- 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 “stress” tag
rssCoronavirus outbreak – World Bank initial package of up to $12bn in immediate support
COVID-19 outbreak has hit >60 countries
World Bank announce:
- making available an initial package of immediate support to assist countries coping with the health and economic impacts
- new fast track package
- financial package will be globally coordinated
- will make available initial crisis resources of up to $12 billion in financing – $8 billion of which is new – on a fast track basis.
More at that link above
Practice Trading As A Game, But Trade To Win
When you are developing your trading skills and trading mindset have fun at it, and treat it like a game. Develop a stress free environment where practicing and learning are fun. This is where “Paper Trading” can help you. “Paper Trading” is a great way to practice your trading in a stress free environment where you can have fun while learning and improving. When you ready to trade with real money, trade to win! Be relaxed yet focused. Don’t get too serious or you will lose your edge and become uptight and stressed. Instead flow with the markets but make no mistake about it, you are there to win! The Navy Seals have a great saying, “It Pays To Be A Winner!”, and “Second Place Is First Loser!”, and this is true for trading as well.
Trading Hints and Tips
1. OPPORTUNITY. There are dozens of these every day, unfortunately you can’t buy them all, so only pick the top 10 and then narrow them down to 2 to 3.
This is done by using your buying criteria which is part of your trading plan which you already have written down. (Hopefully you have one?)
2. BUYING and SELLING. I have a pre planned strategy which I have developed by trial and error; this was achieved by learning by my trading mistakes and the mistakes of others.
3. PATIENCE.This is definitely a virtue worth developing. Sometimes the market is going up in the right direction, but is not going as fast upwards as you would like. Be patient and use a “stop loss” to lock in those profits. However small they may be. Also don’t always be in a hurry to “buy that next share” just because you have that money burning a hole in your pocket. Do your homework and then you have chosen the right share for the right reasons and not just because it looked good
4. STRESS.If it is hurting! Don’t do it, cut your losses or be content with a small profit and get out. (more…)
Genetic Testing for Traders
I”ll confess to being mostly skeptical about these quasi-deterministic genetic trait studies — circumstances generally matter so much more — but there is a new study claiming a genetic basis for some aspects of decision-making in risky situations.
Research published today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B1 is a step towards a more nuanced understanding of how variants of the gene MAOA — which specifies an enzyme, monoamine oxidase-A, that breaks down neurotransmitters such as serotonin — affect financial decisions.
The gene variant MAOA-L is associated with lower production of the enzyme and has been repeatedly linked to risky behavior. Previous studies suggested that carriers of MAOA-L are more likely to lash out when provoked2, for example, or to be more prone to aggression when raised in high-stress environments3.
More here, including a summary of the research, which appears to have been the usual test of a sure versus a gamble for higher gains.
How do *your* coping efforts work for you?
How about after you have a few winning trades, days, or weeks in a row? Do you trade better or worse? Breaking down your performance as a function of recent performance will tell you a great deal about how effective you are in coping with risk and reward.
The other excellent indicator of whether your coping is working for you is your emotional experience during trading. If you find that anxiety, overconfidence, frustration, and stress are pushing you into poor decisions, you know that you’re not coping well with the uncertainties of markets.
Finally, it is helpful to identify the sequences of coping behaviors that you utilize when you’re making good decisions and the sequences when you’re trading poorly. Knowing how your individual coping responses come together to form coping strategies can help you cultivate your coping strengths.
Tracking how you deal with challenges when you are at your most effective enables you to create a mental model of that coping that you can call upon during periods of high stress. We cannot avoid the stresses of trading, but those do not have to generate distress and biased decisions.Take a look at how well you trade after a position has gone against you. Do you trade better after a drawdown or worse?
Trade Like Michael Jordan
How does basketball exactly relate to golf and perhaps trading successfully? Well, you’re going to soon find out!
In this article, Michael provides 10 rules for maximizing competitiveness and if you’ve been trading for any period of time, you’ll instantly recognize their value to trading successfully. In fact, here’s my personal take on how Jordan’s rules directly relate to making us all better traders:
Focus on the little things. It is true, if you focus on the little things (finding and exploiting attractive entry points, proper position sizing, sticking to stop loss levels, unbiased chart analysis, etc.) they’ll all add up to contribute to your big picture success and bottom line. When the pressure is on and tension and stress is high, traders must rely on the basic skills they’ve developed through constant practice to make the tough trades. That practice and constant dedication to improve oneself will make a world of difference when opportunities are the most plentiful.
Have total confidence in what you can do. As Michael says “If you have 100 percent confidence that you can pull off a shot, most of the time you will.” I couldn’t agree more. While we all make trades based on imperfect information and conflicting data, at all times we must be 100% confident in the trades we make. There’s a good reason why so many traders say you must always “trade to win” instead of “trading not to lose.” There’s a huge difference. In addition, the only way to have confidence you really need in the trades you make is to actually do the work the leads up to making those trades in the first place.
Don’t think about the prize; think about the work. Novice traders focus on how much money they stand to gain or lose from trading while great traders focus simply on the process of trading well and to their best of their ability. That’s a key difference. Sometimes a good trader will be very unhappy even if they make money in a particular trade because they didn’t trade it well or the trade violated their strategy and they got away with it whereas a novice trader will simply focus on the profits or losses no matter how and why they earned them. Money, and the rewards the flow from successful trading, are a low priority to the successful trader – instead trading well and trading even better the next time are the two top priorities. (more…)
You Don’t Need to be Right to Make Money
You have to do the mental work to let go of the need to know what is going to happen next or the need to be right on each trade. In fact the degree to which you think you know, assume you know, or in any way need to know what is going to happen next, is equal to the degree to which you will fail as a trader. Mark Douglas The most successful traders have found a way to inoculate themselves from the stress of trading, and from the outcome of their most recent trades. Here’s how they do it: They have an unshakable belief in the fact that 1) While the outcome of any given trade is uncertain they believe in their edge over a series of trades. In other words they know the expectancy of their method and have confidence that over a series of random outcomes, the odds are in their favor. 2) Anything can happen! In other words they have learned to think of every trade like tossing a coin – they don’t need to know what will happen. They don’t expect to either win or lose. This firm belief in the uncertainty of any given trade, while knowing that over a series of trades you will be profitable, is very liberating. When you learn the mental discipline of letting go of the result of any individual trade you keep your mind in a state where it can easily perceive the opportunities that the market is offering. It is not distracted by focusing on your expectations of what you think should happen – it can perceive what is most likely to happen. The Body/Mind Connection
3 Big Aggravations You Shouldn’t Tolerate
The first (and in some ways, the most irritating) is knowing that there are people making it in trading, and they aren’t half as smart as you.
– They haven’t put in nearly as much effort as you.
– Haven’t sacrificed as many evenings or weekends that could have been spent more enjoyably.
– Haven’t tried nearly as many systems or strategies as you have.
– And yet, they’re making money, relaxing when its time and feeling pretty good, while you’re still beating your head on the rock and bleeding, and not getting nearly as much good sleep as you’d like.
The second is knowing that there are plenty of trading strategies and systems that are readily available to you, but you don’t know how to find them, and even if you did, you don’t have a process to know if it is one that would suit you well and actually produce the way you wanted
Well you could find out by just going ahead and trying it, but that kind of stinks too, huh?
And it doesn’t help that it seems like every Tom, Dick and Harry has a system for sale, with everybody and their brother sending you emails promoting it.
Same problem: “Does it really work, and even if it does, would it work for ME?”
No method to KNOW without trying it. (more…)
Traits of a Successful Trader
We urge you to use this checklist for your own trading and investing preparation. We truly feel that these traits are very important for you to understand. These trader traits coupled with the proper psychology can make a huge positive difference in your overall trading performance.
• The ability to act on your decisions.
• The ability to accept responsibility for your actions.
• You must have emotional detachment from the markets.
• The ability to accept risk and take losses (you’ll never be right 100% of the time). (more…)