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  I believe this is an important post.  Much of what has been written about trading psychology--including what I have written about trading psychology--misses an important dimension of elite performance. First, an explanation of the above picture.  This is a screenshot from the FreeStyle Libre II blood sugar monitor.  It takes real time readings of your blood sugar via Bluetooth and summarizes the readings over time.  You can think of it as biofeedback for blood sugar.  It's very helpful for those (like me) with diabetes, but also helps anyone stay in the zone between overly high sugar levels (which are associated with fatigue) and overly low ones (which create nervousness and distraction).   The above picture shows a summary of my readings over the past 90 days.  The device measures the percentage of time when my blood sugar is too high (over 180) or too low (below 70).  As you can see, I've been in the proper zone 99% of the time....

  I would like to build upon the theme of a Forbes article I wrote quite a few years ago.  Each of us has many facets to our lives:  our trading, our careers, our friendships, our romantic relationships, our families, our community activities, our hobbies, etc.  In that sense, our life is an organization , and how well we organize the parts of our lives will play an important role in how successful and fulfilling our lives will be.   What that means is that, if our life is an organization, then we are the leaders of that organization .  All of us lead our lives, but not all of us act as the leaders of our lives.  Leadership requires the setting of goals and visions; the division and allocation of resources; the creation of inspiration and teamwork.  If you were leading a business organization the way you typically lead your life, how successful would that organization be?  How well are you setting the standards for what will make today,...

  In my recent post , I discuss a conclusion from the writings of many trading psychologists:  that successful active trading requires an intuitive feel for market action .  My experience is that looking at relatively static chart patterns or indicator readings does not provide that market feel.  A structural view of markets can be informative, but we get a feel for how a market is moving from the flows of market activity.  It's interesting that many of the experienced traders I've been reading emphasize the value of "reading the tape".  By watching the flow of bids and offers and seeing how price responds to these, it's possible to get moment-to-moment readings of how the market is moving and whether buyers or sellers are dominant.  From this flow of information, we gain a sense for market cadence--and that provides us with a "feel" for the market we're trading. It's not so different from carrying on a conversation with a person.  We don't j...

  What role does emotion play in helping you trade well? What role does emotion play in disrupting your trading? How does your trading process harness the intuitive feeling that comes from long exposure to markets and their patterns? Two weeks ago I wrote about the trading psychology texts I was reading and what I was learning from those.  What I found was that reading multiple books on a given topic opened the door to unique insights.  An important theme from the books I read was that, in some ways, we are wired in ways that prevent us from succeeding at trading.  If we simply go with our natural instincts, we'll sell when things are weak, buy when they're strong, and fall prey to choppy, trendless markets. Since then, I have scoured texts by Jason Williams , Denise Shull , Mike Bellafiore , Ari Kiev , Eve Boboch and Kathy Donnelly , and Mark Douglas --and there's more to come! A number of these authors highlight that emotion is a common source of failed trading bu...

  Success is not the result of motivation. Success is not the result of positive thinking. Success is not guaranteed by talent. Success is built inductively , from the bottom up, by doing one thing after another successfully, day in and day out.   We internalize what we consistently do. When we do small things successfully and consistently, we internalize a sense of being successful. When we do things greatly each day, we absorb a sense of greatness. Small actions, planned and performed successfully and consistently:  This is how we learn to trade successfully. Each activity in daily life, planned and performed successfully and consistently:  This is how we learn to live successfully. We can be reactive, we can follow mindless routine, or we can act out of conscious values, goals, and plans.  We become successful when we wire ourselves for success in our smallest activities. All success springs from the expansion of free will and the consistent achievement ...

  Very interesting research on neurofeedback (providing people with real time biofeedback readings of brain wave activity) suggests that when people can learn to control their brain waves, they can change even very difficult behavior problems, such as alcohol abuse , traumatic stress , and attention deficits .  Evidence suggests that neurofeedback builds our self-regulation .  Newer neurofeedback devices can be worn in everday life, including sleep, allowing for ongoing monitoring of our ability to operate "in the zone".  The very portable nature of these devices allows us to use them in performance situations (like trading!) to track and work on our self control in real time.    Big questions:  Can real time feedback during trading help us build our self-control and capacity for sound decision making under conditions of stress and uncertainty?  If neurofeedback can help us control addictive patterns of drinking and chronic problems of anxiety, mi...

  This weekend has been special.  I have immersed myself in books about trading psychology from such authors as Tom Hougaard ; Andrew Aziz and Mike Baehr ; Steven Goldstein ; Steve and Holly Burns ; Mark Minervini ; Anne-Marie Baiynd ; Michael Lamothe ; and Jared Tendler .  Next weekend will be a fresh crew of authors that I'll immerse myself in and share in a post. For me, the key to immersion is reading multiple books simultaneously, focusing on overlapping topics.   When you have several experienced, insightful authors all addressing the unique emotional challenges of trading, it's like sitting in on a conversation and absorbing the unique perspectives and the areas of agreement.  That immersion brings the topics to life in ways that are difficult with ordinary reading. All this preparation for my next book has had one unexpected impact:  It has absolutely renewed my interest in trading--and in being immersed in a community of dedicated and insightful t...