for execution (e.g., “0 impulsive clicks; minimum 2-minute wait after alert”).
- Pre-tag the calendar: news windows → reduce size by 50% or stand aside entirely.
- Quick body check: rate tension 1–10; if >6, delay opening positions until ≤4.
Opening Protocol (First 30–60 minutes)
Early minutes set the emotional tone. You start small, confirm your read, and earn the right to scale when behavior—not hope—stays clean.
- First trade max risk = ½ normal unit; only expand after two clean decisions in a row.
- No limit changes in the first 2 minutes of a position; let the original plan play.
- One screen for setups, one for journal notes; record the why before entry.
- If you break a rule, freeze new risk for 15 minutes and complete a 3-line post-mortem before resuming.
- No “catch-up” behavior after a missed A+ entry; next trade must meet prewritten criteria.
Real-Time Correction (When emotions spike)
You won’t stop emotions, you’ll route them. Create interrupt routines you can execute in 30–90 seconds to prevent a single impulse from becoming a session-killer.
- Name the state fast (“tilt-anger,” “FOMO-hype”) to shift from feeling to handling.
- Run a 3-breath cadence, then read your “injection of logic” card aloud (one sentence that kills the bias).
- Drop size by one tier immediately after any urge to move a stop without a plan justification.
- If heart rate or mouse-click tempo jumps (your tells), set a 5-minute timer before any new order.
- One discretionary override per session max; a second override triggers mandatory flat for 30 minutes.
State-Based Sizing (Risk tied to your mental game)
Sizing adjusts to your mental state like a trailing stop adjusts to price. A good state earns exposure; a compromised state protects the account.
- Define A/B/C-game states with objective markers (sleep hours, distraction level, rule quality).
- A-game: full size; B-game: 50–75%; C-game: no new risk—manage open trades only.
- After two C-game flags in a week, hard-cap daily loss to ½ normal until two A-game sessions.
- Any rule break in the last 15 minutes → cap remaining session risk to 25% of daily limit.
- Scale-up only after 10 straight A/B-quality decisions, not after a single big winner.
Trade Management Rules (Keep winners, cut noise)
Most leaks come after entry. Pre-commit your add/reduce logic and remove room for “hope edits.”
- Move stop to breakeven only when trade has achieved 1R and structure still confirms.
- Add to winners only if: initial thesis intact + fresh trigger + total risk ≤ daily cap.
- On first sign of thesis violation, reduce by 50%—don’t flip; reassess on fresh signal.
- Trail stops behind structure, not P&L; never tighten solely to “lock profit.”
- If you narrate the P&L more than the setup, flatten to baseline size immediately.
Journal That Actually Changes Behavior (Fast, structured, useful)
Notes must be short, searchable, and tied to fixes. You’re building a database of your mind under market pressure.
- For every trade: record trigger, confidence 1–5, state tag (A/B/C), and one sentence on execution quality.
- After the session: highlight one error pattern and one strength; design a 24-hour drill for each.
- Track “time-to-awareness”: minutes from first emotional cue to intervention; aim to reduce weekly.
- Weekly review: rank the top 3 mistakes by cost; assign a single correction for each next week.
- Keep a wins file: 10 screenshots of textbook execution to prime A-game each morning.
Common Traps & Fixes (Plug the biggest leaks first)
Different traders share the same villains. Pre-wire your responses so the fix is automatic when the feeling hits.
- Fear of loss: pre-commit 3 trade ideas the night before; during live fear, choose from the list, not from emotion.
- FOMO: require “two-checkpoint confirmation” (structure + trigger); if late, set an alert at the pullback level and walk away.
- Revenge trading: any loss >1.25R enforces a 20-minute cool-off plus one chart mark-up drill.
- Overconfidence after wins: drop size to 75% for the very next trade; re-qualify with two rule-clean decisions.
- Overtrading: daily max = 8 tickets; each additional idea requires a screenshot of the higher-timeframe context before placing.
News & Volatility Windows (Avoid avoidable pain)
Volatility is not automatically an opportunity. Decide in advance which events you trade and how your playbook changes.
- Red-flag events: flat 2 minutes before and 3 minutes after, unless your strategy is built for it.
- If trading news: widen stop per backtest rules and cut size to 50%; slippage contingency = +0.25R in risk calc.
- After unexpected headline spikes: halt new entries until ATR returns to within 1.25× daily baseline.
- For trend days post-news: hold winners with structure trails; no countertrend attempts unless 3 reversal signals align.
- If spread/latency expands beyond your threshold, switch to alerts-only mode.
Scaling Skill Deliberately (From leak-plugging to mastery)
Skill compounding is the edge behind your edge. Build pressure-tested habits with small, repeatable drills.
- Run 10-trade micro-cycles focusing on one fix (e.g., stop-moving); grade pass/fail, not vibes.
- Sim or small-size “pressure reps” right after the review to lock in the correction.
- Add one complexity at a time (e.g., partials, adds) only after 80% clean execution over 3 cycles.
- Monthly “stress test” day: higher volatility or faster markets with half size to train decision speed.
- Tie any account size increase to execution KPIs (≥75% rule-clean decisions), not equity milestones.
Teaming With Your Future Self (Make it easy to do the right thing)
Design your environment so good behavior is the default. You want fewer chances to improvise under stress.
- Pre-load platform hotkeys only for planned actions; remove anything you don’t want pressed under tilt.
- Keep a one-page “Playbook Card” on screen: entry checklist, risk tiers, intervention steps, shutdown rule.
- Use “if-this-then-that” alerts for your tells (e.g., three chart flips in 30 seconds → on-screen reminder to stand down).
- Schedule a mid-session reset (walk, water, breathing) at a fixed time daily.
- Night-before prep done by a hard deadline; no plan, no trade—tomorrow you will thank yourself.
Size Risk Like a Pro: Let Volatility Dictate Your Bet
Jared Tendler drills home that your position size should flex with the market’s mood, not your hopes. When volatility expands, you don’t “man up,” you size down to keep risk constant and execution clean. When it contracts, you can lean in—still within predefined limits—so your edge shows up without emotional sabotage. He frames sizing as a behavioral tool as much as a mathematical one: keep the same decision quality, regardless of how wild the tape gets.
Here’s the simple play: choose a fixed account risk per trade, then scale contracts or shares inversely to ATR or implied volatility. If ATR doubles, your size halves—no debate, no gut feel. Add a hard daily loss cap and an auto “size cut” after any rule break to prevent spiral behavior. Over time, this volatility-first sizing compounds quietly because it protects your A-game the way Jared Tendler insists it should.
Build a Daily Checklist: Process Discipline Over Gut Feel Every Time
Jared Tendler argues that a daily checklist is the simplest way to make good decisions repeatable. Instead of trusting nerves or hype at the open, you run the same preflight items to lock in focus and risk boundaries. The checklist turns vague “be disciplined” talk into binary yes/no gates you must pass before you click. It also creates a paper trail that exposes your real leak—rules broken, context missed, or size drift.
Start with prep items: sleep score, news windows, ATR regime, and today’s A/B/C-game state. Add execution gates like “is thesis + trigger both present,” “risk per trade within cap,” and “no order for two minutes after alert.” Include interrupts for common traps—if FOMO spikes, read the one-sentence logic cue and cut size one tier for the next entry. Close every session by grading the checklist itself, because, as Jared Tendler stresses, a process that isn’t measured won’t survive on a volatile day.
Diversify Smart: Mix Underlyings, Strategies, and Holding Durations
Jared Tendler pushes traders to diversify the way risk actually shows up—not just by ticker count. Spread exposure across different underlyings (indices, rates, FX, commodities) so one macro theme can’t nuke your day. Pair strategy types that win in different regimes—trend, mean reversion, breakout, event—so you’re not a one-trick pony. Stagger holding durations (scalps, swing, position) to smooth equity curves when one timeframe goes cold.
He also urges defining risk buckets before the bell, so sizing and stops aren’t improvised. Cap correlation clusters by limiting how many trades you can hold that are effectively the same bet. Rotate focus toward the strategy/timeframe currently executing cleanest in your journal metrics, not the one you “feel” like trading. Jared Tendler’s point is simple: real diversification is an execution shield that keeps you in the game long enough for edge to compound.
Trade the Mechanics, Not Your Predictions: Rules First, Opinions Later
Jared Tendler says the market doesn’t pay you for being right—it pays you for executing right. That means your entry, stop, target, and position size are prewritten, and your opinion is just background noise. You validate a setup with mechanics (structure + trigger + risk), not with a narrative about where price “should” go. If the mechanics aren’t there, you don’t trade—no matter how convincing the story feels.
He pushes a simple rule: if you can’t state the setup’s checklist in one breath, you’re guessing. Move stops or targets only on fresh mechanical signals, not emotions like “it’s due” or “it can’t break.” Journal whether each trade followed the mechanics to the letter; grade execution even on losers, so you can keep pressing a valid process. Jared Tendler’s bottom line: opinions are free, but only the rules you actually follow can scale.
Know Your Risk: Defined vs. Undefined Exposure and When to Quit
Jared Tendler draws a bright line between trades with capped downside and those that can blow out on a single gap. Defined risk—like options spreads or hard-stop futures with modest size—lets you survive rough regimes and keep pressing your edge. Undefined risk—naked short volatility, averaging down without limits, moving stops on the fly—turns a small mistake into an account story you don’t want to tell. He argues that your job isn’t to predict perfectly; it’s to prevent one trade from rewriting your year.
Set maximum loss per position and per day, then bind them to structure, not feelings. If slippage or widening spreads make your “defined” risk fuzzy, auto-cut size or stand down. Prewrite a quit rule: hit daily loss cap, break two rules, or tag two C-game states—flat for the day, no exceptions. As Jared Tendler puts it, professional confidence comes from knowing exactly when you’re done, so tomorrow’s A-game has a seat at the desk.
In the end, Jared Tendler’s message is brutally practical: you don’t need mystical confidence—you need a system that makes good decisions survive real market stress. He keeps separating what’s technical from what’s mental, then builds bridges between them: size to volatility so risk stays constant; write simple, binary rules so execution can’t wiggle; and track your states so A-game gets full size, B-game gets a haircut, and C-game gets flat. He treats “tilt,” FOMO, and revenge not as moral failings but as predictable failure modes that deserve prewritten interrupts, loss caps, and cool-off timers.
Across the conversation, the same pattern repeats: pre-commit, then measure. Picks are validated by mechanics—structure, trigger, and risk—not by storytelling. Checklists lock focus before the bell; “injection of logic” cues and size cuts protect you mid-session; fast journals and weekly reviews actually change future behavior. Define the risk you’re taking (especially around news and gaps), diversify by underlying/strategy/duration so one theme can’t wreck you, and tie any scale-up to clean execution streaks—not lucky P&L. That’s the real edge Jared Tendler is selling: a playbook that makes your best decisions show up on demand, day after day.
