RG 243 – Automated Stock Market Trading w/ Laurens Bensdorp

Laurens is an expert at combining several non correlating trading strategies to achieve high returns no matter what the market is doing. He is the founder of the Trading Mastery School and the author of the 30 Minute Stock Trader. He has a new book on bear markets and how to make money in a downturn. He made his first dollar as a child playing ping pong at teaching others.

Laurens never went to university and started as a white water rafting and ski instructor at 22. His family had a small venture capital business that was in trouble and his dad asked him to come and help. He went home and jumped into something that was completely new for him, he’d always been good with numbers so he worked on it 18 hours a day. Part of the business was stock trading which grabbed his attention – he noticed that the family bankers were doing a bad job so he decided to liquidate the portfolio. Also on the side he became an independent trader – he failed when he first started but it was a great lesson to learn.

Top tips

• habit – spreadsheet of goals
• person – friend tom baso
• tool – softwae to scan markets – he created himself
• failure – not knowing his goals or objectives
• tradingmasteryschool.com

Laurens Bensdorp (00:35):

Like PNL, uh, um, I don’t look at that at all. To me, it doesn’t matter at all. If the company makes a profit yes or no, it doesn’t matter for me in what sector it is trading. It doesn’t matter if I like the outlook of the company that I like the management of the company, because eventually you never know if all those numbers are manipulated.

Reee Goossens (03:12):

Today I have the pleasure of speaking with Laurens Bensdorp. Laurens is an expert at combining multiple non correlating trading strategies to achieve high returns, no matter what the market is doing. He’s the founder of trading mastery school. He’s a bestselling author for the 30 minutes stock trader and his new book, automated stock trading systems has just dropped on Amazon and it details the entry and exit rules for three automated systems that deal with bear markets and how to still make money. Even when the markets are going down pretty, uh, pretty timely interview, I think as COVID is now hitting, but, but, um, but I’m really pumped and excited to have him on the show and I’m going to shut up and let him get out of here. So get a Lauren’s welcome to the show.

Laurens Bensdorp (03:53):

Good day. Well, thanks for having me.

Reee Goossens (03:56):

My pleasure. It’s been, uh, I know we’ve, we’ve had to reschedule a few times, but it’s really good to finally get you on the show and you’re dialing in from Portugal. We just, we just talking before we press record, Portugal is now open now we’re, we’re recording this on June 12th. I don’t know when the podcast will go live, but you are a bit of a nomad, right? You travel around the world because you are an independent,

Laurens Bensdorp (04:19):

Right, exactly. And I mean, that’s one of the great benefits of course, of, of, uh, trading basically online, uh, that it is not location dependent. And, uh, Portugal was one of the first countries in Europe actually to opening up. And, um, it’s a lovely place over here. Uh, renting an apartment with nice CPU, uh, close to Lisbon and, uh, it’s lovely over here. So, um, yeah, it’s great. Love it. Love it, love it.

Reee Goossens (04:48):

Well, before we get into the nuts and bolts of what you do and the systems you’ve created around your two books, um, can you rewind the clock and tell me how you made your first ever dollar as a kid?

Laurens Bensdorp (04:58):

My first ever dollar as a kids? Um, I think I was nine years old and, um, I started a, uh, pink pong school. Um, we had at that time, the, uh, at that time, I think that was quite a privilege that we had a ping pong table and, um, nobody else in the neighborhood had that. And, uh, I really liked to play ping pong a lot. And then I said like, okay, everybody else can come. And we can talk to, I think, on Klopp. And, um, I think I charged like a, what is it? Uh, uh, at that time it was like a Gilder, which is like half a year or so per month or so. Uh, but that’s kind of how it’s, how it started and how I kind of could see as an entrepreneurial that like, Hey, you can actually make money when you’re offer a service. Right?

Reee Goossens (05:50):

No, is it, and for those people listening out there, uh, Gilda is the Dutch currency back before the Euro was brought into place, correct? Yeah. Yes, yes. So, so for those people listening, you can tell Lawrence is not from America or not from Australia. He’s actually from, uh, where my, where my heritage is from, which is the Netherlands, the great, great place. And we were just discussing before we press record here, a little place called non-state, which is about two hours from Amsterdam, where my OPA and OMA grew up and, uh, visited many times growing up. So, but anyway, Lauren’s enough about me. Let’s get into your story and maybe let’s walk us through the journey that you’ve, you’ve obviously built some success today, but it hasn’t happened overnight. So walk us through, you know, university and how you got the entrepreneurial bug to start creating a really a freedom lifestyle, which it sounds like you traveled the world, you know, trading stocks, but that didn’t happen overnight. Right. So maybe you could walk us through, uh, the backstory.

Laurens Bensdorp (06:41):

Absolutely. Uh, yeah. You mentioned the word university. Um, I never even got to university. Um, I think from when I was young on, I always wanted to have, uh, Liberty for myself and I wanted to have, uh, a lifestyle that, that really had all my dreams in there, which was traveling, et cetera. Um, but it took a long while before I, uh, got to that point actually. Um, I mean, when I started, like, when my, with my professional life, I started as a white water rafting guide and as a ski instructor. So you do the summers, you do white water rafting, and then the winters you do ski instructing, uh, which was, which was a great time. Uh, it was lovely, uh, when you’re 22, 23 years old, et cetera, it’s really good fun and everything, but there came a time, um, when the intellectual challenge of that was kind of lacking and, um, at that specific time as well, um, the family business, uh, they had a small venture capital business, uh, was in quite some trouble.

Laurens Bensdorp (07:56):

And, uh, so I got a phone call from my dad and he basically said like, listen, I need somebody who can really help me with this and who I can trust, et cetera. So I said, okay, um, no problem at all. Um, there was quite some money involved in there and it was really going South. So, um, I went back to the Netherlands and basically jumped into a business that was totally new to me. Um, but I’ve always had a very large affinity with finance and with numbers. So, um, I just dove in very deep, um, working 18 hours a day and, uh, kind of starting to figuring things out, et cetera. And that was a large Regal reorganization that I needed to do, et cetera. But a part of that, uh, business was also the stock trading and was the part that, uh, most grabbed my attention.

Laurens Bensdorp (08:59):

And the reason why I grab my attention is that at that time I saw that was, um, beginning two thousands. Um, I could see like, Hey, listen, you could actually make money from anywhere in the world by buying low and selling high. And that sounded so incredibly appealing to me. Of course, it sounds very simple and very easy to do that in reality. Uh, you see, when you start that it’s a very different story. Of course. So, um, I started to educate myself a lot with that and, uh, read about 500 trading books more or less. And, um, I noticed that the bankers that were managing the money of the family were absolutely doing a terrible job. Um, you hear that more. And, um, this was in the two thousands basically where we just had that big opera of the.com boom, where everything you bought was going up.

Laurens Bensdorp (10:05):

But then we had that bear market basically, and everything was going down big time. So I just decided to liquidate the complete portfolio. And, um, from that time on really educate myself. And, um, so I started myself as well as an independent trader, uh, besides the work I was doing for the venture capital business. So I started with a $30,000 account. And to me at that time, it made total sense like, okay, I can make a living out of this and, um, earn every year, like a hundred thousand dollars with that. It sounded totally logical and it didn’t work out that way. It didn’t work out at all. That way was the best ever lesson I could get in my life. Um, because the account basically went to zero, um, which is, I think always a very good learning curve, um, when you really want to become successful in that, because you get to respect the, uh, the risk side of trading and everything.

Laurens Bensdorp (11:12):

So, um, at that time I didn’t give up though. I kept educating myself and then step by step by step by step, things started to get better, but it was a huge, large learning curve. Um, until I discovered ways that you could actually, uh, not base your trading decisions on fundamental trading, where you kind of use a crystal ball and then predict where the market will go. Um, but I discovered a different way where you actually do quantitative trading, where you base your trading decisions. You’re buying in yourself decisions on previous price action, uh, and everything is done by the computer. And that really grabbed my attention. I specialized in that part. Um, and since 2007, I hired a programmer. I have a lot of trading ideas, but you need to see if those ideas actually make money. Yes or no. But from that time on, uh, the curve really started to go up every year.

Laurens Bensdorp (12:23):

So that was kind of the start of where things really started to look good. Um, and I started to make money and then there was something else. Um, so I had that new approach that really works and it’s approach that has been proven, uh, that is successful. But in markets and stock markets, we have bull markets and we have bear markets. Um, best example is if you see 2009 to 2019 markets went up was very nice, very easy making money. And then suddenly you see COVID coming and the markets dropped 30%. So in my case, I, um, already positioned myself for that in 2007 where I was trading both long and short at the same time. So you basically, uh, invest on the long side to make money when stocks go up, but also another part of your portfolio, you short stocks, which means that you make money when the markets and those stocks go down.

Laurens Bensdorp (13:31):

So then came the 2008 bear markets, the big crisis where the S and P 500 had a 56% drop. And those were one of my best years. I made a huge amount of money at that time. Um, basically because the, the downfall was so strong and I was positioned really well on the short side with that. So from that time on, I knew like, okay, I do not want to have a bias and predicting the market goes up, or the market goes down. No, I let my systems tell when to buy and when to sell.

Reee Goossens (14:12):

Got it, got it. Well, I think that’s really important in today’s world and this podcast is more geared towards real estate investing. I want to dive into how you assess different businesses based on P and L’s, and based on the strength of capital on hand. So maybe walk us through some of the, sort of maybe four to five things you look for in order to make sure that you created this automated system. So that, so that, that then went and looked for those things in different stocks in order to say, yes, this is the right one to buy.

Laurens Bensdorp (14:44):

Yeah, that’s, that’s an interesting question because things like PNL, uh, um, I don’t look at that at all. To me, it doesn’t matter at all, if the company makes a profit yes or no, it doesn’t matter for me in what sector it is trading. It doesn’t matter if I like the outlook of the company that I like the management of the company, because eventually you never know if all those numbers are manipulated. Uh, right. Examples are with, uh, WorldCom and Enron, uh, back in the days that, uh, that got bankrupt. And in Enron, they had like huge, uh, manipulation with bookkeeping and everything. So those numbers, you really need to take them with a big grain of salt, actually. Um, so my approach is purely based on price action, where I scan the complete universe of us stocks and, um, there’s different styles. So a simple style is trend following where I say, okay, I look at the previous price action over the last six months.

Laurens Bensdorp (16:06):

And if I see that the trend is up, I say, okay, this is a good moment to buy because I expect the trend to continue. Now, there’s a big, important rule in there where when it doesn’t work out, you cut your losses short, straight away, and you say, okay, it’s not working out. So I take my loss and that’s something which is very difficult for many people with trading, because we’re learnt at school, um, to always be winners, have good grades, et cetera. Um, but you could actually end up with a strategy that is only 35 or 40% of the times, uh, of your trades are profitable, but your winning trades exceeds your losing trades by a factor of three, four or five. So it’s all about measuring previous price action. And based on that, you make the decision to buy. And when the trend is over, then you sell again. So there’s no, um, uh, looking at all at any kind of company numbers, um, or expectations if profits have exceeded or not exceeded, no, because we basically, um, have a statistical model where we’d be fine, everything based on statistical edges.

Reee Goossens (17:36):

Got it. So I guess the big question for me comes with your six month time horizon. Surely you’d want to look a little bit further back to, in order to you talking about risk and managing that risk to make sure you’re seeing the right, because sometimes when you look at something six months may not tell the true picture that you might need to look a little bit further, like 12 or 24 months. So, absolutely talk to me about that. So do you try and look as far back as you can, or the six month is, is, is a rule that you are hard and fast by?

Laurens Bensdorp (18:02):

No, I have different systems with different look backs and, um, uh, you can have trend following systems where you say you enter in the trend very early, that only have a look back of 30 days, and you hope to catch the complete move. You can also have trend following systems where you say, we look back to, uh, the last 24 months and see, we see a large and sustained and good trend. So let’s jump on that wagon and right. That trend basically, um, it really depends on what your personality with that is. I think both have pros and have cons what I do, I combine those systems. So I have different systems with different look backs and combine them in one blended suite of systems. Basically.

Reee Goossens (18:55):

Got it. Got it. And so with the buying side of it, what else goes into, we say trending? So what, what does actually mean for the layman who’s out there who wants to get involved in stock market trading? Excuse me, about what is the trend look like and how does a company, or how do you look at the trends? Meaning like, what is the, what is the fundamental data that, uh, to, to make a trend look good in your eyes?

Laurens Bensdorp (19:16):

Um, on a very simple way, if you look at a graphic at Yahoo finance or something from a stock over the last year, and you look from the left sides to the right side, and you see that the right side is higher, so it goes like that from left low to right up, you see that the trend is up. It’s that simple. There is no, uh, no incredible complicated math involved with that, but you need to have some kind of mathematical formula to quantify that so that the computer can make those decisions for you.

Reee Goossens (19:58):

Would you, would you, which would be taking the 12 month low and the present high and making sure that he’s in the positive, right? You don’t want a net cause it cause positive would mean it’s trending. Negative would mean

Laurens Bensdorp (20:09):

The whole rule could be, um, the close of today is, um, 15% higher as the closed, uh, 12 months ago, for example. Right. That would give you an indication, although you still do not know exactly what happened between those times. Um, but that could be a very simple indicator indication. And you’ve got things like indicators as well, moving averages where it’s kind of, um, measures the average of the price action over a certain period of time as well. And if it’s above that average, then you say to try this up,

Reee Goossens (20:49):

You got it. So you guys, so you’re saying that you look, you do look at other data. So it’s the average of the price of the stock over a period of time. And when you see that average starting to tick upwards, that is also another indication of an upward trend and thus would be a good time for the computer to say, yep, let’s go ahead. Absolutely. Yep. And then I guess on the converse side, once it starts trending negative, or that average starts to drop, do you have a, a floor or a ceiling, a shift, maybe it’s a floor, um, where it just automatically sells, like it’s dropped 10, you know, 2% over a period of a month. And it just automatically sales is, is a floor set and your system to make sure that you are hedged against any real, um, you know,

Laurens Bensdorp (21:28):

Crash. Yeah, I think with, with trend following, and that’s just one part of the styles that I trade, I trade other styles as well, but with trend following the key is that you want to let your profit run, but in order to do that, um, you need to give that stock some space as well, because, um, ideally we want to have a stock moving in a 45 degree angle from left to right, without any drops down, et cetera, uh, that unfortunately is not the case. So there will be times when a stock drops maybe five, 10% or so, et cetera. So, um, as a general and simplistic rule, we can say, um, like as soon as you’re in positive territory, uh, we use what we call a trailing stop, which means that you move your, your exits up as long as the stock keeps moving up, which means that eventually you’re going to give back a part of the profits. That’s the hard part for many people as well, because we want to look for the perfect, uh, the perfect exit point at the absolute high and say, I got it completely. Right. It doesn’t exist. Um, we can’t predict that we only can’t predict like, okay, we can stay in this and just write that trend until it’s over. Right?

Reee Goossens (22:59):

No, I was stuck speaking with another gentleman, um, on the show earlier, a couple episodes before this one, uh, um, uh, Richard Smith. And he was talking about that exact, that exact thing, the stop, the stop gap. And I was like, well, what’s it called the, uh, the treading stop where you have a 20% or 25%, if it drops 25% automatically excels. And so to your point, you might’ve gone up 50%, but it’s dropped really quickly, or it’s dropped back 25%, boom, automatically the floor is following the profit. And so, so it takes the emotional out of it because he was talking about the psychology of investors, right. And there’s this whole thing of when your down or you’re negative. So you’re trying to always get back to one, I’ll get back to positive. Once I get back to breakeven, I’m going to sell the same is, is when with profits, it starts burning a hole in your pocket. I could just keep holding on for little bit longer. And all of a sudden you hold them for way too long. And then boom, you’re back to where you started.

Laurens Bensdorp (23:54):

That’s exactly the worst thing possible. I’ve seen people, um, going bankrupt, although 90% of their trades have been profitable, but it’s that other 10% where they buy at $30, but they let it drop to zero because they’re not able to take their losses. Um, and that’s the same with real estate as well, I think, uh, to a certain degree when you buy a property. Um, and there comes a time when you say fundamentally, I just don’t think real estate or having this property is looking good. Uh, you might want to cut your losses to say, um, I sell this with a loss and that is with trading incredibly important, but it goes very much against our nature. Our nature is that we want to have a winning thing. So we say, well, I just wait until it comes back to break even, and then I got out, right? You want to be right. And that’s what makes you feel good? You know, when you’re in the bar or you have a dinner with friends and you say, yeah, it was in that stock was a heart one, but, um, I eventually got up and actually made a profit on it. Right,

Reee Goossens (25:11):

Right. And I think the big thing about all this and from what I’m learning a little bit more talking to more experts like yourself in the trading world is just completely removing the emotional part of it. And once you do that, you become so much more profitable in the stock market trading because you remove the emotional, the ebbs and flows of profit to loss, to breakeven, to all this stuff that psychology in our reptilian brain, uh, tells us to the flight or fight or flight. And so, um, I think it’s really important to have automated systems so you can protect yourself from yourself. Right. That’s I think has been the most important thing and, and, and from losses. So, uh, uh, lands, uh, what else are you, what other automated systems do you have? Um, so Lorenzo’s, you’re not lost Lorenzo. What other automated systems do you have that you can explain to us? You, you just spoke about your, um, your price, attention, or price action or, and trend to bought out. What else are you you talk about in your book?

Laurens Bensdorp (26:03):

So, uh, another style is kind of the opposite. So the trend followings is a long-term strategy where you stay as long as possible in a, in a position. The opposite is a mean reversion strategy. And with mean reversion, I mean that a stock has moved up so much in price. There were so much greed in there that at a certain point, statistically, the odds are so much against you, that the stock will continue to move up and the odds are much more in your favor that it actually will drop. And that’s what you can do with back testing and systems, what I do, and those stocks, you actually sell short. So you sell the stock and you buy it back. Once it has reverted back to its mean again, which generally is a trait, which is a lot shorter in duration. So if you see a simple example could be that a stock over the last four days has moved up 20%. So that means it was a lot of greed in there, et cetera. And statistically, um, if you short that stock 60%, more or less of those traits, three days later we’ll have a lower price. So that’s a statistical edge. So the edges are, uh, are quite clear there, but it is a shorter term trades. So those strategies do very well. Of course, when you combine them with the trend following parts. Right,

Reee Goossens (27:52):

Right. Interesting. So you combining a couple of things there to make sure that you’re, you’ve got a trend going up, you got your you’re buying at a, you know, a short you’re shorting, the market or shorting the stock in terms of, if it comes back to a more mean average to thus, then know when to sell a buy. That is that what I’m hearing. So tell, talk to me a little bit about what you think and what’s happening here with COVID and the reaction to the us stock market and how it did it has rallied over the last couple of weeks. What do you, what are some of the thoughts around that even though, you know, fundamentally, you know, we’ve got high unemployment, um, but a lot of stimulus in the market, a lot of monies out there, uh, you know, low interest rates. Do you look at any of that?

Laurens Bensdorp (28:34):

Not at all. And thankfully, thankfully I do not actually, because from a rational standpoint of you, um, it doesn’t make any sense that with COVID with all the unemployment with countries still closed, et cetera. Um, and the NASDAQ was making all time highs. Now, certainly there are companies that are kind of exempt from a, uh, a, uh, situation like this. Uh, zoom is for example, um, a good company because there’s a lot more web conferences and stuff going on, but most of it it’s, it’s from a rational standpoint of view, it makes no sense at all. And that is exactly why I say, I don’t want to have any opinion. I just follow my price action and traits, according to that, what the computer tells me what to do. And, um, that has been very favorable. First of all, in the, of this year, when COVID came, um, the market dropped like a stone and I have my short-term, uh, short-selling positions in place that make money.

Laurens Bensdorp (29:54):

When the markets dropped, they protected the losses of the long positions that I had in place. Now, when it dropped so fast, uh, and suddenly we saw the S and P 500 with a 30%, uh, negative, et cetera. Uh, it then really started to recover very fast. Um, it’s quite normal that after a while things recover, um, but you would, I would never, ever have expected or predicted, uh, that’s two months after the start of, uh, the real COVID that we would have seen all time highs in, uh, the NASDAQ markets. It would have been totally, um, uh, there’s nobody at that time that predicted that right now, in hindsight, they say, yes, it all makes sense, et cetera. But at that time, the whole world, everybody was incredibly negative, but, um, why it happens, I don’t know, but, uh, once the market started to move up again, those longterm trend following system started to kick in again and started to ride that trend up again.

Laurens Bensdorp (31:09):

And, um, so with, with, with markets like these, when there is so much uncertainty, um, uh, about the future, um, but still you do not know what the actual stock market is going to do. Uh, according to, uh, what president Trump says or recording what the unemployment rate is. I mean, first it was an expectation that the unemployment rate would be 20% and then the Revi, they revised it still 16% and the markets, they moved up like crazy. Although from a rational standpoint of you, 60% is not necessarily a, a lovely number of course. And, um, if you can take that emotion out of it and just follow the price action and say, okay, this is what it is, and it’s fine. And, um, that means that during a whole time like that, uh, with COVID, uh, for many people, it was, um, psychologically a very difficult time. Um, if you have an automated systems that trade both in bull and bear markets, uh, for me, it was a very comfortable ride, actually.

Reee Goossens (32:24):

Interesting. Okay. So you haven’t experienced major loss in the last two months, right?

Laurens Bensdorp (32:29):

No, absolutely not. I mean, I’m up for the year,

Reee Goossens (32:33):

Right? That’s fantastic. And I think that’s, it goes back to the point of taking the emotion out of it and having the systems you in place for both bull and bear markets to be successful and stop taking the guesswork out of it and, and get your brain out of it and just rely on what the computer says and what the data says. And I think that’s it, you know, the last couple of interviews I’ve done with stock traders, it seems like that is always the case these days and, and reading, you know, Ray Dalio’s book principles, that’s exactly what he talks about. You know, looking, looking at developing a system. So it is foolproof and it’s a system not relying on people. It’s a system relying upon

Laurens Bensdorp (33:08):

Because it’s, it’s, it’s so hard to predict things. And, um, if you just have a model, uh, where you have 25 years of data where you can see how it works in bull markets, how it worked in bear markets, how I’d worked in sideways markets, in volatile markets, in non-volatile markets, then you’ve got a lot better idea of what you’re actually trading. And, um, it doesn’t matter what the market does then if we are going to get a depression scenario, like the 1929, uh, depression, uh, where the Dow Jones in two and a half years dropped, uh, think 86% or so, um, which, which, which would be a disaster. I mean, uh, nobody would like to, um, to see that, but from my systems, I don’t care. I’m totally fine with that, if that happens for my systems, but I don’t want it to happen of course, because there’s a lot of other economic things that, that, uh, that would impact it. But, but for my accounts, no, I mean, um, it would be very comfortable actually.

Reee Goossens (34:21):

Well, I know you’ve got a new book out about automated systems. You want to tell me a little bit about that? Has that actually launched? I mentioned in the intro, when is it launching? Because we’re probably this podcast won’t go live. It’s now June 14th. It’ll probably go through 12, go live probably in eight to nine weeks. So I don’t know if the book will be out of that stage.

Laurens Bensdorp (34:37):

It is, it is, it is launched already. It was actually in, in a little bit earlier. So, um, it’s out there and, uh, you can see it over here. It’s, uh, automated stock trading systems. And, um, in that book, I explain, uh, different trading styles with very simple rules on how to enter and how to exit and all of it is backed up with statistical evidence since 1995. And, um, it’s interesting. So there’s seven different systems in there. Uh, the last system, uh, I wish I would have, um, uh, published the book a little bit earlier, uh, because, you know, writing a book takes a long time. Uh, but the, the seventh system is called the catastrophe hedge. Um, that was the one, of course that did incredibly well during the complete COVID, uh, crisis and made a lot of money actually. But the key in that book as well is that if you blend those systems together, those seven systems, that is where you actually increase your simulated, um, compounded annual growth rates or your annual return, but you lower your risk because you trade a blend of different styles all together. And at the same time, also the volatility is getting lower of your complete portfolio.

Reee Goossens (36:17):

Love it. No, I think that, and that’s super important to have a diversified portfolio, no matter what you’re investing in, you’re investing obviously in the stock market, having great things, you know, having seven different systems means you have seven different risk buckets. And the average of all those risk buckets means that you can lower your overall risk, your overall volatility, the same applies with real estate investing the same applies with business investing. We have to have diversification in whatever you do. So I think that’s super important. Uh, Lorenzo, before we wrap up the show here, tell me what you’re doing. What are you traveling to for the rest of 2020? You’re going to be in anywhere else besides Portugal?

Laurens Bensdorp (36:49):

Absolutely. Um, I haven’t made the plans yet, um, because it kind of changes every day right now, uh, as to where you go and what the limitations are and whatnot. Um, but, um, I will be in the U S in September as I’m hosting a seminar in Las Vegas at the end of September. Um, and, uh, I generally travel around quite a lot. So, uh, I’m from the Netherlands originally. So, uh, probably within the next month or so, I definitely will be there, uh, visiting friends and family, et cetera. And, um, I just see wherever, um, the places where I prefer to go

Reee Goossens (37:32):

Love it. I live by design. You have got it dialed in by the sounds of it, but, uh, awesome stuff. We’ll look at the end of every show. We like to dive into the top five investing tips. You ready to get into it?

Laurens Bensdorp (37:44):

Go ahead. Yes.

Reee Goossens (37:52):

Daily habit, you practice to keep on track towards your goals

Laurens Bensdorp (37:56):

To keep on track of my goals is I have a spreadsheet in which I have my long-term goals, my medium term goals and my short-term goals. And I, um, take a look at where I am with my goals, and I adapt them on a daily or sometimes weekly basis where I say, okay, I’m on track over here. I’m off track over there. I need to adapt this and need to change that. And, um, the great thing about that is when you do that is you see the progress that you make, because it’s not always about that. You exactly reach that goal, whether it is a financial number or it is a business number or a health number, et cetera. But if you see the progress, that’s where the fun part is.

Reee Goossens (38:45):

Right? Right. Exactly. And I think that that’s so important as you’re going along this journey of being an entrepreneur and having goals, as long as you’re edging towards some target, and you’re not staying still, that is the most important part. And I love how you said you start enjoying the process, which is really, really important. A mate who has been the most influential person in your career to date

Laurens Bensdorp (39:06):

In my trading career.

Reee Goossens (39:09):

Oh, it personally trading career, whatever, whatever you want. We’ll both.

Laurens Bensdorp (39:13):

Um, I think it’s, it’s, uh, it’s, it’s currently sexually, it’s a, it’s a good friend of mine now. And, uh, uh, we host a once in a while, a seminar together, it’s a famous hedge fund manager called Tom Baso. Um, he basically was the one that was featured in a trading book a long time ago. And what may, um, his influence for me, so incredibly important as well that he designed his trading, according to the lifestyle and the risk and everything that he wanted. So he kind of became a little bit of a mentor to me. And, um, if he listens, uh, if he talks, I’m the one who listens and, um, up today, I just, everyday I learned a lot from him.

Reee Goossens (40:07):

Awesome. That’s, that’s great. I think that’s super important to design a life in and around your financial freedom in around the goals that how you want to live your life and back into a system or a vehicle and investment vehicle, like stocks that you can go out and live that life, which it sounds like what you’re doing right now. So, so incredible stuff. Um, question number three is what is the most influential tool in your business that you use on a daily basis? And when I say tool, it could be software, or it could be, you know, a physical object, like a journal or a phone, what what’s the most, what’s the best tool that you use

Laurens Bensdorp (40:41):

In my case, it’s software, of course, because I use software to scam the complete market and to decide what my buy and sell decisions will be in the stock markets. So that’s my own software, uh, the TMS elite software that I created basically, and we filled over the last 13 years or so. Um, which of course has been incredibly favorable for me.

Reee Goossens (41:07):

Awesome. I think that’s great. And, and, uh, I knew it would be because we’ve talked so much about your automatic Chinese

Laurens Bensdorp (41:14):

Kind of makes sense. Yeah,

Reee Goossens (41:15):

It does make sense. It does make sense. Uh, question number four in one sentence, what has been the biggest failure in your career? And what’d you learn from that failure?

Laurens Bensdorp (41:26):

Biggest failure is not knowing my goals and my objectives. And that was a failure. I can talk a little bit more about it if you want to go ahead. That’s the short version? Um, until I was 30 years old, I had no goal in life. I had no real objective. I didn’t know that a thing like that kind of existed. Um, and that, of course didn’t move me ahead the way I wanted. So, um, I think that was the main thing that really lacked me from not making any earlier progress.

Reee Goossens (42:15):

Yeah. That’s, that’s, that’s super powerful. I think, understanding and being self-aware of that and looking back on where the failures, that you’ll shortcomings that you had in your, as you grow, but that’s the beauty of it, right? That’s the beauty of your journey that you did. You can now look back on an insight as in a more mature adult saying, yeah, I didn’t have an objective or a goal in life. In my late twenties, early thirties, I was sort of felt like I was floating, but then to now pinpoint it down and say, this is what I need to do. And these are the goals and targets I need to go after, and this is my objective of why I want to do it. So I think that’s,

Laurens Bensdorp (42:46):

And it’s, I think it’s so incredibly important. Um, for everybody, it doesn’t matter in what kind of area you’re, you’re working, but that you actually work on your own psychology as well. Um, because we only are limited by our own thoughts. I mean, that’s all it is. And, and, and if you get the awareness of what you actually can create and what you can do and what you’re capable of, then it changes the whole thing, um, around you.

Reee Goossens (43:18):

Yes. Yeah. Completely correct.

Laurens Bensdorp (43:21):

And everything it’s so incredibly important. Yeah.

Reee Goossens (43:26):

Just on that briefly, do you do much self work?

Laurens Bensdorp (43:29):

Yes, I do. Absolutely things like meditation, uh, projecting. Um, I basically always try to maintain a very calm mental state, um, and having the awareness. Um, once I see that I get upset about something, that’s just a little voice in my hat that is telling me some kind of, which then this part is actually actually believing it. And that’s where the trouble starts. So if you have worked a lot on that, you kind of recognize that you can shift that away. Um, so, so the mental side is something that is something that I’m always focused on because, um, it’s, it’s, it’s, um, it’s, it makes you more productive. It makes you more successful, but it also makes you a lot happier because it’s something that is so beneficial as well, not only for business, but also in other parts of your life, you down that inner chatter,

Reee Goossens (44:32):

Which we all have. Right. And you can turn it down a little bit and focus a little bit more on self calm and being, being comfortable in your own skin.

Laurens Bensdorp (44:40):

Exactly. And if you, if you’re aware that that inner chatter exists and that it’s not true, and you’re able to tell that inner channel like, Hey dudes, get outta here. Um, it’s, it’s really good. Yeah,

Reee Goossens (44:54):

No, I love it. Love it, mate. Last question. Where can people go or to, to continue the conversation they want to be in your sphere? What do they go?

Laurens Bensdorp (45:02):

So they can go to my website, trading mastery, school.com, or they can go to Amazon and just type in my name, Lawrence Ben storks. So it’s L a U R E N S a B E N S D O R P. And I’ve got two books. So the first one is the 30 minute stock trader, uh, which was, uh, published in 2017, which was the bestseller at that time. And, uh, the more advanced one is the one that recently came out as we spoke about it a little bit.

Reee Goossens (45:40):

Awesome. Well, Mike, I want to thank you for jumping on the show today. I just wanna reflect a few things that I took away from today’s show. And I think the biggest thing is respect risk. You mentioned that earlier in, in your, in the show and understanding how to build a system around how you quantify risk and what does that mean for your investment trading decisions and taking your self, your emotional self out of the equation and letting a system that has got algorithms and just vices on just on the numbers and historical data, make those decisions for you. So you are the bottleneck of losing your own money. I think that is probably the most, the biggest thing that I’ve taken away from. Today’s today’s show.

Laurens Bensdorp (46:23):

I love that you want to add anything with that? Um, no, I think that is the main thing. Um, if there’s one other thing that I would like to add is, um, stock markets do not always move up. You need to have systems in place that can work for the upside, but also for the downsides. And that’s very important as well, because we could end up in a time. Um, I mean, if you see 90, 95 till now, it’s been generally bullish. And if you just bought and hold, you make money, but you could also end up in a time, um, where you get 20 or 25 years with no performance at all in the markets. But if you have then short-selling systems in place that make money, when the market goes down, then you actually, um, are so far ahead of, I think 95% of, uh, the professional investors as well.

Reee Goossens (47:20):

Right? No, I completely agree. And I think that’s having, that’s the beauty of what you do and what you teach is having gone back to that diversification piece. You have seven different automated systems that are for seven different ways in which the stock market can go and having a little bit of money allocated to each of them helps reduce risk dramatically. So I think it’s a, it’s paramount to, to have diversification in anything you do, but mate, I want to thank you again for taking some time out of you today to jump on the show. Uh, we really, really enjoyed it here. I hope you enjoy the rest of your week. I hope you enjoy Portugal and wherever 2020 takes you. So, but thank you very much for coming on the show today. My pleasure. It was really fun to do this and,

Speaker 4 (47:58):

Uh, thank you very much.

Reee Goossens (48:01):

Well, we’ll catch up very, very soon. Well, they, haven’t a cracking episode, jammed pack with some incredible advice from Lorens. If you do have any questions for him, make sure you’re getting his copy of his book because it’s going to have all the automated systems that we spoke about on today’s show the seven of them in more detail written in a very simple and easy way to go out. So you can execute. If you do want to reach out to Lorenza, make sure you head over to his mastery school website and all the links from today’s show will be on the show notes. I want to thank you all again for taking some time out of your day to tune in, to continue to grow your financial IQ, because that’s what we’re all about here on this show. If you do like this show, we’ve had some really great reviews online. Please continue the trend and give us a five-star review on iTunes. And we’re going to do this all again next week. So remember Be brave and go give life a crack.