Trading outside the box on LSD

Thanks to everybody who has taken the brain test,would be good for more to join in,

Your Brain Usage Profile:
Auditory : 52%
Visual : 47%
Left : 78%
Right : 21%

SatchFan, you are strongly left-hemisphere dominant, with a balanced preference for auditory and visual inputs, a productive combination of traits.
The preeminence of your left hemisphere implies that you are organized, structured, and self-monitoring. You always start analyzing situations and problems by looking at details and then attempt to categorize those details in a very systematic way. You persevere on a theme.
Because of your balance between auditory and visual approaches, you can organize details into a pattern or you can arrange them sequentially so that you have at hand at least two alternatives which dimensionalize your organization and thoroughness.
There is no question that you enjoy a sense of control and feel that planning is important. Everything must be definite since im- provisation is less easy for you. You can be reflective at times and active at others, focus on the visual aspects at some times and on the auditory qualities at others. You have the capacity to simultaneously process a great deal of information and then your tendency is to organize and categorize it as the most convenient mode of accessing it again in the future.
Your balance of sensory preferences tends to make you more perceptive than most, and your ability to organize information adds to your productive processing capabilities.

thanks satchfan for taking the brain test,your our first dominent left sider,may i ask you a question,would you describe yourself as a descresionary trader or mechanical ?.

this may be usefull if futer testers state ther tendancy,again many thanks to all particepents

pryme time,missed your dominent left,may i also ask you the same question,are you descrenionary or mechanical,thanks

Well , hard to say .. really!


one has to differ between what is mechanical and where does it get discretionary! ?


i mean for me mechanical is with assistance of for example crystal clear orders
from indicators,etc, for example.. like if A+B happens do C

or if Price Breaks 1.2345 then do A .. or if price stalls @1.2344 do nothing etc..

so mechanical is limited to an extend.. as u get clear orders .. wich tell u how to act or not to act ... but takes out the evaluation ..

like think of it .. some authority person comes up and tells u that the sky is green! ... and u take it for grant without thinking/looking of it on your own , u just accept it! ..

like an indicator wich is the last point in your mechanical system confirms
a long entry! .. but infact price just gone up thusfar and triggered the indicators long impulse .. maybe even just by 1 pip.. where the whole upmove
was just profit taking! and just a reaction/correction .. and occured by the lack of supply... and not an increase in demand,.. wich may lead to a rise!

what happens u bought where someone else sees another good entry for a short.. and he prob isnt alone.. and more capitalized and what not!

u see if u would have looked how price moved to that level where the indicator signaled a long entry .. and u judged the move on your own..
u probably would rethink of entering a long....



where discretionary (and i dont mean gut feelings) its al lil blurred! ..

u still can have pre determined points ,wich have to be met in order to take action or not.. but u can judge them more detailed . ie how and what happened .. here and there ... not only the end result of a particular situation...

for example :

several things have to be met in order to go long..
like we need to have signs of strenght in the background
+ now that signs of strenght can come in many shapes an forms
-more pronounced upswings
-weak reactions (no selling pressure)
-demand getting stronger ie,. good quality...
we have to breakout of resistance
+ again the breakout can come in many variations
-alot of momentum?(good)
-High Vol.?(good)
-Big Upbar?(good)
-Close way above?(good)
we need to see a retest of broken resistance
+again many variations
-low vol? (good)
-HighVol? (bad)
- Small Bars?(good)
-BigBars? (bad)
----------------------------------------------
etc. etc...

aswell as the action on the chart varies.. but it willl still represent the same picture but just a lil fractal.. i may say...

i mean do u know how w HS patern looks on a single OHLC bar ?
right! its a pinbar! .. and u can see several chart pictures/actions wich look
a lil different but tell the same story! and with expirience u see formations
and bar actions .. wich tell the same story .. . but on a streched timescale so to speak! .. u know what i mean?

can a 100% mechanical system see take such behaviour in account ?

the markets arent black and white! but they do act in the same manner over and over!


SO to answer your question .. i do have a strict plan! where several points have to be met in order to take action or not! .. but i do analyse/judge how the points have been met! in order to pull the trigger! its important to take into consideration HOW price came here and there and HOW price acts there ..

u need to have a mechanical outlay before u opne a trade .. ie lets say all points have been fullfilled.. and in the way u want it to see!
so now u have to see how u want to act.. ie u create your game plan
(trade management) .. where is SL where TP? how do you act if price
moves to first Trouble area? what if the market doesent respond in the way of your position? how much risk u take? .. when to pull SL to BE ?..etc..

all these points have to be mechanical! ....


so its hard to explain.. i would say i take the best of both worlds!

cheers

I used to be discretionary, but since I never seemed to be able to consistently grow the account, I am in the process of becoming a rules based trader, with a trading plan.

Thanks again for those traders who have taken the brain test,not quite enough feed back to get a feel for which side has a prefered use within trading,although personaly im swayed to think that ,;
proficient trading would require both sides .as has often been said ,trading is science and an art form.

Roger Sperry
1913 -

Psychobiologist Roger Sperry discovered that human beings are of two minds. He found that the human brain has specialized functions on the right and left, and that the two sides can operate practically independently.
After receiving a bachelors degree in English literature, he studied psychology and zoology, followed by several years of research at Harvard, Yerkes Laboratory of Primate Biology, and the National Institutes of Health. In 1954, he joined the faculty of Cal Tech where he remained for 30 years.
In the early 1960s, Sperry and colleagues, including Michael Gazzaniga, conducted extensive experiments on an epileptic patient who had had his corpus collosum, the "bridge" between the left and right hemispheres of the brain, split so that the connection was severed. At first the patient seemed quite normal, but experimentation showed certain activities such as naming objects or putting blocks together in a prescribed way could only be done when using one side of the brain or the other. (Since the right eye connects to the left brain, the left hand to the right brain, and so on throughout the body, the stimulus would be given to the side of the body opposite the brain hemisphere being tested.) These abilities were not absolute, but it seemed that the left hemisphere specialized in language processes and the right is dominant in visual-construction tasks.
Sperry's work helped chart a map of the brain and opened whole fields of psychological and philosophical questions. Sperry received the Nobel prize in 1981.

http://www.brainstyles.com/images/st...ess/sperry.png
GAME-CHANGING RESEARCH
In 1981, psychobiologist Roger Sperry earned the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine for his "split-brain" studies which defined specific functions for each brain hemisphere.
The initial hypothesis of BrainStyles was formed by 1982 by chemical engineer, David Cherry, in a startup high-tech plastics company. With a mere $5mm in sales, losses of nearly 10%, failing equipment, and 24% interest rates, the business was up against enormous odds. Worse, the stressed management team was struggling and conflicted. In this environment, Cherry began looking for new answers. Observing his executives in high-pressure meetings, he asked why the “smartest” guy on the team was slowest with his expertise. Why did the “tough guy” on the team shed tears two days after firing someone in thirty minutes?

Organizational consultant Marlane Miller presented the exciting new field of neuroscience to Cherry. Learning what the left and right hemispheres of the brain provided became the key to defining the abilities of the team members. Cherry’s own gift for conceptualizing reduced the complexity of the theory by creating a breakthrough hypothesis: It had to be brain access that created their timing. People would do what was natural first because their brain mandated that they do so. They took more time to use parts of the brain that were not as easily accessed. Natural strengths, the source of what someone could be counted on to deliver, had to be a result of rapid brain access.

A model followed which diagrammed four basic timing exchanges between the left and right brain. Redefining what each member brought to the team, respect for differences grew. Meetings were held differently—visually—with teamwork expanding down into the organization. The failing business repositioned key employees with this new model. Bob DiLaura single-handedly drove a quality initiative to transform the “unshippable” product of ’81-’82 to earn the company Ford Motor Company’s highest honor as a “Q1” supplier by 1985. Bob Gerlach reluctantly moved to sales and, doing what was more natural than any other job he’d had, kept customers engaged when the product failed and had to be retooled. Market leadership was achieved and maintained in all product areas. Acquired by a Fortune 100 company, the basic structure remains in place and sales have continued to climb in excess of $200mm. By leveraging employees’ brain-based strengths, Cherry created and maintained outstanding quality, profitability, and market dominance.

Miller began teaching her clients at PepsiCo, P&G, Frito Lay the principles established by the successful entrepreneur. She began the research to substantiate the conceptual breakthroughs with teams who reduced timelines and uncovered new leadership, matching natural gifts, or what was to be termed a brainstyle, with job requirements.

It wasn’t until 1994 that Scientific American would publish some of the first colored images (PET scans) of the brain at work that substantiated how a brainstyle uses distinct parts of the brain when trying to reach new or unfamiliar decisions as opposed to what was learned, or stored in memory.

PARTNERING FOR SUCCESS

In 1989, Miller engaged H. Thomas Hurt, Ph.D., Professor of Communications Studies of the University of North Texas to administer a pilot instrument to assess four "decision-styles" modeled on BrainStyles theory. Dr. Hurt successfully tested 180 subjects in private companies along with 70 students with 90% of those tested recognizing themselves with the definitions provided (face validity). Moreover, there were some indications that specific brainstyles tended to cluster in certain areas of business organizations. In fact, according to Hurt's study, the higher the organizational role and salary, the more frequently the executive scored as a particular brainstyle. That brainstyle was later found to make up the largest percentage of The BrainStyle Inventory database.

These initial findings pointed to observations in several client organizations: a company's brainstyle leadership defines the corporate culture as well as the overall market strengths of the company. The founder, team leader, or hiring manager will hire people in the same brainstyle who can “speak the same language”. When unaware of this bias, productivity suffers—later quantified by the Center for Creative Leadership’s analysis of global staff meetings in 1997. Different brainstyle teams produced higher quality results.

In 1990, Professor Lawrence Peters, Ph.D., of the Neeley Business School at Texas Christian University (TCU), was engaged for his specialty in designing and testing management instruments to develop a self-test to determine a person's brainstyle. Over the period of a year, Marlane Miller and Dr. Peters designed and tested an initial set of 36 questions with a sample of several hundred people. Dr. Peters performed statistical analysis on the responses, whittling down the original set of questions to 24. By the publication of an initial book BrainStyles: Be Who You Really Are, 1992, the instrument demonstrated a 90% face validity, which means that 9 out of 10 people who used it were content with the match between the identified brainstyle and its description of their own self-described strengths. Follow-up interviews with a sample of respondents from Miller’s growing database of some 1300 showed two things:

1) either The BrainStyle Inventory accurately predicted the strengths of the individual

or, perhaps more importantly,

2) initial disagreement between their brainstyle score and their self-described strengths often could be attributed to performing in a role at home or a job that didn't "fit" the person's natural gifts. Respondents had an "instant learning experience" that helped them focus on where their natural strengths actually lay.

RIGHT SIDE

 

1. Recognizing faces
2. Expressing emotions
3. Music
4. Reading emotions
5. Color
6. Images
7. Intuition
8. Creativity

LEFT SIDE

 

1. Language
2. Logic
3. Critical thinking
4. Numbers
5. Reasoning

WHO MAKES THE BEST TRADERS,

the etreme left and right use ther extreme to find winning edge,some of the quants find intricate equations ,some of the more artistic thinkers find pattern ,feel price as though they are dancing with it.

so were does that leave the majority, in the middle ,unable to quite get it.regardless of hours spent in study the middle group always end up in the middle.

our first step is firstly, to reconise who we individually are.and are strenghs and our weaknes.we need to learne skills that are not natural to who we are.i have certain strenghs but lack others that you may have an abundance of.we need to be complete before we can win

a good example of this,jesse livermore understood who he was and what his greatest strenghts were,his tape reading skills whilst trading the bucket shops gave him an edge.yet when he took those same skills to the real market they didnt work.he spent many years having to discover additional elements.one of those elements was TO KNOW WHEN NOT TO BE IN THE MARKET.

in this example we can all move closer to our goal.concider all us in the middle with all are diferent methods indis ect,we get a signal from our system to buy.generally over a 12 month period its not much better than a coin toss..now imagine we spent as much time producing an indi that told us to stay out even though your system tells us to trade,we would increase our systems win percentage.this is just an example.to provoke thought.but very true,its a must element

i believe us in the middle can become great winners

Always been a big fan of psychedelics. Psilocybe cubensis mixed in with a little bit of cannabis to wash it all down really illuminates things.

Maybe my regular dosage is a bit too high, but looking at charts "under the influence" typically yields no results. As a matter of fact, half the time it's impossible to recognize whether or not you still exist in the "physical form".

However, there are insights that you can apply to trading by spending time in this state of consciousness. These insights are not directly correlated to trading, but are more "universal", and thus correlated to all things (including trading).

that would be an interesting volitile day if everybody was tripping on acid !

thanks for your comments,would be great if you throw somthing into the mix for topic.

insights leading to the elements for an uncomplicated trading method

This would be extremely hard to articulate. The things one experiences in the ether are so profound, that being able to describe them would be challenging, at best.

The simplest way to put it is that it’s like having dinner at God’s house.

How does it give you an edge in trading?

It allows you to feel completely liberated from the confines of your ego. Does that make sense? The mushroom kills the ego exposing you in your true form – pure consciousness. I believe it is this precise experience that has a direct effect on all things in your life, not just trading. When you know what it feels like not to have the ego present, it becomes much easier to recognize when it rears its ugly head. This becomes extremely valuable ( especially in trading).

yes mr marketz,very much so,infact it makes these forums very useful ,when one can become very cinical about there uses,but on ocasion we get somthing which we infact didnt know that we were looking for !

you have shed some clarity on somthing i couldnt quite put my finger on,so thankyou.

through out my life iv touched on this subject in various forms and for sure has helped me in my trading.

personaly i first found the startling use of this clarity of mind through my art therapy,whilst being in that state of mind,i can only say it was like being transported mentaly to another world,the awarness,the clarity,quite frankly i still find this mind state quite ,(to qoute from yourself for a better word)profound.

now this has opened many doors in my trading,but were i am with this,is its a state of mind which i still find is at war within myself.what i have implemented is knowing when my mind state is not in tune.although unlike you i have yet to master it.until i become aware of it,

all a little deep,but unfortunatly i believe without this control i will always be in the middle.unfortunatly thats were most retail traders are

which doors specifically? or just talking random stuff?

hi Misterme,
are you rich yet?

I hear what you are saying, and I think the war comes in when we are feeding from our own conscious mind rather than the collective unconscious which is the realm of psychic activity. But I still think studying and practicing is the only way to get to that calm state in the trading world, because the more second nature it becomes the greater the depth of tapping into the collective unconscious. Trading in its essence is a visionary quest.

Ok... I'm going to say this very directly:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNbExvU42q4




Seriously though, don't do LSD (or any other psychotropic drug) thinking you'll make money trading.. you'll likely just see the chart implode on itself and have no way to tell what's going on in reality.

If you approach this as "I'll make money taking LSD because magic." Then you're in for some harsh results... and potential flashbacks in 20 years.

---

With that out of the way, I'm surprised no one has talked about actual prescribed drugs that are found to reduce the things that make traders choke up.

Things like beta blockers that reduce adrenaline and other stress hormones... Or anti-anxiety medications, SNRI's etc... that make dealing with anxious situations easier. Or ones that help attention spans and reduce impulsive natures... etc... etc...

I mean, if we're going to have this talk (drugs and trading) then at least think through what would be something you'd take... have a desired outcome... not just toss darts at a board to see what happens if X substance is taken hoping for some magic result.

But please, any talk of any substance here is NOT AN ENDORSEMENT to take it as it relates to trading performance. I'm only going to participate in this thread form a hypothetical and academic point of view. The only time you should take medication as such is when it's prescribed to you by a qualified doctor to treat a symptom you legitimately have.


"Going long EUR/CHF and wondering why it won't move anywhere isn't normal... but on meth it is."

I don't think it would be beneficial to trade on LSD, but it might be beneficial to study charts, especially harmonic stuff. But then comes the question of whether or not what you are finding is actually valuable, or just your own mind making it seem that way. I think this is why tribes had guides when doing hallucinogenic rituals, so as to keep the participant free from his own conscious dwellings.

My drug of choice when i trade:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFYipGB6Z18

Doogh, it's booze. sorry. Wrong thread. lol

Not sure why. But i just had to post this. lol My apologies.

Following on...

hi custos,you always ask the most dificult questions to answer.and in my atempt in doing so it may in turn answer jacks and czarays points.

im going to refer back to my time with my partner of the time who taught me to portrait paint.ill refer to her as the therapist.

the therapist thought that ineeded to be more in touch with myself,beleiving it may help me in many aspects of my life.

the therapist gave me a pencil and paper and a mirror.draw yourself i was told.so i did.the end result was myself unreconizable and more similar to herman from the monsters.i have this portrait hanging on my bathroom wall.

next she asked me to study my hand and concentrate on only my hand and draw it without looking at the paper i was drawing on.i was drawing blind.i was asked to do this many times,with many various objects connected to me.

the more i did this the more i found myself loosing myself,and the time loss was imense.i could spend 3 hours drawing my foot without once looking at the paper .it seemed like only 10 or so minutes had passed.i had escaped time.for me this was a door opening.

when veiwing the finished sketch,i was some what taken back by the intricical detail,the structural make up,the complexity.it was my foot.this opened another door.

from this stage we went on to self portrait.i was given the technicals,were to shadow,were the eyes should be,the distance the nose should be from the nose,ect ect.faces are prety much the same the world over in there symetrical shape and make up.its not until you start the portrait and loose yourself within the structures individuality,its compexity,its finite detail.its not until i became in this timeless state could i see its harmonic whole,the intrical little detail ,if one eye twitches the nose perts,the lips pout.i had taught or i should say my therapist had taught me to see.without preudice.mr marketz put this into words for me.whilst in this state ,i have no ego .theres no battle within myself.my ego cannot direct me to draw myself more handsome than i really am.this was another door newly opened .
now,theres nothing startling about these ways of teaching art or other forms.many books and teachers use similar methods ,but for me i had found somthing far greater.which was my partners aim.

i have found this has helped my trading and given many skills i wasnt aware before.

having said that,have i taken my new insights and developed a super ea or indi,capable of taking me into a trade with no drawdown,maximin take profit from the daily range and concolidating whilst i take a dump the answer is no.is that my quest,yes

Ya, right-brain drawing's nice. W/photo-reading, projects chart shapes. Lots of potential with brain tricks.
Failing is, for me, social thinking, which I read involves the entire brain and which is, of course, on-going. Map that and you're done: I mean, "astray" is the common in discretionary.