We’ve all heard the old trading adage, “control (or eliminate) your emotions”.
The problem is it is not only impossible, it is very frustrating – not to mention not helpful – to hear this hackneyed and unrealistic advice over and over.
Anyone familiar with cutting edge neurobiology knows that brain research, including brain scan research, shows the emotional areas of the brain are very intertwined with the thinking areas of the brain.
No wonder it is so difficult to follow our plan!
The best thing you can do for yourself as a trader is to develop deep, honest self-awareness. This begins by knowing how you truly feel, on a very granular level and being honest about it. The next step is to develop an understanding or a context for knowing why you feel that way.
From my own personal trading experience and having worked with many traders, some great and some not so great, strong feelings about the market or a trade are very important to pay attention to.
Why?
This is how we begin to control our actions. We may not be able to control our feelings, but if you understand the deeper roots of your feelings (they usually connect to other areas of our lives – self-worth, social status, current and past relationships, upbringing, etc) you put yourself on the path towards controlling your actions. Understanding the deeper roots of your feelings is a special type of work. It happens to be one of my specialties.
BTW, most of my coaching clients have already tried NLP, time-line-therapy, EFT, affirmations, hypnosis, mindfulness meditation, etc – without getting the results they want. Those techniques may give you a temporary positive lift but rarely result in sustained change.
The reality in trading is how you respond to discomfort in it all its various forms will define your PnL. And much of our response begins on a subconscious emotional level, with the final act – the actual behavior – showing itself as a “trading mistake”. Or series of related mistakes. Often part of a theme that gets repeated.
This is what is meant by my often repeated statements –
YOU are are your own edge.
and…
We don’t see the market as it is… we see it as we are.
You can learn all you want about markets and trading – volume profiling, auction theory, MP, specific set-ups, market cycles, chart patterns, correlations, stats, doing a ton of back-testing, etc (the list is endless) – but in the the end you will continue to veer away from your plan…unless you actually address the correct issue. YOU.
This includes auto trading strategies and black box traders. I’ve had a number of them as coaching clients. They have a tendency to turn on/off or tinker with their their system at the wrong time.
The work I do with my coaching clients (my self-paced course as well) is focused on this very neglected but crucial aspect of trading – developing your self awareness.
Most of you who are unsatisfied with your trading results will spend more time examining markets, and perhaps do more back testing, and many of you will spend more money on chat rooms, indicators, and trading education. And the vast majority of you will end up at the very same place you are right now.
If you agree with I wrote above, you have a very important choice to make, quite likely the most important choice you will ever make as a trader.
How will you allocate your resources as a trader? How much will you direct towards developing yourself?
Working on my book and a few special projects involving the development of intuition, I have limited capacity to take on new clients . Therefore, I’m only taking on people who are absolutely committed and a good fit. If you think you’re one, email me first, if you’re still serious, we will have a phone/Skype chat to see if it makes sense to work together. I prefer to choose my clients as much as they choose me. You’ll know why once we talk. My self-paced course is another option.
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