Trading is Bad for your Mental Health
- Thread starter 4DTrader
- Start date
Quote from Cheese:
Unsurprisingly this thread has related emotions to trading and in particular the effect on your 'mental health' of unsucessful trades/trading. The interchangable emotions at work here are hope, anxiety and anger.
You can eradicate these emotions, or lessen these emotions to negligible effect by knowing exactly what you are doing when trading. These emotions (particularly anger) are greater the greater is the extent to which you do not know what you are doing.
Lets just follow that in daytrading mode. You have a set up. It works most of the time. Ok, so it appears. You enter your trade. Soon it shows that its not working this time. Fuck it, you think. Did you put in a stop? You didn't think you needed it. Loss accumulates. You hope that price will turn around and favour the direction of your trade. Price does turn at last and run in the direction of your trade. Anxiety as you see the loss reducing and you want to lift the trade without loss. But that doesn't happen. Anger as price again turns against your trade.
OK take this example again. Trade is entered. Price runs in your favour. Hope and anxiety play strongly as you can't decide when to take your profit. You take a profit. The same direction of price continues and you blow your top because you missed most of the profit you could have taken.
They are simplistic examples. But the point is you don't really know what you are doing. Uncertainty is your constant campanion when you don't really know what you are doing.
Lets consider instead a professional approach. You will have an accurate methodology and you will read your market with that methodology buying the upmoves and selling the downmoves sequentially. In addition you know the metrics of of your market - the order and magnitude of the price gyrations moving along the time axis - and you are tracking where price will be going with your trading model.
In such a professional mode certainty attends your use of a market and all that you are doing. Think harmony. Think serenity. Think calm and peace.
Hi cheese,
Lets look at your and lilduck's examples.
From a mind point of view.
Both of you are doing the job and getting it done. Great business plan. Super trading plan. You run 50 contracts all the time in ES and rack up a multiple of the ATR daily.
Its time to ACT. Do the trade and keep your eyes shut after that.
You are both in and rolling and your eyes are shut.
By following your B plan and T plan and keeping your eyes shut, you are really on the stick and.......
Is there any emotion involved here???? Remember you acted because you came to the time to ACT, each of you using your own strategy.
Check number 1. Are your emotions there because they are suitable for your skills and knowledge? Feeling that big four? Harmony , serenity, calm and peace just like a poker hand that has four aces in it? The four aces are what caused you to ACT aren't they? Lets say we did check number 1 100 milliseconds into the trade. Ohhh, any emotional changes????
Like nothing could be going wrong by now???
Okay check number 2. I brief peek of 100 milliseconds. Now close those peepers again and keep them shut.
Do you notice yet that whatever routine you are doing can't be done without sensory input?
If we do a trade without sensory input for a while, do our emotions get created by our intiative and personal proactive control to have calm, serenity, harmony and peace. Are we at choice to create anger, anxiety and fear instead if we feel like it just because we want to?
About that stop both of you are using (I don't use stops) you have it in place and it will take you out with or without slippage.
Check number 3. Keep your eyes shut and enjoy the moment everything is under control and you KNOW this for sure. Still have that big four going? Peace. harmony, calm and serenity.
check number 4. Eyes shut. Did you put in a target as well? (Idon't use targets personally. Would having no target affect your big four feelings? sure so that may be why you have one in your T plan.
Check number 5. Peek again for 100 milliseconds. You are out of the trade. Cool cool cool cool. you still have those big four feelings because you followed the T plan and B plan. Your discipline keeps the big four right there and you are in the driver's seat all the way.
Serenity, calm, Harmony and peace rule.
I never have anger, anxiety, fear, calm, serenity, calm, harmony or peace.
But I trade with sports memory I am in the market all the time and on the right side of the market. When I make a mistake I take a small profit and get back on the right side.
I feel like I am in a sports race (for me like skiiing, sailing glider acrobatics competition or glider xcountry competition. My eyes are wide open and I am making sure I am winning or when I make a temporary mistake I get back on the track or path and keep winning.
I can't shut my eyes and let a stop or target get a result for me.
Did anyone get stopped out or hit his target during those checks??? I think the peeks are when the emotions are affected. I don't think a person can think up his emotional feelings or eliminate his emotional feelings.
When does a person work on creating his trading mind? I feel that it is better to do the beginning of learning after RTH. The next steps or prescriptions can be done while watching the market and doing behavioral things along with the market but none of these have anything to do withy trading ACTIONS.
What happens with thses two kinds of learning in terms of the emotions? I think that under these conditions you can have great positive emotions like the skiing emotions or staying the course. whereare fear, anxiety, clam, anger, serenity and harmony? They are not being created by either the mind, heart or the senses.
Why do most people not know all the senses? Ever fall out of your chair while trading poorly? LOL........
suze Orman is playing a game in the background.. 10K to put in....A. guarantteed 80% first year and loss of 50% following year
blah blah B. 5% for two years??
9K or 11.2K blah blah
I sort of feel 50 contracts running at a multiple of ATR everyday means suze is silly.
There are many stags of building the mind. I think cheese and lilduck are not considering how the mind works and then building the mind to be an expert trader. I changed channels. LOL....
Im not going to disagree with what you said, however, i dont think one can conclude that by reaching this state of mind in trading, equals the kind of sucess you imply.
.... Multiple ATR......... etc...
There are others skills needed, perhaps some that you have to be born with, in order to be in the right side of the market as often as you imply.
You said, if you make a mistake you just take a small profit and get back on track.... most dont have a profit if they made a mistake. (why get out at a small profit.... you said you don't use stops.... perhaps time stops?)
While I dont disagree with your approach to market physcology, I am extremely wary of your results........ I've been doing this long enough to get a "gut" feeling when i'm being told something that doesn't square up.
(thats the nicest way i can put it)
.... Multiple ATR......... etc...
There are others skills needed, perhaps some that you have to be born with, in order to be in the right side of the market as often as you imply.
You said, if you make a mistake you just take a small profit and get back on track.... most dont have a profit if they made a mistake. (why get out at a small profit.... you said you don't use stops.... perhaps time stops?)
While I dont disagree with your approach to market physcology, I am extremely wary of your results........ I've been doing this long enough to get a "gut" feeling when i'm being told something that doesn't square up.
(thats the nicest way i can put it)
Everyone has to find his own way. To me, day trading is too hard. My own experience tells me that trading is roughly 90% psychology + 10% technique.
To me, being very defensive is the key
to control the emotion. Of course, I will miss a lot of opportunities and never become a hero, but I am satisfied with the end results.
My technique is very primitive, compared with the ones described in most books.
Psychologically I simply cannot use the more sophisticated techniques.
To me, being very defensive is the key
to control the emotion. Of course, I will miss a lot of opportunities and never become a hero, but I am satisfied with the end results.
My technique is very primitive, compared with the ones described in most books.
Psychologically I simply cannot use the more sophisticated techniques.
maybe you can see this guy after trading.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/07/n...em&ex=1215662400&en=afcb4f239fe3c8c1&ei=5087
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/07/n...em&ex=1215662400&en=afcb4f239fe3c8c1&ei=5087
Trading helped me become less emotional and calmer. I often have to fake emotion in social situations. Becoming calmer can also give people the impression you're apathetic. Do you ever wish you could recover the emotions you lost once you embarked on this fun path?
Trading is not a real occupation. Staring at a screen and guessing which way the market is going to move is gambling, pure and simple. When people say you need an "edge," I usually think they are either lying, in a state of euphoria after a lucky win, or have some kind of inside information. I think Gordon Gecko was right after all.
A Random Walkist wandering around a site for traders is like a deaf man at the symphony or a devout Muslim at a peace rally. WTF are you doing here?