- High pressure and stress is a part of the trading environment. Stress reduction is not a viable strategy. The approach instead is to build a person’s resilience and ability to cope more effectively with the pressure and stress that they are encountering.
- This is done by a process of exposure to the stressful events, and then recovery. The recovery process will prepare you to engage again but with a higher stress threshold.
- Build your stress exposure over time by gradually building the demands on your trading — slowly increasing your position sizing, complexity of trades, diversification, etc.
- Use relaxation techniques to enter a restorative state where your mind and body can recover.
- Look after your nutrition, exercise, sleep, get balance in your life with friends, family, other hobbies.
- Consistent performance is achieved when you have a healthy oscillation between positive peak performance states, and periods of recovery.
Archives of “Psychological resilience” tag
rss3 Types of Confidence
First, is what I call ‘false confidence’ That’s the person who talks big and poses like a big shot. This type of person often takes big risks in an effort to either impress others or to assuage their own discomfort, and the results are often erratic and often end terribly.
Next, there is temporary confidence, which is conditional on recent performance. This is the person whose self-esteem is tied to their account equity or P&L. When on a good run, they feel confident and take larger risks (often the prelude to giving it all back). And when performance is lousy they start grasping at anything, maybe exiting winners prematurely or taking on excessive risk to get their money back.
Finally, we have true confidence. This is confidence that does not depend on recent results. It is based on a deep sense of inner trust. This is the person who has a history of doing the right thing, regardless of the outcome. Doing the right thing in the sense that they act in their own best interest and trust and understand that doing so over time has a positive impact on results. The trust runs deep enough to provide resilience in the face of disappointment. This is true self-confidence, the kind you want in trading and in life.
10 Characteristics Among Successful Traders
1) The amount of time spent on their trading outside of trading hours (preparation, reading, etc.);
2) Dedicated periods to reviewing trading performance and making adjustments to shifting market conditions;
3) The ability to stop trading when not trading well to institute reviews and when conviction is lacking;
4) The ability to become more aggressive and risk taking when trading well and with conviction;
5) A keen awareness of risk management in the sizing of positions and in daily, weekly, and monthly loss limits, as well as loss limits per position;
6) Ongoing ability to learn new skills, markets, and strategies;
7) Distinctive ways of viewing and following markets that leverage their skills;
8) Persistence and emotional resilience: the ability to keep going in the face of setback;
9) Competitiveness: a relentless drive for self-improvement;
10) Balance: sources of well-being outside of trading that help sustain energy and focus.
The Daily Trading Coach- 10 Lessons
1. The Process and the Practice: “Confidence doesn’t come from being right all the time: it comes from surviving the many occasions of being wrong” (27).
2. Stress and Distress: “Thinking positively or negatively about performance outcomes interfere with the process of performing. When you focus on the doing, the outcomes take care of themselves” (56).
3. Psychological Well-Being: “We can recognize the happy trader because he is immersed in the process of trading and finds fulfillment from the process even when markets are not open” (72).
4. Steps Toward Self-Improvement: “Your trading strengths can be found in the patterns that repeat across successful trades” (105).
5. Breaking Old Patterns: “Many trading problems are the result of acting out personal dramas in markets” (133)
6. Remapping the Mind: “When we change the lenses through which we view events, we change our responses to those events” (168)
7. Learn New Action Patterns: “Find experienced traders who will not be shy in telling you when you are making mistakes. In their lessons, you will learn to teach yourself” (203)
8. Coaching Your Trading Business: “Long before you seek to trade for a living, you should work at trading competence: just breaking even after costs” (230)
9. Lessons From Trading Professionals: “If you don’t trust yourself or your methods, you will not find the emotional resilience to weather periods of loss” (267)
10. Looking For the Edge: “The simplest [trading] patterns will tend to be the most robust” (311).
10 Characteristics of Successful Traders
1) The amount of time spent on their trading outside of trading hours (preparation, reading, etc.);
2) Dedicated periods to reviewing trading performance and making adjustments to shifting market conditions;
3) The ability to stop trading when not trading well to institute reviews and when conviction is lacking;
4) The ability to become more aggressive and risk taking when trading well and with conviction;
5) A keen awareness of risk management in the sizing of positions and in daily, weekly, and monthly loss limits, as well as loss limits per position;
6) Ongoing ability to learn new skills, markets, and strategies; (more…)
Why Trading is Most Difficult Job in the World
How many guys do you know who can accept being wrong?
How many guys do you know who can be wrong and lose money?
How many guys do you know who can be wrong. lose money and not feel bad?
How many guys do you know who can be wrong, lose money, not feel bad and reverse their position?
How many guys do you know who can be wrong, lose money, not feel bad, and reverse their position quickly?
Don’s point is that trading requires an unusual combination of emotional resilience (the ability to tolerate being wrong) and mental flexibility (the ability to use losses as information and quickly change one’s position in the markets).
Many people have a need to be right. That makes it difficult to quickly accept losses, and it makes it especially difficult to flip one’s views. The best traders don’t have a need to be right, and in fact they readily admit that there’s many times they’re wrong.
Emotional Resilience & Creativity -Qualities of Successful Traders
Emotional Resilience – The very successful traders have a great attitude about losing. They know it’s going to happen. They don’t take it personally. If anything, they try to find learning experiences from losses. Elsewhere I have written about how good traders view a losing trade as “paying for information”. A trade with an edge that doesn’t go their way either tells them something important about the market, or it tells them something about their execution. Either way, it’s a potential learning experience. Resilience means that the excellent traders trade well out of a hole. They can be down money for day, week, or quarter and continue to make the same good trades they would normally make.
Creativity – We normally think of creativity as a trait that belongs to artists, but it also is quite noticeable among traders who have been successful over many years. They find edges in the most unlikely places. They look at interesting relationships within the market they’re trading, and they find unique relationships from one market to another. One trader very recently told me of a strategy that exploited the way one market was priced related to a similar market at certain time periods. I would have never thought of that idea in a million years. He was making consistent money from the concept.
Successful Traders are Having 3 Things
1) Resilience – Successful traders take risk. Successful traders are sometimes wrong. Successful traders take hits. Successful traders learn from the hits, get up, and move on. They are resilient. They succeed, as Churchill observes, by moving from failure to failure with enthusiasm.
2) Selectivity – Successful traders have clear criteria for what makes good trade ideas. They also have separate criteria for what turns good ideas into good trades. They don’t watch everything, and they certainly don’t trade everything. They wait for good ideas to become good trades.
3) Calling – Successful traders have an uncanny sense that this is what they’re meant to be doing. It’s not a job, and it’s not a career for them. It’s a calling. That’s the only thing that can keep people searching and re-searching, banging away for good ideas and good trades. And it’s the only thing that enables them to gain the immersive pattern recognition experience that separates them from average traders.
To be sure, there are other success ingredients, from discipline to creativity. What I see among the traders listed above, as well as those I work with, is an unusual combination of these three factors. It’s a pleasure and a true education to study successful people. There is much more to success than avoiding failure.
10 Characteristics of Successful Traders
1) The amount of time spent on their trading outside of trading hours (preparation, reading, etc.);
2) Dedicated periods to reviewing trading performance and making adjustments to shifting market conditions;
3) The ability to stop trading when not trading well to institute reviews and when conviction is lacking;
4) The ability to become more aggressive and risk taking when trading well and with conviction;
5) A keen awareness of risk management in the sizing of positions and in daily, weekly, and monthly loss limits, as well as loss limits per position;
6) Ongoing ability to learn new skills, markets, and strategies; (more…)