The reason I asked is I've been around these forums many years. It's common to hear guys say the key to trading is behavioral finance and psychology. Yet, I have yet to read one person elaborate on exactly what "behavioral finance" and "psychology" mean, when it comes to trading.
In my experience, I would say successful trading is pretty much 98% psychology and "human behavior" in terms of its application to finance, but I seriously doubt people who dote these concepts around know what they're talking about...
Lots of literature out there about these topics including University classes devoted specifically to such in references to Universities that have trading rooms and classes about such (e.g. Penn State, George Washington, Univ. of Texas, MIT, Carnegie Mellon Univ., McMaster University and many more).
http://universityfinancelab.com/gallery/
Many of these state of the art multi-million dollar trading rooms and classes are lectured by top people in the financial world, guest lectures via top institutional trades and all sponsored by top financial firms...
very common to lecture topics about behavior finance and psychology of trading. The link above is mainly U.S. but the European universities seem to be more fitted for such although there are more behavior finance/psychology companies in the U.S. doing business with Wall Street.
I'm a little perplex why you're having problems finding any information that elaborates what "behavioral finance" and "psychology" involving trading. Its so important, there are companies (past 10 years) completely devoted to such that its a 700 million dollar industry per year and growing...
Many of these firms are hired as consultants to the biggest Wall Street and European financial firms.
I names several of these companies in an earlier post at this forum involving another topic about institutional trading firms that view algorithms and behavior finance as the next step to their longevity in a debate with Maverick74 about the importance of such...he had the view it wasn't important even though Wall Street obviously thinks the opposite.
Yet, getting it down to the retail trading level is more difficult in my opinion because of that "individualism" mentality that makes it very difficult for retail traders to connect to "team identity". Our inability to understand this is the reason why ourselves is the key component to our trading. Seriously, take a look in the journal threads where someone openly admits they have a discipline problem or unable to stick with the trading plan. What do they do instead, they get all kinds of advice about tweaking their trade method or they spend more time on their trade signals...very little time on themselves as a trader.
By the way, I know a handful of institutional traders that have quit their jobs for whatever reasons or layed off during the 2008 - 2009 financial crisis to then become retail traders. Almost all of them continue using their network (team) that they had develop as a professional trader...a network (team) that helps with the retail trading. Thus, they remain well connected and they are less likely to approach trading as this "lone wolf" mentality that typically is seen among retail traders.
