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Fear, greed, doubt — these emotional forces can devastate even the most battle-tested traders. SurgeU’s leadership recognized this reality early, prompting them to develop a comprehensive course focused on the psychological aspects of trading.
“Mastering the Mental Game does exactly that,” says Steve Albin, SurgeU’s vice president. “It walks you through. ‘Here’s what you’re going to experience. You’re going to experience fear, you’re going to experience greed, you’re going to experience all these.’ How do you deal with it? How do you handle that? How do you handle a loss?”
While technical skills matter, without emotional discipline it’s a zero-sum game, says Albin.
In the course, students learn to recognize and manage common emotional triggers that lead to poor decision-making, including panic selling during market downturns and overconfidence during bull runs.
The program’s structure reflects SurgeU’s broader educational philosophy that trading represents a skill to be mastered rather than merely information to be absorbed. Live trading sessions deliberately expose students to losing trades, teaching them how to maintain composure under pressure.
“So now picture, I’m live with 500 students online and I take a trade, I’m the expert, and it loses,” Albin says. “So the instructors at that moment in time will talk through ‘how does a good trader handle a losing trade?’”
The SurgeU Difference
In SurgeU, instructors create controlled environments where students experience these challenges directly, developing resilience through guided practice.
The program incorporates Surge U’s Trade Analyzer tool, a simulator, to help remove emotional bias from trading decisions by enforcing pre-established rules and risk parameters.
The curriculum — which students can experience live or on demand — delves into several critical areas including recognition of fear-based versus logic-based trading decisions, development of personalized stress management techniques, implementation of strict risk management protocols, creation of detailed trading plans that remove emotional variables, and building psychological resilience through simulated high-pressure scenarios.
Rob Collins, SurgeU’s chief marketing officer, notes the program’s faith-based foundation adds another dimension to managing trading psychology.
“We’re equipping people with tools to make an impact and because of that we’re with them on the journey throughout,” Collins shares. “Whether they enroll in a 12- or 24-month program or longer, we’re with them every step of the way, walking with them, helping them along the journey. We’re in the business of equipping Christian investors with important life skills, not simply delivering education.”
The results speak volumes. Students who complete Mastering the Mental Game training report significantly improved trading consistency. Many describe breakthrough moments when they finally understood how their emotions had previously sabotaged their success.
“There is a whole world of new asset classes, investment vehicles, and trading strategies that students are opened up to that can create an aha moment that forever changes how they look at opportunities in the financial markets,” Jeremy Nosek, SurgeU’s chief strategy officer, says.
SurgeU builds on the lessons within a framework of community: Regular group sessions allow members to discuss their psychological challenges openly, fostering an environment of mutual growth and accountability.
“I think the other thing that I’ve seen, too, is it’s to follow the plan,” Collins advises. “You’re given strategies and you’re given parameters, and you know what those are, and you have to do it without emotion.”
He adds, “The people that get in trouble are the people that go outside of the plan and that are doing things based on emotion.”
According to Collins, these people may also be seeing a stock tip on TV or social media and prematurely running with it.
“They like a certain stock or they think it’s going to be great because they heard something on Mad Money or something like that,” Collins says. “And you just have to kind of follow the plan and do it without emotion.”
SurgeU For All
Mastering the Mental Game training represents a key facet of SurgeU’s educational approach. Students must complete this foundational course before advancing to more sophisticated trading strategies, ensuring they build their technical skills on a solid psychological foundation.
“Wall Street has conditioned retail investors to doubt their capabilities,” Nosek observes. “We show people they don’t need an Ivy League MBA to understand trading. Nobody will care about your money more than you do — your financial adviser isn’t lying awake worrying about your kid’s college fund.”
Success stories continue emerging from the program. Students report newfound confidence, not from blind optimism but from genuine emotional mastery. Their trading results improve markedly once they learn to manage their psychological responses effectively.
“[My SurgeU instructor] helped to take the mystery out of trading and simplified it into process steps and he provided a clear road map for buying long or selling short in the stock arena,” SurgeU student Heidi B. of Hopkinton, Massachusetts, shared. “He provided 30 hours of training in a user-friendly and simplified way. He reminded us that trading is a marathon and not a sprint and he provided us with the basics and the necessary steps to follow to begin the race.”