Strengthening Your Trading By Leveraging Your Strengths

 

12/8/2025 - As we get to the end of the year, many traders reflect on the year past and formulate goals for the year ahead.  An important concept in psychological research is that much of our growth comes, not from our top, "signature" strengths, but from expanding and developing what are called our "latent" strengths.  These are areas where we excel, but don't necessarily know we excel and so we don't consciously draw upon them during times of challenge.  We can think of these as relatively "hidden" strengths.  Perhaps they show up only occasionally in life or in a limited number of life circumstances.  They *are* strengths, however, and we can cultivate them to further our development.

My signature (top) strengths include a drive to learn and achieve.  If you were to ask those I live with, however (especially my cats!), they would say that my ability to listen and understand others are some of my best qualities.  Indeed, those have long driven my work as a psychologist.  In pursuing trading, however, I've only recently worked on ways of becoming a better listener of markets:  breaking down the market into components (sectors, subsectors) and hearing the (often unique) story each part of the market is telling.  Getting inside the market and truly listening has opened insights that I had missed despite my work ethic.

What areas of strength might be relatively hidden in your life that could take your trading to the next level in 2026?  How could you exercise those areas, so that your latent strengths get even stronger?  Very often, looking to areas of life very different from trading can alert you to what you do well that could creatively be imported into your trading processes.

In the upcoming free Wednesday afternoon webinar (December 10th; 4:15 PM ET), we'll not only evaluate your strengths, but also identify your latent strengths and discuss ways of growing them.  If you're interested, please shoot me an email at steenbab at aol dot com and I'll get you a Zoom link.  

Let's make the new year a year of new growth!