Trading Hasn’t Gotten Easier. The Process Can.
The market doesn’t owe us certainty.
It never has.
Every trade we take has an unknown outcome. A great setup can lose. A mediocre setup can win. And occasionally, a genuinely bad decision gets rewarded.
That last one may be the most dangerous.
Because a bad decision that makes money can teach us exactly the wrong lesson.
I’ve spent a lot of time over the years thinking about what separates traders who become consistently better from traders who seem to repeat the same cycle:
Find a trade.
Take the trade.
Hope it works.
React to whatever happens next.
And then do it all over again.
I don’t think the answer is predicting the market better.
I think the answer is having a better process for making decisions when the outcome is uncertain.
That’s the idea behind the FMT Trading Framework.
You Don’t Have to Win Most of the Time
Here’s something that surprises a lot of traders.
Through August, only 42% of our completed FMT trades in 2026 have been winners.
Our average winner, however, has been 2.38 times the size of our average loser.
On our $100,000 model account, risking $2,000 per trade, those 55 completed trades have produced $45,407 in net profit year-to-date.
That’s not because we figured out how to eliminate losing trades.
We haven’t.
Nobody has.
It’s because the objective is different:
Big winners. Small losers.
That’s asymmetry.
And once you really understand that concept, it changes how you think about trading.
The question stops being:
“Is this trade going to win?”
And becomes:
“Is this an opportunity worth taking, how much am I willing to lose if I’m wrong, and how much room am I willing to give it if I’m right?”
Those are questions we can actually answer.
The Opportunities Keep Moving
There’s another lesson in our results this year.
Look at where some of our largest winners have come from:
That’s a pretty diverse list.
And think about the market we’ve traded through in 2026.
We had a flat first quarter. War with Iran. An enormous AI-chip rally. Then massive capital rotation away from chips and software. Sector leadership has repeatedly shifted.
This hasn’t exactly been an “everything goes up” market.
Yet opportunities kept appearing.
The opportunities move. The framework doesn’t.
That’s why I often say:
We follow the money—not the headlines.
The Framework Is Simple. Applying It Isn’t Always.
At its core, the process isn’t terribly complicated.
We understand the overall market environment.
We scan for opportunity.
We qualify what we find.
We execute with a defined plan and controlled risk.
We manage the trade.
And then we review what happened.
Market → Scan → Qualify → Execute → Manage → Review.
The challenge is doing it consistently while real money is on the line.
That’s where trading gets hard.
Fear gets involved.
Greed gets involved.
A stock starts moving without us.
A position moves against us.
A winner pulls back.
The market suddenly changes character.
And the nice, logical process we intended to follow can disappear remarkably quickly.
So I’ve Been Building Better Tools
Over the past several months, I’ve been working on something that I’m pretty excited about.
I’ve built an entire suite of tools around the FMT Trading Framework:
An Overall Market Dashboard to help understand the environment.
A Market Heatmap to quickly see what’s moving.
Relative Strength tools to see where money is flowing.
An Open Trades & Watchlist Dashboard.
A consolidated Thinkorswim indicator to make chart analysis faster and more consistent.
And most recently, FMT AI Trade Coach, which can help apply the Framework to trade analysis, risk and trade management 24/7.
The important distinction is this:
The tools don’t replace the process.
They make the process easier to apply.
And that led me to something else.
Master Trader Boot Camp - The FMT Framework
For six weeks, we’re going to combine the FMT Trading Framework + live markets + the FMT Tool Suite + individual coaching.
The new Master Trader Boot Camp includes:
Six live small-group sessions.
Six private 1:1 sessions with me.
One year of the complete FMT Tool Suite.
One year of FMT Picks, Alerts & Updates.
We’ll work through reading charts, risk and asymmetry, finding opportunities, options, putting the complete Framework together, and advanced techniques.
But perhaps more importantly, the private sessions let us work on your trading.
Your charts.
Your trades.
Your questions.
Your process.
Your sticking points.
The investment is $2,997, or three payments of $999.
And we’re starting Wednesday, August 26 at 9:00 AM Pacific / Noon Eastern.
Enroll Now — Start Now
You don’t need to wait until August 26.
As soon as you enroll, we’ll schedule your first private session.
We can get your trading platform and FMT indicators configured, get you access to the tools, talk about your current trading, and identify what you most want to improve.
If you’re not already an FMT Picks subscriber, you’ll also immediately start receiving the current trades, alerts and updates.
So when the first group session begins, you’re already set up and ready to work.
And if you’re interested but aren’t sure whether the program is right for you, I’m happy to talk.
I’ve opened some 15-minute spots on my calendar this week.
Trading hasn’t gotten easier.
I don’t think it ever will.
But we can get better at making decisions when the outcome is uncertain.
And ultimately, that’s the part we can control.
—Dean