Turning Trading Anxiety Into Growth

Here is a powerful psychological technique that I learned from a wise therapist I saw when I was in graduate school.

Identify clearly what makes you nervous, uneasy, fearful, or anxious.  Typically, those will be situations that you find yourself avoiding.  Anxiety is a form of psychological pain. No one likes pain, and so it's often easiest to avoid the situations that make us uncomfortable.

A good trading example would be bumping up your trading size and hence your risk-taking.  You've been doing well in different market conditions and would like to take greater advantage of your edge in markets.  Increasing the size of your trades, however, will increase the P/L swings for each trade, each day, and each week.  That is not necessarily comfortable.  So we may find ourselves making excuses, avoiding the situation that makes us nervous.

The therapist I met with in Kansas specialized in dream interpretation, so much of our discussion centered on my dreams from the past week.  One dream was that I was on a playground, climbing a tall slide.  At the top of the slide was a lever.  You could set the lever anywhere from 1-10.  I realized that the setting would determine how fast you went down this large slide.  I decided to be prudent in the dream and selected a "5" setting.  

Now I should mention that the issue that brought me to therapy was feeling "blah" in my life.  I didn't feel all that much excitement about what I was doing and felt that the resulting malaise was keeping me from doing my best in all situations, from school work to relationships.

The therapist quickly perceived that the dream image of the slide with the lever was a creative metaphor for my life at the time.  I was going down the slide, but keeping my descent safe and predictable.  Perhaps it was time to try a higher setting on the slide.

That's when the therapist offered a keen perspective.  She said that, if you're not a person with an actual pathological anxiety disorder, your fears point the way toward your growth.  We grow by embracing and pursuing what makes us anxious.  The reason for this is that we always grow by extending our boundaries, by going beyond our natural comfort zones.  Whenever we forge new territory and push our self-defined limits, that's scary, that's the unknown.  

The implication is profound:  we tend to avoid what makes us uncomfortable, and our discomfort tends to occur in those areas where we most need to grow.  If you find yourself procrastinating, avoiding, nervously setting your life's challenges at a comfortable "5", those are the areas to pursue. In mastering those fears, we find the person we're meant to be.

And the ride down life's slide becomes a helluva lot more fun.

Further Reading:  Embracing Stress, Minimizing Distress

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The Power of Regret in Trading

One of the more fascinating phenomena in trading psychology is that traders will trade poorly, miss opportunities, and lose money--and then they will proceed to do exactly the same things the next day and the next week. Finally, hurting from the losses, they seek psychological assistance.  But is the problem primarily one of psychology?

A close look finds that traders commonly respond to losses in two ways:  

1)  As frustrating events, inevitable but difficult to experience and important to move beyond;

2)  As mistakes, to be noted and learned from.

Not uncommonly, traders will respond in the first way and then transition to the second in order to put losses and missed opportunities behind them.

Then, having placed the experience behind them, the traders repeat the exact same behaviors!

Why?  Haven't they done the right things, psychologically?

Let's imagine a different situation.  Suppose you unwittingly hurt the feelings of someone you love and damage their reputation.  Or suppose you are entrusted with the care of young children and feed them improperly, causing great and painful illness.  How would you respond?  Would you simply deal with it as an annoying, frustrating event?  Of course not. Would you respond by merely keeping a journal and jotting down a lesson to be learned?  I don't think so.

If you truly hurt people you cared for, you would feel deeply guilty.  You would be overcome with regret and you would beg their forgiveness.  You would not deal with the situation as a mere psychological issue.  You would respond to it spiritually: as something profoundly wrong requiring repentance.  You would be unlikely to repeat the hurtful situations, because your sense of regret would sear into your heart and mind a commitment to be more aware and sensitive in the future.

We commonly view guilt as a negative emotion to be overcome.  We view "guilt trips" as things to be avoided.  It is not by coincidence, however, that all major religions incorporate the ideas of sin, guilt, and atonement.  It is also not by coincidence that programs such as AA emphasize moral inventories and making amends for the damage created by addiction.  We don't change because we're frustrated by a behavior, and we don't change because we treat that behavior as an error.  We change because we feel horror, regret, and disgust at what we've done and the damage we've created.  We move on, not by minimizing our behavior, but by fully connecting with the consequences of that behavior and then proceeding, in all sincerity, toward forgiveness.  

Alcoholics who hurt their health, hurt their friends, hurt their career opportunities, and hurt their spouses and children--and who don't view all that with absolute regret and an absolute desire to change--those are alcoholics at risk for relapse.  Traders who lose their money, miss opportunities in life and in markets, who fail to support families that count on them--and who don't look at that with a deep feeling of guilt and responsibility--those are the traders who will continue the error of their ways.

All the psychological techniques in the world can't help someone who doesn't perceive and deeply feel the need for transformation.  Pain alerts us to a situation in our body that needs to be evaluated and treated.  In that context, pain is an important part of health.  Guilt and regret are pain of the spirit. They are telling us we have been on the wrong path. That can be a very constructive element in our development.

Further Reading:

  Peak Performance Conditioning

Regret and Trading

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The Unappreciated Reason Hard Working Traders Underperform

I recall a trader who was struggling with his trading, getting out of winning trades too early and letting losing trades run. His coach worked with him tirelessly to keep daily journals and track his discipline.  Amazingly, the more he worked on his "process", the more erratic his trading became. Eventually he could not sustain his career and went into other work.  It was one of the first times I had seen coaching directly lead to a trader's demise.

The problem was that the trader was placed on a strict risk management regimen.  Essentially he had a mandate to make money, but lose very little.  This tight regime led him to trade increasingly short term to limit his losses.  That short term horizon did not allow him to meaningfully participate in the bigger picture ideas he generated.  On the few occasions in which he did try to faithfully follow his research, he drew down before the position ultimately worked out and had to stop out prematurely. That compounded his frustration. 

Quite simply, the trader's strength was as a big picture thinker and investor.  He was given a mandate to be a trader and that took him out of the zone of his strengths. Journaling and rigidly adhering to a process that did not capture his strengths only served to block and frustrate those strengths. His weakness was a function of strengths that could not find expression.

So it is with many traders.  They work and work and work on their "discipline" and "process", when in reality the problem is that their trading method does not capture their true cognitive and personality strengths.  If you are finding that the usual psychological approaches are not helping your trading, I encourage you to check out the recent article on how our strengths can create weaknesses.  My hope is that the article gets you thinking about your strengths in a new light, so that, instead of working on "problems", you can focus on leveraging the best of your information processing, emotional, and interpersonal assets.

If your trading results aren't what you hoped, even after considerable work, perhaps you are trying to participate in markets in ways that thwart the best of who you are. Working harder at the wrong things can only produce disappointing results.  We are best able to figure out markets if we first have figured out ourselves.

Further Reading:  How Our Strengths Can Weaken Our Performance

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Ideas For Jumpstarting the Market Week

*  If you want to know another person's psychology, just listen to their words and observe their actions.  Are they dwelling on the past or creating opportunity for the future?  Do they express anger and frustration or gratitude and fulfillment?  Do they actively create positive experiences for others, or are they largely focused on their own needs?  Do they seek adventure or the sameness of routine? If their words and actions were foods, how nourishing would you find their diet?  Does your trading reflect awareness and acceptance, or does it come from a place of ego?  All the psychology in the world won't help a trader living the wrong values.  Our psychology reflects our values in action.

*  Seriously, if you haven't delved into Weighing the Week Ahead and all its links, you're missing some solid market prep.  Check out winners of Jeff's Silver Bullet Awards:  perhaps a gold bullet should go to winner David Bailey and colleagues for consistently provocative, thoughtful research.

*  Nice to see Merritt Black teaching new traders with a framework of auction theory and Market Profile.  Recognizing value areas in markets and how volume behaves as we move away from value is key to understanding short-term price action.  Jim Dalton's work remains a tremendous resource in making sense of seemingly random market behavior.

Further Reading:  Evaluating Yourself as a Trader

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Awareness and Acceptance in Trading

Two of the most powerful psychological assets in trading are awareness and acceptance. Let's look into those.

Awareness means that we consciously direct attention to something.  We become a keen observer; we focus our attention.  Self-awareness means that we direct our attention inward and observe ourselves. Market awareness means that we step back from moment to moment price action and observe something about the market.  We most effectively act on something if we sustain awareness of it.

As Branden's quote suggests, however, awareness means little if it is not accompanied by acceptance. In a state of acceptance, we are open minded; we readily process what we observe.  When we lack acceptance, our awareness cannot become insight.  We shut off our awareness when we fight against it.  Acceptance means that, sometimes, we have to process information that is uncomfortable.

The trader who lacks awareness is clueless.  The trader who is aware but who lacks acceptance is defensive.  This is a very important principle.  When we find ourselves becoming tense or frustrated in trading, it is often because we are aware of something we have difficulty accepting.  Whatever that something is, is usually important.

Yesterday I was trading long in the market early in the day and doing well.  I then did my usual thing, waited for a qualified pullback and bought.  The market ticked higher, stalled, and then went to a lower low on increased selling pressure and volume.  My awareness said, "This shouldn't be happening."  My acceptance said, "This is the wrong trade."  I exited for a small loss.

Then, however, a second level of acceptance kicked in.  I said to myself, "A good trade that fails can be a signal in the opposite direction."  In other words, if flows truly had shifted in the market, we should not look back and surpass the highs that preceded my qualified pullback.  That acceptance of a change in market flows/direction allowed me to sell the next bounce and, indeed, continue to trade the short side in the afternoon.  That made for a good day of trading, but it was only because I could truly accept the information the market was providing.

Earlier in the week, I was locked into a view that we would move higher in the market and failed to accept the same exact information.  That not only led to losing trades, but the failure to capitalize on potential winning ones.  Interestingly, my lack of acceptance interfered with even my awareness.  A closed mind cannot accept, but it also is hampered in processing what is in front of us.

It is not enough to try to eliminate negative emotions in trading.  Many of those emotions, from uneasiness and nervousness to frustration and discouragement, reflect an awareness that we are having trouble accepting.  Losses and missed opportunities are less threatening when we view them as tools for expanding our awareness and gaining new perspectives.  As in my case, the losing trade was the catalyst for winning--but only because of awareness and acceptance.

Further Reading:  The Power of Self-Awareness in Trading
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Capturing Value and Momentum in the Stock Market

In mid-2014 I hit upon an idea for analyzing the strength and weakness of the overall stock market. Suppose we took every stock in the New York Stock Exchange and assessed whether it gave a buy signal, a neutral signal, or a sell signal for a standard technical indicator, such as Bollinger Bands. Such a measure would capture the breadth of strength and weakness for stocks as a whole, not just for the index itself.  Would this be a useful measure?  It turns out that the measure was indeed useful and I began collecting the data daily from the Stock Charts website.

Then I hit upon another idea.  The signals from cumulated stock performance on one indicator (such as Bollinger Bands) were different from the signals from other indicators (such as RSI and Parabolic SAR).  Might it be useful to create an indicator of indicators? This would show occasions when we have strength and weakness across all stocks *and* all indicators.  

The resulting cumulative indicator measure is charted above from 2016 forward (indicator in red; SPY in blue).  Even within the considerable uptrend we've had over that period in SPY, we've seen relative periods of overbought and oversold in the measure.  Note that we currently stand at a significantly oversold level.

Going back to June of 2014, when I first began accumulating these data, next ten day returns in SPY have averaged +.01% when we have been in the top half of the distribution for the cumulative measure.  When we have been in the bottom half of the measure, next ten day returns in SPY have averaged +.63%.  This is a significant value effect.  Returns have been significantly better over a swing period when we've been oversold than when we've been overbought.  If we break down returns by quartiles, the upside returns are even more striking in the weakest (most oversold) quartile, which is where we stand now. Interestingly, when the indicators have been simultaneously strong, we've seen superior upside returns over the same ten day horizon.  

In other words, the cumulative measure is capturing both a value effect (buy when things have gotten weak) and a momentum effect (buy when there is a broad thrust higher). Returns have been subnormal if we are not broadly weak or broadly strong.

This is a nice illustration of the value of "big data" and especially the value of well-conceived unique data sets.  As a discretionary trader, I find it crucial to be quantitatively informed.  I observe that integration of discretionary and quantitative among the great majority of the successful traders and portfolio managers I work with.  Even for longer time frame active investors, timing market entries and exits with shorter-term measures that capture value and momentum can meaningfully enhance returns.

Further Reading:  The Foundation of Trading Success

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What I've Learned From My Trading Setbacks

During the summer months, I have made a concerted effort to work on my trading.  My year to date results had been well below my average returns and indeed had turned negative for the first time in recent memory.  I took that as a worthy challenge and engaged in a detailed review of what was working and what wasn't working in my trading.  I'm pleased to say that the results of this work have been quite positive, not only turning the P/L around but also instilling both a consistency of process and a consistency of results.  Below I share a few of the things I have learned in my trading that might be of help to other traders who are adapting to challenging, low volatility markets:

1)  Think in Cycles - This has been one of the two greatest changes I've made in my trading.  I stopped thinking about trends and ranges entirely, I don't focus on chart patterns, and I don't pretend to know what the "big players" are doing apart from noting volume patterns.  Instead, I am identifying dominant cycles in the market at short, medium, and longer time frame and focusing on how those cycles interact with one another.  I am focusing on cycles of volatility in the market, as well as cyclical price action.  This has been a much more effective way to participate in directional market behavior, especially when implemented in event time. The cycle framework has naturally made me more flexible as a trader:  at certain junctures in a cycle, I am a "trend" trader, following the momentum that occurs when cycles line up.  At other cycle junctures, I am a "mean reversion" trader, adjusting to the "choppiness" that occurs when cycles are not aligned.  Most of all, I've become better at focusing on dominant cycles and the ways in which volatility regimes shift the cycles that dominate.

2)  Focus on Execution - A side benefit of the cycle framework is that it allows for simultaneous tracking of short term and longer term cycles.  The short term cycles become extremely useful in entry and exit execution, allowing the trader to extract more from each trade.  I find that the difference between good entries and exits and poor ones in low volatility markets is an important component of making and losing money.  I might be trading a longer term cycle, but I will use a short term cycle to get in near a trough and exit near a peak.  This is a bit counterintuitive, as you're buying when things look worst and selling when they've been recently strong.  By giving execution a short volatility bias, it's helped me participate in directional moves that do occur.

3)  Focus on Trading Spirituality, Not Just Trading Psychology - This is subtle and is a topic not everyone is comfortable with.  Trading just doesn't work when it is *me* focused.  Me making money, me losing, me becoming successful, me working on my state of mind, etc.  Once the ego is the focus, we lose flexibility and perspective.  I of all people should know that: as a psychologist, if therapy ever becomes about me, I lose my effectiveness.  The skill of a therapist is in listening, understanding, and responding to another person.  If I'm concerned about my income, my reputation, or my feelings about the other person, I lose my focus and my impact.  In the past months, I've regrounded myself in my religion and made spiritual readings a daily part of my morning routine. The change in perspective has been dramatic. A turning point occurred when my research yielded a very good trade opportunity.  I didn't feel excitement, conviction, greed, or any of those things.  I felt grateful.  It's a big change.

I'll be doing a free online workshop this week and will be happy to amplify these ideas.  Setbacks occur for a reason; they point the way to new directions we need to take.  I hope you always have setbacks in your trading and I hope they always make you a better trader--and a better person.
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Free Group Coaching on August 9th

I've recently found group coaching sessions to be highly productive.  When a group meets with me for coaching, we can discuss the common challenges members are facing and each person can learn from the experience of others.  In recent sessions, I've outlined specific psychological and trading approaches that address those challenges, so that group members can take away concrete goals and directions for improving their trading.

I'm pleased that Futures.io is hosting a free group coaching session with me at 4:30 PM on Wednesday, August 9th.  The extended "ask me anything" format means that this will *not* be a lecture-style presentation.  Rather, attendees will be part of a group that interacts for group coaching. Participants can ask questions about their personal lives, their trading approaches, psychological challenges they face in trading, how to join trading firms, and much more.

Here is the link for registration for the event.  Space in the room is limited, so please sign up early.  And start thinking about the best questions you have regarding trading psychology.  It's a great opportunity to learn from each other's experience!

Thanks as always for the interest--

Brett