DislikedNo worries.
I think I was splitting hairs, anyway.
I keep hammering away at the psychology,
and yet a devastatingly bad trade still hits me often enough.Ignored
FX4
When do you know you ready to go from demo to real trading? 61 replies
Trading: A Mind Game 15 replies
When and how do you know you are ready to invest real money? 61 replies
Relaxing the heart and mind while trading 12 replies
DislikedNo worries.
I think I was splitting hairs, anyway.
I keep hammering away at the psychology,
and yet a devastatingly bad trade still hits me often enough.Ignored
by R.J. Hixson
What to Do?
Ratey explains that scientists aren't sure yet what the minimum or optimal amounts of exercise are. He does state, however, that you need to get your heart rate up above 65% of your peak level for 30-60 minutes pretty much every day. A workout at 65% maximum is medium intensity and probably involves some heavy breathing and sweat—but nothing that will leave the average person exhausted or gasping for breath. Ratey recommends a mix of aerobic intensities with some days at 65% and others somewhere between 75% to 85%, where you feel like you’re working out pretty hard. In addition, he recommends some weight training, although the links between anaerobic activity and brain function improvement are less highly correlated. Finally, he advocates doing complex motor skill activities such as martial arts, tai chi, yoga or dancing about twice a week. These kinds of group “exercises” help stimulate the interaction of multiple parts of the brain, coordinating challenging bodily movements and social aspects of interacting with other people.
Other Benefits
Across the board, scientists are verifying that aerobic exercise can help people of all ages in all sorts of conditions: it can reduce stress, battle depression, end addictions, reduce the effects of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease and minimize female hormonal imbalances, including those that occur after childbirth and during menopause. These are more than bold claims; scientists are confirming every one of them.
Implications for Traders
Van likes to say that trading is 100% psychological. He’d probably be okay with adding one caveat: a healthy psychology requires a healthy support system. Exercise helps you perform at peak performance levels, not only physically, but psychologically as well. We talk about this in the Blueprint workshop, and Ratey’s book adds a lot of evidence to support what Van has long said on the subject.
How might a trader take advantage of this knowledge? Well, what if there were ways to mimic the activity for which our bodies are designed in order to perform at peak levels? Several years ago, the Wall Street Journal ran a photo of a guy in a shirt and tie looking at some monitors over the front of the treadmill on which he was walking. Apparently, he spent his days managing a hedge fund while walking on the treadmill at a slow pace of about a mile per hour. I also know of a prop fund in Chicago that allows its traders the option of trading while walking on a treadmill. Not only that, it has a walking path around the facility so traditional desk traders can get up and move around (no doubt some of the firm’s principals know about the Naperville school system’s results). These ideas seem a lot less kooky to me now that I’ve read Spark and its references to numerous academic papers documenting research results.
Let's say, though, that a treadmill desk is not an option for you. Is it possible for you to work out every morning before the market opens or at lunch? I know of one trader who goes outside for a short intense walk several times a day—especially after big trades.
In several ways, exercise can make your trading better and improve your execution of trading systems. For a trading edge, figure out some way to raise your heart rate on a regular basis through aerobic exercise.
DislikedTrading firms recruit a lot of former athletes and military, from what I've read and, a few times, know.
Also, exercise helps make mind-body connections and grow kinaesthetic learning (VAK model). Gut instinct, where, as I gather, one feels the pattern one observes, is also whole-body pattern or action pattern, just like other neural plexuses in body -- tops being the brain, of course -- can generate a pattern.
That's all okay for chart study, and may balance the chemicals some.
But I don't think it'll cover entirely for the trade.
Here's...Ignored
DislikedI can certainly understand why trading firms would hire successful athletes or military personnel...as you have said...for the benefit of the mental conditioning process they understand. Those mind -body connections are real.
Gut instinct, where, as I gather, one feels the pattern one observes, is also whole-body pattern or action pattern, just like other neural plexuses in body -- tops being the brain, of course -- can generate a pattern.
These firms are probably realizing that there is some advantage to getting traders...Ignored
DislikedYou can only be dominant over the boundaries you are entrained to respond to,
until you expand to other types of (game) boundaries,
and then to the skill of stimulus-response with a certain, simple (and thus game-like) set of conditions (boundaries).
Chemicals make dominance, i.e. dopamine. Other chemicals too, I guess, where ever your body gets it from.
That's all I meant.
Anyway, was framing your exercise etc. post a bit for context. To what I've read, charting for trades is a kind of game.Ignored
DislikedYou can only be dominant over the boundaries you are entrained to respond to,
until you expand to other types of (game) boundaries,
and then to the skill of stimulus-response with a certain, simple (and thus game-like) set of conditions (boundaries).
Chemicals make dominance, i.e. dopamine. Other chemicals too, I guess, where ever your body gets it from.
That's all I meant.
Anyway, was framing your exercise etc. post a bit for context. To what I've read, charting for trades is a kind of game.Ignored
DislikedYou can only be dominant over the boundaries you are entrained to respond to,
until you expand to other types of (game) boundaries,
and then to the skill of stimulus-response with a certain, simple (and thus game-like) set of conditions (boundaries)...Ignored
DislikedI got another for you,
one more attainable for the average would-be trader.
It's mindfulness.
I'd needed a crossover between brain chemicals and emotion,
and found the Buddhist list of five hindrances: desire, aversion, sleepiness, restlessness, doubt .
On mec, maybe aversion on the positive x axis, desire on the negative x axis, restlessness on the positive y axis, sleepiness on the negative y axis, and doubt at the 0,0 of x,y axis; this'd...Ignored
QuoteDislikedThis started as a PM between 4x4newbies and I when I returned from Vegas. Enjoy your week.
Something interesting I learned and was right in line with your thread. A family member invited me to go to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.(I never abuse it, she just wanted some company). So we hopped on the monorail and went to the Riviera. Ever since I read "Trading For a Living" by Alexander Elder, I have wanted to go to one of these meetings. He recommends all traders go and substitute something like "Abusive Trader" every time someone says Alcoholic.
A particular individual was sharing that the hardest thing to accomplish to quit drinking was only about 18 inches. The approximate distance between the brain and the heart. When you know in your heart that you are an alcoholic and need to change then results happen.
So it is with traders. 18 inches is all it takes to believe in your heart that you are a trader, then the first million will be easier then the first thousand as Jessie Livermore had said. So for me that one hour meeting was worth the whole trip. Such a simple little analogy but communicates so much.
Dislikedmust be the old cynic in me but I've read it off and on over the past week waiting for the 'sell' to take place. Refreshing to see that there isn't one and it's just a good mixture of anecdotes and wisdom. Thanks.Ignored