8/5/2025 - Life is a series of transitions, as we learn from the past and present and build a new future. Each of our life's activities, from marriage and career to raising children, is also a series of transitions. We build our lives by rebuilding our lives. Just as we're created at birth, we re-create and renew ourselves. Personal growth is not a smooth process. It is a series of transitions and rebirths. What is painful now is a birth pain for the person who will emerge. How are your trading challenges meant to shape the person you're meant to become?
8/4/2025 - Two pillars of success are the psychological dimensions of happiness and fulfillment. Happiness is what brings us joy and fun; it makes us feel good, and it brings us emotional energy. Fulfillment is different. It is what is meaningful to us: what brings us a sense of purpose and significance. Many traders look to trading for happiness, but fail to pursue trading in a way that is fulfilling. One topic we'll discuss in the upcoming online session (see below) is how we can bring greater meaning and purpose to our trading. That is what is meant in Radical Renewal about trading from the soul and not only from the ego. There will always be periods of profit and periods of loss in trading. If there is nothing beyond P/L to make trading significant in our lives, we won't sustain the ups and downs.
8/3/2025 - The reason we fail at trading is not because negative emotion takes over. The reason we fail is that we adopt a trading process/approach that does not tap into what we do best and what we find most meaningful. We copy some approach that we learn from another source with no assurance that the approach leverages our strengths and what gives us energy, meaning, and fulfillment. (My book coming out early in 2026 tackles this topic in detail). Suppose my greatest strength and source of inspiration is intellectual curiosity. How is trading some mechanical indicator or chart pattern going to be fulfilling for me? We fail at our discipline because we inevitably gravitate to who we are and what we do best. Working on our negative emotions only doubles down on the problem. The whole challenge of trading is to find approaches to markets that leverage our uniqueness and draw on our sources of energy. Ironically, it is not our weaknesses that undermine us; it's our strengths.
8/3/2025 - Trading, properly pursued, makes us better as people. When we truly train ourselves to trade well, we train ourselves to focus and listen to markets; to collaborate and learn with others, making everyone better; to reach a level of discipline and self-control where we can act with purpose and planning; to embrace our mistakes and learn from them; and to blend our analytical and intuitive capacities and act on opportunity. Trading trains us to put our egos aside and make the right decisions at the right times for the right reasons. Like all great pursuits, it pushes us from real to ideal: to become more of the person we know we can be. See below if you're interested in a free online session on the topic. I don't solicit business at these sessions, but look forward to sharing and learning.
8/1/2025 - In my (free) blog-based online book Radical Renewal, I made a first attempt to explore the spirituality of trading, as opposed to the psychology of trading. The key question I wanted to address is whether our spiritual development can benefit our development as traders. As I explored the topic, it seemed to me that many trading problems are ultimately ones in which our egos get in the way of our performance. The role of spirituality is to transcend ego, not simply eradicate negative emotion. From that vantage point, the religious and spiritual beliefs that make us better people also can make us better at what we do: in life and in markets.I know, I know, I know, most of us are uncomfortable talking about our religious beliefs and practices and sensitive about not wanting to impose them on others. It is rare indeed to encounter such talk in the field of trading psychology. So we ignore a major dimension of human experience--which (ironically) may be the very problem that holds us back in our personal and trading success!
My own religious background is Jewish, and I regularly post to a website/blog, Integrative Judaism, that captures spiritual themes and lessons. I'm continually surprised by how often these are themes that show up in my trading. For example, repentance is a practice that shows up in many religious and spiritual traditions and that is particularly relevant at this time of year for those in the Jewish faith. It is also something that helps us grapple with the ways in which we allow our egos to subvert our personal and professional lives--including our trading.
I would love to host an online session for traders of different spiritual/religious beliefs and share how these impact our trading--and our daily lives. If this is of interest to you and you would like to be part of the sharing/learning, please feel free to email me at steenbab at aol dot com. It would be fun--and hopefully enlightening--to connect a small community of spiritually-grounded market participants!
Thanks as always for your interest and support--
Brett
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