| 1. Nine out of 10 people in finance don’t have your best interest at heart. 2. Don’t try to predict the future. 3. Saving can be more important than investing. 4. Tune out the majority of news. 5. Emotional intelligence is more important than classroom intelligence. 6. Talk about your money. 7. Most financial problems are caused by debt. 8. Forget about past performance. 9. The perfect investment doesn’t exist. |
Archives of “emotional intelligence” tag
rssThe Most Powerful Trader in the World
Once you’ve mastered putting in protective stops, you’ll feel empowered. Why? Because at that point you are emotionally balanced and are WILLING to transfer the risk to someone else and exit with a small loss. You have emotional and financial understanding that trading is a process and that any one trade is meaningless over 1,000s of trades.
At that point you have personal power in that trading is just one part of your day and your life is abundant. And you don’t need to tell anyone about your trading. You’re in love with your process – be it mechanical or discretionary – and not in love with any one particular trade.
At that point, you’ll also realize that you can’t really speak to anyone about trading anymore. Most amateurs don’t understand that trading like a professional requires a combination of self-awareness, emotional intelligence, and some level of technical proficiency.
You won’t be able to communicate with such a person as they are speaking one language and you another. They are ignorant about your expertise and necessary behavior. It’s a dialect all its own and it’s unique to you and only you.
This ability is learned behavior – but most will never achieve this level because they are focused on the wrong principles. They’re missing the 80% of the puzzle that is most significant.
Emotional Intelligence v Intellectual Intelligence in trading.
What is more important for success as a trader – A high level of Intellectual Intelligence, or a high level of Emotional Intelligence?
Warren Buffett once said; “Success in investing doesn’t correlate with I.Q. once you’re above the level of 25. Once you have ordinary intelligence, what you need is the temperament to control the urges that get other people into trouble in investing“.
Very briefly emotional intelligence can be defined as an ability, skill or a self-perceived ability to identify, assess, and control the emotions of oneself, of others, and of groups.
Broadly speaking intellectual intelligence can be defined an academic or cognitive intelligence. Resing and Drenth (2007) use the following definition: “The whole of cognitive or intellectual abilities required to obtain knowledge, and to use that knowledge in a good way to solve problems that have a well described goal and structure.”
Jack Schwager on Market Sense and Nonsense
This is Jack as analyst, not as trader interviewer. I think the insights herein will benefit investors especially over traders, although both are served well. Jack totally destroys the EMH in this book. He also debunks a great deal of conventional wisdom for the investor, which I think will be shocking at first. Why? Conventional wisdom “feels good” and to go against the grain so to speak as an investor takes a great deal of emotional intelligence — and a strong inner voice — which most investors don’t have. Good trading and investing oftentimes does not “feel” good at all. It’s much easier for a newbie or amateur to go with the crowd and succumb to one’s emotions. What feels safe is normally not a proper risk management decision for the untrained.
At the end of each chapter, Jack delineates several “Misconceptions” that I believe are worth the price of the book. One in particular deals with when it’s NOT a good idea to just blindly buy the S&P 500 after it’s gone up a certain amount.
Market Sense and Nonsense is an objective take on popular investment themes that is backed with a great deal of data to support its claims. I think the conclusions in this book will surprise most of its readers and that’s a good thing. At least they will be armed with strong arguments to bring up with their advisors.
The Probability of Self-awareness
With 20 years of trying different things and hearing from others I made an important discovery that has shaped me as a trader and a coach. What I found is that more people will improve using an approach to change that emphasizes expanding self-awareness and emotional intelligence.
(With so many different approaches advertised as a ‘change process’, I think its important to share what I’ve found to work. That’s really what we have to do, right? Doing more of what works and less of what doesn’t.)
Very briefly, what I mean by expanded self-awareness is:
1) the recognition that our thinking and our emotions are intertwined and both influence our perception and judgment that leads to our decisions and actions (this view also happens to be consistent what the leading brain scientists are now saying)
2) much of our motivation – the intertwined thinking/emotion that drives our behavior – is actually subconscious, e.g. we assume we are trading the market but on other levels we are also trading our P&L and our feelings about our P&L (and what our P&L represents to us) is just one example. (more…)