Are people with ADHD better or worse traders?

[vanzandt]

Everyone seems like they have ADHD and/or depression. -- it's kind of overblown, to some degree, in my opinion.

Just give up coffee/caffeine, and social media, TV, and junk foods...and sip tea, plenty of water, go for long walks with a dog and lift weights. and stretch, and learn to read books. be vegan. etc etc.

...you'll be back to normal, and even better, before you know it.

Fuuuuuck that ..... take up smoking, drink more alcohol, eat more fried foods, get nflx prime..... and crunch up that Ritalin and snort it.

OP... I'm just kidding. Perhaps try paper trading for awhile... who knows. But good luck to you, I wish you all the best.

 

[JackRab]

So did you get ADHD-ish after you started trading or already before? And how are you without meds? If you didn't have any issues before trading, maybe it's the trading that's doing your head in.... I know it affects me sometimes...

 

[Golden Retriever Trading]

Nah I certainly had adhd for my whole life. When I was a kid I'd daydream while the teacher was explaining the instructions and all the kids would stand up and start moving somewhere and I'd be like "what's going on here? What am I supposed to do. I tuned out the whole time" I was always that kid that was clueless all the time and the class clown. I got it much more under control until I started working in wealth management, and I was in charge of the portfolios and was the jack of all trades because it was a company with 4 employees. I think that certainly made it even worse.

With meds, I'm just a lot more focused and diligent and attentive. But it's boxed in my mind a bit. There's only one channel my brain can tune into at one time whereas without medication it can receive 4 or 5 channels with a lot of chatter in the background. Kinda hard to describe to someone who doesn't have it. This psychologist describes it best.

 

[p0box4]

Nah I certainly had adhd for my whole life. When I was a kid I'd daydream while the teacher was explaining the instructions and all the kids would stand up and start moving somewhere and I'd be like "what's going on here? What am I supposed to do. I tuned out the whole time" I was always that kid that was clueless all the time and the class clown. I got it much more under control until I started working in wealth management, and I was in charge of the portfolios and was the jack of all trades because it was a company with 4 employees. I think that certainly made it even worse.

With meds, I'm just a lot more focused and diligent and attentive. But it's boxed in my mind a bit. There's only one channel my brain can tune into at one time whereas without medication it can receive 4 or 5 channels with a lot of chatter in the background. Kinda hard to describe to someone who doesn't have it. This psychologist describes it best.

I have ADHD myself and i also used to take medications for it.
Fortunately i did outgrow it for the most part when i got around the age of 20.
Medication did help me back in the days but if i would have the choice again i would not take it again, i had some serious side effects.
One thing i really want to warn for is that these kind of medications can have a big impact on the nerve system and mental conditions in the long term, been there myself and it took several years after quitting the medication before it went away.
Not everyone will have side effects of course, just sharing my experience.
These days people are taking these kind of medicines as if it were candy without really needing it and not thinking about the possible effects. (No personal attack)

 

[1shooter]

My assumption is part of your natural adhd self drove you to trading, its highly complex and moves fast. Seems like a good fit. Now that that noise is subsided your worried you can't perform.
Use a limited account, call it gambling. Take a 1k or 2k and burn it up.
Its a fairly cheap experiment. With such a low amount you know going in you will be loosing it. With fees it will eat you up a bit.
But that the gamble you bet on yourself to win. The bet not that high so there is not much to loose, and the world to gain.

 

[cjbuckley4]

This is such a controversial topic that I know I'm probably going to regret opining on [here]. It goes without saying that over 65% of ET members are registered psychologists who are more than qualified to tell me I'm wrong but here's my experience with this:

I'm diagnosed and medicated. A lot of people say ADHD isn't a thing (they might be right) and these medications are a crutch, but being medicated changed everything for me. In high school I was unattentive, a disruptive force, and generally only really cared about sports. Thankfully, I was born into one of those families we keep hearing about that convey a major advantage on the SAT so I was able to do quite well there and I always kept my grades marginally okay if not good in math and other subjects of interest. After high school I went and played hockey for a couple years. Second year I lived alone at my parents' second house in a beach town where I knew no one and which is basically devoid kids of outside of summer months...think of this like my Walden Pond. A lot changed for me during this time. A lot of it is immaterial for this discussion but suffice to say the direction of my life changed substantially and it was during this time that I decided to play around with some recreational math using the ADHD medicine I had been prescribed years earlier but never taken or refilled.

Fast forward four years. I'm graduating in May from an Ivy with a math and statistics degree. Have a job waiting for me that I'm excited about. Here's what I have discovered:
- medication helps but it ameliorates the attention deficit, it doesn't make you work. If you think doing school work on adderall is fun, you should try Xbox. You still need to make a conscious choice and put your mind to things. This isn't NZT, it's speed.
- These pills don't entitle you to success and in fact they can bring you quite the opposite. You're early in your stimulant perscription career and I remember how great it was starting out, but trust me as a student at a competitive school, this stuff can be abused and it can legitimately ruin your life. It's happened to a number of my peers. High highs and low lows.
- Inattentiveness is crippling academically but either ADHD or some other pathology has caused me to become obsessive about certain goals in my life. Maybe it hasn't been my Classical Mythology or Music Humanities classes, but in the grand scheme that might be okay. This obsessive nature gave me the background in software engineering and trading necessary to excel at my internship last summer securing me a job. My daydreams for the last few years have been about these subjects, I love reading about this stuff and I love the depth of knowledge available. The obsessive side of this disorder is really where an advantage can be conferred upon a trader if this is a passion rather than a fleeting interest and I can't say enough for that. Don't believe me though, I'm just starting out, believe a great trader who apparently has a slightly obsessive or daydreamy predilection for trading himself:
"I wasn’t the fastest guy in the world. I wouldn’t have done well in an Olympiad or a math contest. But I like to ponder. And pondering things, just sort of thinking about it and thinking about it, turns out to be a pretty good approach." - Jim Simons

 

[comagnum]

Nearly any person with an energy level above geriatric is often diagnosed with ADHD these days. Not saying yours is not real, if you have it you will know and everyone around you will also. Here are a just a few real life symptoms from my 'observations' on true ADHD

** When stuck sitting to take a test and given a pencil - you will mow the pencil down to tiny stub in no time - like some huge rodent.
** You can go a month easily on less than 2 hours a sleep every 24 hours. It feels like you are at the best party off all times don't want to sleep for fear of missing out on something.
** When taking an airplane ride the air marshal blows their cover to take you on - they tell you to sit or face arrest upon landing, you make up a lie like 'I have kidney stones' and get right back up anyway and end up making a trip to the rest room every 5 minutes because it is impossible to sit still.
** You take up something new, say surfing and like it a lot - so you quit your big time job and move to an exotic island to surf all day from sunrise to sunset. Everything you get into becomes an insane full time 24x7 obsession.
** You stay up for a zillion nights in a row tunnel visioning out on something really odd you just got into - like watch lions kill buffalo. Months pass and you have done nothing but watched millions of film clips on this to the point you have seen every single film ever made on this topic and now you frantically scour night and day for new clips - you now it's insane but just cant stop it.
** When there is a line.. no matter how much you tell yourself you will not cut in front of people you just can't help it and cut in front anyway because you are always in a great hurry .
** When you drive you are always about 1' behind the other fastest car on the road flashing your lights and swerving.. pounding on the steering wheel.. no matter how much you realize what an asshole you are you just cant help it.
** You get an electric toothbrush with a timer on it so you will not brush to long. You go through the timer about 10-20 times anyway no matter how fast you think you are going you are certain that the timer is just way to short.
** Even at cocaine parties people ask you to calm down and your the only one at the party not taking any drugs.
** You use only plastic forks/knives/spoons because you bend the metal ones into weird shapes.
** You win every argument, even legal ones because there is no stopping point or compromise, no distance you will not go to win. Like the film 'Cape Fear' you just can't let it go.
** you lose stuff all the time ... like madly racing around looking for your sun glasses you just lost .. than after a few hours you realize you are wearing them.
** In your school years you only attend classes a few days before finals - because you cant be stuck inside at a desk all day. Only during kaos can you get motivated to study. You pass it with ease despite only attending a few days of the semester.

ADHD antidote: consume all the energy possible. Have to walk at least 5 miles a day minimal. The best thing is to have a sport your wild about and do it often as possible. Many of the best high tech CEOs off all times report they learned to harness their ADHD into an asset - directing their energy into creating and running their company.

 

[Golden Retriever Trading]

^ I'd advise you to check out the video I posted above about adhd from Dr Brown.

 

[FortuneTeller]

Nearly any person with an energy level above geriatric is often diagnosed with ADHD these days. Not saying yours is not real, if you have it you will know and everyone around you will also. Here are the real life symptoms from my 'observations' on ADHD

** When stuck sitting to take a test and given a pencil - you will mow the pencil down to tiny stub in no time - like some huge rodent.
** You can go a month easily on less than 2 hours a sleep every 24 hours. It feels like you are at the best party off all times don't want to sleep for fear of missing out on something.
** When taking an airplane ride the air marshal blows their cover to take you on - they tell you to sit or face arrest upon landing, you make up a lie like 'I have kidney stones' and get right back up anyway and end up making a trip to the rest room every 5 minutes because it is impossible to sit still.
** You take up something new, say surfing and like it a lot - so you quit your big time job and move to an exotic island to surf all day from sunrise to sunset. Everything you get into becomes an insane obsession - like practicing guitar all night and just cant stop even when talking on the phone people get made because the amp is always blasting non-stop.
** You stay up for a zillion nights in a row tunnel visioning out on something really odd you just got into - like watch lions kill buffalo. Months pass and you have done nothing but watched millions of film clips on this to the point you have seen every single film ever made on this topic and now you frantically scour night and day for new clips - you now it's insane but just cant stop it.
** When there is a line.. no matter how much you tell yourself you will not cut in front of people you just can't help it and cut in front anyway because you are always in a great hurry .
** When you drive you are always about 1' behind the other fastest car on the road flashing your lights and swerving.. pounding on the steering wheel.. no matter how much you realize what an asshole you are you just cant help it.
** You get an electric toothbrush with a timer on it so you will not brush to long. You go through the time about 10-20 times anyway no matter how fast you think you are going you are certain that the timer is just way to short.
** Even at cocaine parties people ask you to calm down and your the only one at the party not taking any drugs.
** You use only plastic forks/knives/spoons because you bend the metal ones into weird shapes.

Hilarious. You cracked me up pretty good.

 

[vanzandt]

Nah I certainly had adhd for my whole life. When I was a kid I'd daydream while the teacher was explaining the instructions and all the kids would stand up and start moving somewhere and I'd be like "what's going on here? What am I supposed to do. I tuned out the whole time" I was always that kid that was clueless all the time and the class clown. I got it much more under control until I started working in wealth management, and I was in charge of the portfolios and was the jack of all trades because it was a company with 4 employees. I think that certainly made it even worse.

With meds, I'm just a lot more focused and diligent and attentive. But it's boxed in my mind a bit. There's only one channel my brain can tune into at one time whereas without medication it can receive 4 or 5 channels with a lot of chatter in the background. Kinda hard to describe to someone who doesn't have it. This psychologist describes it best.

Your dog in the pic if he or she is yours, is beautiful... but my experience with Golden Labs is THEY have ADHD and are way too hyper. I mean they're pretty as all get out... but you need a mellow dog.

Get ya a big ole lazy pit/bulldog mutt mix. Thats where its at. Plus, if you train them right.... they make great stock-pickers. One "woof" for up.... two "woofs" for down. Mine has beat the markets 6 years running.

And buy Milkbones. Lots and lots of Milkbones. The peanut butter mini's are the best.