BRETT STEENBARGER'S TRADING PSYCHOLOGY RESOURCE CENTER

Below are resources to help traders become their own trading coaches, improve their trading processes, and develop a positive work-life balance.  All the TraderFeed posts also contain links to valuable resources and perspectives.  

RADICAL RENEWAL - Free blog book on trading, psychology, spirituality, and leading a fulfilling life

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The Three Minute Trading Coach Videos

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Forbes Articles:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/brettsteenbarger/
  

My coaching work applies evidence-based psychological techniques (see my background and my book on the topic) to the improvement of productivity, quality of life, teamwork, leadership, hiring best practices, and creativity/idea generation.  An important part of the "solution-focused" approach that I write about is that we can often best grow by focusing on what we do well and how we do it--and then doing more of what works for us.  The key is to know our cognitive, interpersonal, and personality strengths and leverage those in the pursuit of performance. 

FURTHER RESOURCES

*  A Creative Way to Use TraderFeed 

*  Brett Steenbarger Bio

*  Brett's Books on Trading Psychology

I wish you the best of luck in your development as a trader and in your personal evolution.  In the end, those are one and the same:  paths to becoming who we already are when we are at our best.

Brett
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Two Important Lessons From Professional Traders

 

Here are two key takeaways from successful portfolio managers and traders I've been privileged to work with.  I'll discuss these in the upcoming webinar.  

1)  Create Multiple Ways to Win - A trader who only knows to go long or short a particular instrument is like a baseball pitcher that only knows how to throw one kind of pitch.  There are many ways to win in markets:  by using options to trade patterns of volatility; by trading the relative relationships between two or more assets; and by expressing market views across a variety of instruments and markets.  Note that the stock market pullback today would have hurt a trader who was long, but would have made money for a trader who had recognized the shift in relative strength between small cap stocks and large cap ones.  What is the best way to express a given market idea?  Trade structuring is every bit as important to returns as trade ideas themselves.

2)  Create a Lifestyle That Builds Your Strengths - If we internalize what we consistently do, then consistently exercising our strengths will make us stronger people and more successful traders.  What we do outside markets ultimately finds its expression in our trading.  Profitable trading requires intensity of focus and flexibility of focus, as we shift from generating ideas to executing and managing trades.  If we live a distracted life, we unwittingly undermine the cognitive strengths needed for market success.  The degree to which we actively structure our calendars is the degree to which we can live each day intentionally and use each day to build our capacity for focus and purpose.  There can be no trading discipline if life itself is lived without discipline.

Trading is a performance activity that builds upon our talents and skills.  Whatever you do that is successful in markets will be an expression of what you've already done successfully in life.  We find our passion in expressing our talents:  that is what drives us to build skills, and it is what ultimately builds our trading psychology.  A masterpiece painting is crafted one brushstroke at a time.  A masterpiece life is created one purposeful, meaningful day at a time.

Further Reading:

What Predicts Success Among Developing Traders?

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Sound Trading Is Training In Trading Psychology

 

Please note:  The free webinar on trading process and trading psychology is rapidly filling up.  Please indicate your interest to the address below if you would like to attend.  The session will not be recorded; sorry for any inconvenience--

On Wednesday, July 31st at 4:15 PM ET after the NYSE close, I will be conducting a free webinar on the topic of how to design trading processes that build our trading psychology.  This could be very helpful to traders looking to get to the next level in their performance.  I will be limiting attendance to ensure opportunities for Q&A and discussion.  To sign up for the webinar, please email me at steenbab at aol dot com.  I'll send you a Zoom link in advance; thanks!

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A sound trading process is a kind of gym where we exercise the functions that contribute to a successful trading psychology.

As the recent post illustrated, what we call a "trading process" is actually a number of interwoven processes that push us to exercise our abilities.  Idea generation alone may have us analyzing historical information; synthesizing information across markets; consulting market research and valued market participants; and making sense of shorter and longer-term patterns of price, volume, volatility, and more.  

Once we've generated the idea, there is the work of defining and structuring the trade to achieve best risk/reward; establishing position sizing to best meet risk management goal; assessing moment-to-moment action to identify sound entry and exit points, as well as points for adding to positions or taking pieces of our trades off.  Notice that all of these processes require:

*  Sustained focus/concentration;

*  Deep, broad, creative thinking to assemble information into ideas;

*  Fast, flexible thinking to execute sound trades;

*  Personality strengths of conscientiousness and emotional balance.

When we treat our trading process as a gym with many workout stations, we build a sense of inner strength, growth, mastery, and confidence.

A poorly defined, simplistic trading process reinforces laziness and fails to build us cognitively or emotionally.  We internalize what we do.  What we do day after day in our trading preparation exercises the strengths that contribute to a strong trading psychology.  When our processes are grounded in our strengths, the efforts of workouts are fulfilling, not taxing.  There is no challenge as important to developing traders as that of defining processes grounded in our particular competencies and strengths.    

Further Reading:

How Developing Traders Are Most Likely To Succeed

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Two Important Takeaways From The Recent Stock Market Action

 

Update:  7/14/24 - We continued to see breadth strength on Friday and finished the session with 1901 stocks across the NYSE making fresh monthly highs and only 109 registering new monthly lows.  This is considerable breadth strength, bolstered by buying of small- and midcap shares.  Interestingly, going back to 2010 (over 3400 trading sessions), we've only seen 45 trading sessions in which we had over 1500 new monthly highs and less than 150 fresh monthly lows.  Three days later, the SPX averaged a loss of -.41% (17 up, 28 down), quite a difference from the average three day gain of +.35% for the remainder of the sample.  Once we look 20+ days out, there was no downside bias.  I will be watching for near term weakness following the recent strength, mindful of the bigger picture bullish implications of the breadth thrust (see below).  I'll especially focus on which sectors are relatively strong and weak during any market pullback; that information could help set up a good trade.  

On Thursday, the stock market was quite the magician.  Good magicians will get you to look at what they're doing with their right hands but meanwhile the actual "magic" is happening outside our awareness, in the left hand.  The market's right hand gave us a solid decline in the SPX and especially in the growth areas that have been unusually strong.  The left hand, however, pulled off the real magic.  Market breadth increased significantly, creating what we call a breadth thrust.

The purpose of most of my quantitative analyses is to investigate market history and see if a given move is likely to lead to retracement (mean reversion) or momentum (trend).  If I can get a clear signal from market history, I then look at high frequency data to identify solid risk/reward points for entry in the direction of the analysis.  From this perspective, the "setup" is not the trade idea; edge occurs when the market sets up in the direction of solid research.

The market magic yesterday is that we saw very strong smaller cap stocks at the same time that SPX and tech sold off.  Up to now, small and midcap stocks have largely underperformed the large cap and especially the tech market.  Not yesterday.  According to the excellent Barchart resource, that created a situation in which 1518 stocks across the NYSE made fresh monthly highs and 187 registered new monthly lows.  Moreover, if we take a look at the number of stocks giving buy vs. sell signals on technical indicators on the very helpful Stock Charts site, we find that yesterday registered over 600 stocks giving buy signals on their Bollinger Bands and only 13 gave sell signals.  That is unusual breadth strength.

I've tracked these readings since 2019 and can tell you that, in over 1200 trading sessions, we've only seen that kind of breadth strength six times.  Moreover, when we've seen 400+ stocks close above their upper Bollinger Bands on the same day (N = 25), the SPX has been up 21 times, down 4 over the next ten trading sessions.  Interestingly, there has been no distinct upside edge up to 5 days out.  Where that leaves me is looking for short term pullbacks in the broad market that cannot make new lows in order to participate in anticipated continued strength.  It also has me looking with fresh eyes at the specific sectors likely to show this momentum.

So what's the second takeaway from yesterday's market action?  It's that the entire move was triggered by a drop in interest rates in the U.S.  Moderation of inflation numbers led to a rally across the curve.  Not so long ago, I was getting close to 5% on my two-year T-notes.  Now we're closer to 4.5%.  The markets are suggesting that economic strength will broaden out if we indeed see a sustained move toward lower rates from the Fed.  That is important information for traders and investors alike.  What were the best trades in a higher rate regime may not be the best trades if rates sustain a fall.

There are many implications for trading psychology in all this...I'll outline those in the next post.  

Further Reading:

Using Breadth, Strength, and Momentum to Track Market Cycles

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How Developing Traders Are Most Likely To Succeed

 

I'd like to call attention to a very important dynamic in recent markets.  Many experienced traders focused on traditional asset classes, such as rates and currency markets, are struggling with their performance.  The ones I meet with who are making money in those spaces are focused on regions of the world that are less crowded than the US and Europe.  On the other hand, many traders focused on individual stocks--especially active traders--are doing quite well.  What's up with that?

The current stock market is not a stock market; it's a market of stocks.  Some sectors have literally gone nowhere in the last few months, such as financial shares (XLF) and industrials (XLI).  Small and medium cap shares (IWM) have similarly traded in a relatively narrow range for months, as have stocks outside the U.S. (EFA).  On the other hand, we see technology shares (XLK) powering to new highs, along with communications stocks (XLC) and consumer discretionary shares (XLY).

What makes the stock market unique--to use a phrase popular at SMB--is that there is always something "in play":  some sphere of opportunity.  The tricky part is that those areas of opportunity are always changing.  Just as important as how to trade is knowing what to trade.  Because the stock market is so diverse, with so many sectors and companies, developing traders are most likely to succeed by focusing their efforts on current areas of opportunity.  Sometimes it will be with an individual stock or sector.  Sometimes it will be with the entire market.  In an asset class with thousands of things to trade, there's usually something promising that is setting up.

Developing traders need to work on improving their game, but also make sure they're playing the right game.  The lesson of recent markets is that even the best fishermen will struggle if they're casting their lines in the wrong lakes.

Further Reading:

Managing Your Trading Business

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How Elite Performance Actually Occurs

 

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.  Over the last 7 and 14 days, my percentage of time in the zone has been 100%.  The physicians I've worked with have been quite surprised by this consistency.

When I first started with the feedback, getting to 80% of time in the proper zone was a big accomplishment.  Gradually, I learned what to eat, when to eat, and when to do exercise (which lowers blood sugar readings).  I didn't stop myself from going out to eat and from having treats, but with constant readings, I figured out what to do with insulin and exercise to stay in my zone.  It was a lot of trial and error and a lot of adjustment in real time.

What didn't I do to achieve these readings?  I didn't actively motivate myself.  I didn't engage in exercises for positive mindset.  I didn't meditate or use therapy techniques to alter my behavior.  Rather, I tapped into a couple of my personality strengths (achievement motivation and conscientiousness) and kept taking readings, kept learning from those, and kept making adjustments.  Day after day, multiple times per day.

My pursuit of performance fed my mindset, not the reverse.

What if a path to elite trading is active trading, active collection of detailed data on our trading, and the continuous making of small adjustments?  What if how we lead our own performance--our own self-coaching--is the most important determinant of our trading performance?  

What if the best path to trading performance is to reverse engineer how we have best performed in other life arenas?

Lots of outcome data, lots of adjustments, constant small improvements.  Continuous evolution can create revolutionary results.  

Notice, by the way, that I have sustained these positive changes for quite a few years despite numerous lifestyle changes over that time.  If our performance depends upon our mindset, it will always be fragile.  If our performance follows from a flexible process that we internalize, it will always be robust. 

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Great Trading Requires Leadership

 

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, this week, this month successful?  Are you consistently inspiring your own best efforts?

Of course, we are also the leaders of our trading businesses.  How well are we guiding our own learning efforts and structuring our efforts at improvement?  

We are the entrepreneurs of our lives, and we are the entrepreneurs of our own trading.  Perhaps the most underappreciated part of trading psychology is our capacity to exercise leadership in our lives and in our trading.

Further Reading:

Tracking the Rhythm of the Market

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The Importance of Market Cadence

 

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 just listen to the words a person speaks and their literal meanings.  We also hear their tone of voice and the cadence of their speech.  Those provide us with a feel for whether the person is excited, fearful, cautious, etc.  Consider the difference between a conversation carried out through text messages versus a live, face-to-face conversation.  The latter is far richer in meaning.  No therapist would work people solely through text messages!

It doesn't surprise me that a trading firm that has been successful in training new traders, such as SMB Capital, makes tape reading part of their curriculum.  It's that feel for when buyers or sellers are becoming more aggressive and dominant that allows us to identify solid risk/reward entries and exits for our trades.  Yes, idea generation may come from our research, reading, and conversations.  What allows us to trade these ideas well, however, is gaining a feel for real time market behavior.  When the cadence of price action shifts, we are alerted to changing dynamics among buyers and sellers and suddenly that good idea becomes a good trade.

I'm not convinced that tracking the order book is the only way to gain a sense for market cadence.  One thing I've been doing in my own trading is tracking high frequency market action by using volume bars.  If I'm trading stock index futures, for instance, I might track a chart of open/high/low/close for each 1000 contracts traded.  When the cadence picks up, I feel the volume rising in real time.  When market direction changes with the cadence, I'm alerted to a new dynamic among buyers or sellers.  Gaining a feel for the market does not magically result from being relaxed or focused.  We can meditate all we want, but if we don't understand the dynamics of price behavior, we will calmly lose money.  Our sense for markets comes from absorbing the flow of information, much as a psychologist absorbs the flow of conversation in a therapy session.  We feel markets the same way we feel music on a dance floor:  through shifts in tone and cadence.

Further Reading:

Feeling the Next Trade

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Feeling the Next Trade

 

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 but point out that our feelings--our gut instincts--often help us identify opportunity.  Denise Shull makes the valuable distinction between trying to figure out what others don't know versus figuring out what people are soon going to know.  In shorter-term trading particularly, we can anticipate how the crowd will respond to various scenarios and position ourselves to take advantage of that.  A good example is seeing short-term volume expand as we move to the edge of a range, setting up a valuable breakout trade.  We often can feel the momentum of such a move long before it's obvious on a chart.

We need a process for staying connected to what others are feeling.  That is called empathy.  

The challenge is that the ability to feel what others are going to do comes from long hours of observation and experience.  It is not unlike the psychologist's ability to sense an important issue from the stream of conversation with a client.  Access to that empathic intuition requires focus and the ability to absorb ourselves in the moment.  That openminded ability can be trained.  It's when we're filled with efforts to predict the market that we're most likely to fail to identify what the market is actually doing and fall prey to the emotions of frustration, fear, and greed.  

Further Reading:

How We Can Improve Our Access To Intuition

The Role of Intuition in Trading Decisions

Trading With Emotional Intelligence - Part One, Part Two

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How We Become Successful

 

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 of our aims.

Good trading begins with one good trade.  Profitable trading makes the one good trade consistent.  Great trading builds many one good trades across various markets.

Success is built inductively.   

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Beyond Meditation: Using Biofeedback to Change Behavior Patterns

 

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, might it help us directly reprogram the triggers for our worst trading behaviors?

What I find most exciting about applications of neurofeedback is that they provide us with the data that tell us how we best operate in the zone.  The strategies that work for one person may not work for others.  Neurofeedback is a real time score card for self control.  Each person, getting live data in actual performance situations, can figure out how they are most able to maximize their performance mindset.  As a recent research review of over 3000 journal articles reports, neurofeedback is an example of "personalized medicine", where people, empowered with data, can figure out what works best for them.

I see that the FDA recently approved neurofeedback for the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).  If we can rewire ourselves even in conditions of trauma, surely we can rewire our reactions to financial markets!

I will be experimenting with the latest technology for use in trading and look forward to sharing my findings.  It may turn out that the most effective coaching is training in self control.  If we can discover the "personalized" strategies that uniquely maximize our performance, that could be a game changer--

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