Mike Bellafiore was interviewed on #TheMustFollowPodcast from Stocktwits by Sean McLaughlin.

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Below is an excerpt written by @ChicagoSean about this #MUSTLISTEN trading podcast with our own Mike Bellafiore.

Mike Bellafiore: Trading as a Performance Sport

To be the best, you’ve got to train like the best.

We know this to be true in sports, and today’s guest on The Must Follow podcast believes this to be equally true in the trading arena, as he considers trading to be one of the most competitive performance sports there is.

Meet @MikeBellafiore, a founding partner of SMB Capital — a New York City based Proprietary Trading firm that educates and backs Traders with firm capital on a merit-based scale that truly enables traders to be the best Traders they can possibly be.

Mike cut his teeth, as many did, on one of the many trading desks popping up around Wall Street (and eventually around the country) in the mid-1990’s that were catering to the new breed of electronic traders. Over the course of nearly a decade, Mike eventually experienced fantastic success as an intraday trader. But the process of transitioning from a complete newbie to a “Consistently Profitable Trader” left a lot of room for improvement, in his mind.

Together with his friend and trading partner Steven Spencer, they decided to fill this void in the trading universe by forming SMB Capital with the goal of building a firm that would risk its own capital to develop and nurture new Wall Street entrants into intraday and swing trading market pros.

“I think that ‘trader psychology’ or lack of confidence is just another way to say that person doesn’t have a business. That Trader doesn’t understand what his best setups are, that Trader doesn’t have a risk management system for his best setups, that Trader hasn’t visualized really crushing these setups as he should. If you do all of these things and your favorite setup occurs… boy, it’s a lot easier in real-time to make it.” — @mikebellafiore

For anyone who has ever wondered what it’s like to learn at a top-notch proprietary trading firm, or for those who wish to have a deeper understanding of the level of competition you’re up against, I think you’ll thoroughly enjoy and learn from my chat with Bella.

* no relevant positions