has anyone use a trading psychologist?

[wrbtrader]

I don't think anyone can teach it to you.
You get better at it with trading and practicing.

Trader Psychologist or Psycho Therapist do not teach trading.

If someone is teaching you how to trade...they are called a trading coach which is a different profession but people often get the two (trading psychologist / trading coach) confused with each other.

An an example, in college I had a "rowing coach". In addition, I (the team) had a "sports psychologist" that worked with the crew team, soccer players, volleyball players and other sports.

Another way to explain it, you'll see a psychologist in the office or talk on the telephone. In contrast, a coach should be there with you from trade to trade. It's not coaching if the person is not there to monitor your progress in real-time regardless if you're on a simulator or real money trading.

Some firms have in-house trader psychologist and other firms are contracted to send their employees to see a psychologist when the firm believes there's are issues impacting the trader's performance.

In contrast, if someone is teaching someone how to trade / how to analyze the markets at the firm...most likely its by another employee or senior employee that's trading the same markets and/or similar (correlated) markets.

wrbtrader

 

[KCalhoun]

There's definitely a benefit to many re getting help from coaching in both mindset and trading skills. Both are important.

 

[margtwill]

I came in contact with Van Tharp in 1999. I found somethings I needed to work on, and went to a regular psychologist. The funny thing is that I even did not recognize I had troublesome behavior and I was self-sabotaging. I fought every inch about working on myself. I thought my youth was normal. I had no problems to overcome. Until I talked it over with a psychologist. No friends allowed in the house, no recognition, a parent that is narcissistic and controlled the whole family. You have physical abuse that you can recognize immediately, but mental abuse is not clearly visible, even when you go through it. You can spend a lifetime not knowing why you are who you are and what you do.

That is exactly my case: I can read very well PA and "my" Technical Analyze good enough to help others making lots of money most every day on our chat room. They say I am the best... But when "I pull" the trigger I panic. Seems that my EGO is happy just showing what I know. So I used a ET coach, who has helped me recognized and get to know how to deal with lots of issues on my grown up/whole life. I still, not where I want to be, but she gave me lots of confidence to know what I know, and know what I don't know..
Conclusion: Respecting all the others input, to me, it is a good instrument to use a coach.

 

[orbit23]

Paul Tudor Jones(one of the wealthiest traders) allegedly pays Tony Robbins 1m$ annually + performance fees for his coaching. Not for motivation, but to keep him in the proper mental state and make sure he is evolving with the markets.

 

[Same Lazy Element]

Yes. If you can't, best to write a program to have the machine trade it for you. There is no emotions allowed in trading. This is why everybody is using bots to trade right now.

Even as a systematic trader, you are going to provide some human input. Things like turning off strategies, scaling alphas up or down, deciding that some result is or isn't an artifact can be very emotional decisions (and frequently becomes such when money or career are involved).

Then there is a natural question about the alpha, is it still there? For example, daily results for a strategy with a Sharpe of 2 are almost indistinguishable from noise. It gets worse if such a strategy first goes on a hot streak and then draws down or goes cold for a few months.

However, in my experience, many people who care about the psychological implications should focus more on developing alphas. On the other hand, many seasoned traders could benefit from seeing a psychologist.

 

[JSOP]

Even as a systematic trader, you are going to provide some human input. Things like turning off strategies, scaling alphas up or down, deciding that some result is or isn't an artifact can be very emotional decisions (and frequently becomes such when money or career are involved).

That's not systematic trading then. The systematic trading that I am talking about involves zero human input or near-zero input, just letting the machine do all the work when you decide to use the machine, that is. Machine trading is lot more efficient I find. If you find there is still something that needs tweaking, still let the machine do its work but then tweak it after when not trading.

 

[patrickrooney]

Paul Tudor Jones(one of the wealthiest traders) allegedly pays Tony Robbins 1m$ annually + performance fees for his coaching. Not for motivation, but to keep him in the proper mental state and make sure he is evolving with the markets.

This doesn't surprise me at all. The strongest are smart enough to ask for help.

 

[Same Lazy Element]

That's not systematic trading then. The systematic trading that I am talking about involves zero human input or near-zero input, just letting the machine do all the work when you decide to use the machine, that is. Machine trading is lot more efficient I find. If you find there is still something that needs tweaking, still let the machine do its work but then tweak it after when not trading.

Even if you do all of your development in an “off line” mode (like I do), the decisions you make have a lot of emotional implications.

 

[socool]

I haven't used one so far.
I guess experience is the best teacher here in forex.

 

[themickey]

I haven't used one so far.
I guess experience is the best teacher here in forex.

Yes, experience is certainly a great way to learn, this seal here wanted to be a pilot whale and was looking for some flying experience.