Quote from Cheese:
All understand that fear and greed adversely affect some, but your suggestion is horsesh*t.
First and foremost you have to get down to doing the work and study. Learning to understand and know in detail the market you trade in is the initial overriding requirement. You are not going to win in the market just on some special brain setting through meditation...
wrong as usual, cheese.
Why do you think it is that the majority of traders lose? Do you think it's anything other than problems in mindset? Don't you think that there were traders at LTCM who knew what they should do but couldn't pull the trigger? Don't you think that trading mistakes all the way down the chain from there to the retail guy holding on to a loser too long are about mental errors? Trading is primarily a test of mental strength, in my opinion. Sure, money has been lost by newbs who don't learn the fundamentals, as you said, but a lot more has been lost because of pure mental error by traders whose fundamental approaches were sound, by guys who knew what they should do but couldn't do it.
Anything that can help you get a better mindset, get better control over your behaviour, can help your trading. I used to smoke, for many years. I was doing something dumb, and I couldn't stop. Once I stopped, I had a better mindset and was able to apply that newfound thinking to other areas of my life.
Smoking is a behaviour. Holding on too long is a behaviour. Posting crap is a behaviour that you indulge in.
Not every behaviour can be changed (some are virtually hard wired) but many can, and for some people, meditation and other approaches that seem to you to be superstition can help. Who gives a f**k what your label for it is? If something helps someone change their behaviour in a way that is optimal for them, what does your opinion matter?
Not at all.
One poster here said the gym is his meditation. For me it is golf. Being out there recharges me, and lets me focus completely on the task at hand and I find it helps my state of mind. So what if someone else uses a book by an Indian guru and finds something in it?