There's different aspects of "trading psychology" and its critical the trader knows which aspect he/she is within.
For example, if you're problems are personal (e.g. nasty divorce) and its sabotaging your trading...an online trading coach will not have the ability to help you with that. Instead, you need to get personal (in person) help with psychologists in your local area that deals with stuff like that. In contrast, if personal issues in your life is not the cause of your trading problems and its more to do with fears & greed type of stuff...maybe the online trading psychologist will be able to help you but once again...it must be done in person.
Why the emphasis on the
in person help ?
Most traders hide a lot of crap that an online person can't see. A lot more difficult to hide that stuff when someone is sitting next to you in your home watching/evaluating how you navigate from trade to trade and from day to day.
Also, be careful because most of the online "trading psychology" stuff is bundled with "mentoring" stuff.
I personally believe that if someone doesn't have access to
in person psychology help...they should subscribe to psychology magazines or books aimed at mental well being development, behavior finance, self-sabotage are some decent books on the topic to start.
Seriously, think about this very carefully. Many institutional trading firms, banks, top funds have in house psychologists or send their traders to psychologists if needed. Its all in person interaction. Simply, if someone needs help, get out of that chair and go see someone local in person or maybe do home visitations. Just as important, most of today's top corporations have potential employees take psychological evaluations test to help determine is someone is a good fit with the company...many of the world top financial institutions do the same prior to hiring traders, managers and so on considering these people will be in charge of millions of dollars.
In contrast, most of the online psychology stuff is aimed at retail traders and retail traders need to be very careful about such. Therefore, my advice to a retail trader is to determine if he/she is having problems with their trading due to variables
outside of trading (e.g. you're in a depression due to death in the family and unmanageable financial debts)
or if trading problems are due to variables
inside of trading (e.g. fear of taking a valid trade after a losing trade) or maybe its both involving outside and inside variables.
I myself
use to (not anymore) have serious trading problems during the summer time when my kids were home most days when school was out for the summer. That's something a child psychologist works with and had to visit my home to see how the kids were interacting with me and each other during the day when I was working involving my parenting skills while working. Thus, I had to determine my trading problems in the summer was due to
outside variables. This is important because the last thing a trader wants to do like in my situation is to hook up with an online trading psychologist that is not able to see what's actually occurring in my home while I'm trading in the summer.
If you can
not afford the hourly rates of your local psychologists...its than your responsibility to determine what is your problem and then buy books online, subscribe to psychology magazines that deals specifically with those topics. In addition, you may be surprise to find a lot of this information for free at your local library on topics specific to your problem.
With that said, a common problem I see with many traders involves Fear & Greed and the below Amazon books have many good books on that topic.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias=aps&field-keywords=Fear+and+Greed
Further, I think all traders need to understand how they behave when money is on the line and that's where psychology information involving
Behavior Finance can help a lot especially with your subconscious behavior...many things we are not aware about our decision making involving money especially when we are under pressure to make a fast decision.
P.S. I'm a strong believer that retail traders should take a psychological evaluation test prior to opening a trading account just like professional traders must do prior to hired at an institutional trading firm.
I only say that because recently (in the past few years) I've met too many newbies that shouldn't be involved with trading and they believe because they have a little money and valid ID...that's all they need to get started.
-- and a look in the mirror.
