Trading Is A Mental Game

Here's the reality of trading―a trader needs:

1. A strategy that works;

2. A good risk and money management plan;

3. A probabilistic way of thinking about the market.

But that isn't enough.

A trader also needs a good trading psychology strategy that helps:

1. Tame anxiety and blind emotional reactivity;

2. Maintain stability of mind during both winning and losing streaks;

3. Minimize cognitive biases and errors in judgment.

If you don’t have such a strategy, you don’t have a competitive edge in this field.

It’s simple as that.

Mindfulness:
An Effective Trading Psychology Strategy

There are many trading psychology strategies out there―writing, NLP, tapping, affirmations, just to name a few―but the one practice that I personally chose as my main mindset strategy is mindfulness meditation.

Mindfulness a radical and science-based solution that puts you in charge―you as the scientist of your own life.

Paul Tudor Jones, Ray Dalio, Daniel Loeb, and many others are all part of a growing number of Wall Street traders/investors who are fine-tuning their brains and upping their game with meditation.

In fact, many trading and investment firms are now urging their traders to pick up some kind of meditation practice―meditation classes at Goldman Sachs have a waiting list of hundreds.

Learn And Practice Meditation With Me

As someone who’s spent a rather considerable amount of time practicing and studying mindfulness and its epistemologies (on and off intensive months-long retreats), I can only attest to the practice’s life-changing, performance-boosting dimensions.

At the most basic level, meditation helps make you more aware of your emotions, urges, thoughts, which in turn helps you better manage them. As a trader, that alone should make you stop and think of the implications in regards to developing a winning trading psychology!

That said, let me issue a caveat: Mindfulness isn’t some sort of quick fix; it’s not some panacea to all of life’s problems. If you think it is, or if you think that I’m suggesting it is, then please read my disclaimer.

Very simply, mindfulness is a practice that helps you deal with your thoughts and emotions in a more productive way.

Below is a meditation―give it a try with an open mind and see what the practice entails.

The Importance Of Ongoing Practice

If you did this short meditation, you're probably feeling a little calmer and more aware of your emotions. But imagine this: say, you wake up in the morning, you meditate, and then you start your trading day.

You feel very peaceful during your meditation, and so, you you go about your pre-trading routine–checking Futures, reading the news, reviewing your action plan, etc.–with the calm and composure of a monk.

Then, the market opens, you wait for your opportunity and you execute.

So far so good...

But soon after, the market comes back down and you reap your first trading loss.
Your reaction is automatic and immediate: you get angry, annoyed... and bam! There goes your inner peace and equanimity.

You wait and place another trade. But now, you’re on a quest to get back the money lost, so you increase your size on this one.

As luck would have it, this trade is also a loss.

At this point, the equanimity you’ve experienced just moments ago has completely vanished and you end the trading day feeling miserable because:

1. You reaped losses for the day;

2. You didn’t follow your trading rules;

3. You let your emotions bully you.

The thing is, as a trader, you will be confronted with losses and challenges. This is just part of the trading endeavor. Your meditation practice will do nothing whatsoever to help your trading psychology if you don’t actively seek to apply it in your life off the meditation cushion.

What good does being calm, focused, and centered while meditating do to you if you are just going to abandon that equanimity and peace when the meditation session is over? You know?

Your meditation practice won’t help you rise above the challenges of trading if you just abandon it at the first signs of difficulties.

So, meditation on a cushion is great, but the real practice begins when the meditation session is over!

See, most people are bullied around, not so much by the market, but by their emotions based on what’s happening in the market. If the market is up and their position is in the green, they feel good. If the market is down and their position is in the red, they feel crappy. Their moods and emotions continually swing like that because they can’t separate their emotional lives from what the market is doing.

But with a strong and consistent meditation practice, you can begin to develop a more balanced trading psychology so that you can remain more rational and be less miserable as the market does its stochastic dance.

This doesn’t mean that you have to close your eyes and focus on your breath when things get tough; rather it’s about cultivating a friendlier relationship with yourself, your thoughts, emotions, and feelings in an ongoing way.

Yes, as a meditation practitioner you do this formally on the cushion every day, but you can absolutely do this with your eyes opened, amid challenges and difficulties.

Look, the market will serve you challenges that will act as fertilizer for your personal growth. What you do with that is really up to you. All I’m saying is that mindfulness can be an amazing tool that can help you fine-tune your mental game as a trader.

Get Access To Premium Meditations

Sticking with your trading strategy; learning not to panic in the midst of uncertainty; keeping a calm and collected demeanor... as a trader, that is your mission!

My mission, as a trading psychology educator and meditation teacher, is to help you take your trading psychology to the next level.

So, if you're serious about that project, subscribe to my Patreon and get access to premium meditations specifically designed for traders.

My meditation cues are direct and trading- and market-informed because I am a trader myself, and I understand the game and its unique challenges.

When you join my Patreon, you get unlimited access to these premium meditations for the price of a coffee, and they're also available on mobile phones via the Patreon app.

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