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

---

The Three Minute Trading Coach Videos

---

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
.

Trading and Spiritual Strengths

 

12/22/2025 - Here is the most powerful motivation I've found for trading well:  generosity.  A while back, I decided to dedicate a meaningful percentage of my trading profits to support my family.  The idea is that, if I trade well, I will do good by helping those I care about.  The same dynamic would be present if a trader decided to dedicate a percentage of profits to a charity or social cause that they strongly supported and believed in.  

Now all of a sudden there's a different motivation for trading psychology.  I would never want to hurt someone or something I cared deeply about.  My desire is to live generously and see others benefit from my success.  I would feel much worse taking away something from a person I love than taking it away from myself.  That motivation to be caring and generous pushes me to make the right decisions:  take breaks when needed, manage position sizes and risk correctly, and remain patient for A+ opportunities.  It also incentivizes me to take proper risk when those good opportunities arise and make the most of my trading.

Every so often, I visualize the people I hope will benefit from my work (including my trading) and feel the love for them.  That motivates me to be generous and help them through my success.  What otherwise could be an ego-filled set of activities now becomes an opportunity to turn doing well into doing good.

=======================  

12/21/2025 - Related to the spiritual strength of acceptance (see below) is forgiveness.  If someone we care about unintentionally hurts us, we let them know and the odds are good that they will apologize.  At that point, we forgive.  Forgiveness doesn't mean ignoring a wrongdoing or blindly accepting it; it means that we're all fallible and we don't allow individual mistakes to fracture important relationships.

Well, how about our relationship with ourselves?  When we make a mistake that hurts someone--or that hurts us--we own up to that mistake and vow to not repeat it.  But then we forgive ourselves.  Just as forgiveness preserves our personal relationships during times of conflict, it preserves our relationship with ourselves.  We vow to learn from our trading mistakes--and we outline plans to put that learning into practice--and then we forgive ourselves and move forward constructively.

If we can't forgive ourselves, then of course we'll resort to revenge trading and overtrading to undo what we did wrong.  Forgiveness does not mean passively accepting falling short; it means that we support ourselves in correcting our inevitable failings.  

=====================  

12/20/2025 - Yet another spiritual strength that can fuel our trading development is a sense of wonder.  Here is an excellent recent article on the topic that cites research linking a sense of awe and wonder to improved health and emotional well-being.  Most of us are familiar with experiences of wonder and awe in nature, such as when we survey a magnificent mountain landscape.  Perceiving a wonder-full piece of artwork, taking in the sight of a newborn baby, contemplating the stars and our place in the universe--all of these can trigger a sense of awe.

So how does this relate to markets?  When we study the stock market, we cannot help but be amazed at the interplay of timeframes, rotation of funds across sectors, and rotation of money across different asset classes--all impacted by news, economic developments, and geopolitical events.  Are markets wholly predictable?  Absolutely not.  Every so often, however, we catch a glimpse of how funds are flowing and how markets are moving and we can benefit from that insight.  The experience of grasping something that complex brings a feeling of awe and wonder.  It has nothing to do with P/L and it never occurs when we're focused on ourselves and how much money we can make.  It also never occurs when we try to reduce markets to simple chart patterns or trading signals.  It's when we step back and appreciate how markets move that, like scientists immersed in the complexity of what they're studying, we can find a fresh source of motivation in grasping something truly awe-some.

==================== 

12/19/2025 - A second spiritual strength essential to trading success is acceptance.  The ability to accept setbacks is essential to learning from them.  Indeed, much of what we call "overtrading" and "revenge trading" is the result of the inability to accept prior losses.  When we accept a loss or a trading mistake, that doesn't mean that we passively tolerate it.  Rather, it means that we own it and, as noted below, accept it as a gift:  a learning lesson that can make us better.  We can't be grateful for what we learn as noted below unless we first accept it.

But there is a second way in which acceptance is key to our successful trading.  We have to be accepting of ourselves.  We have strengths.  We have weaknesses.  We are still learning.  That is OK.  Ayn Rand once noted that, "A quest for self-respect is proof of its lack".  When we accept ourselves, we accept all of ourselves--and we respect our shortcomings as well as our abilities.  We cannot trade to achieve self-respect.  Our self-respect must guide our trading.

We must become our own gurus and develop our own expertise.  The search for gurus who will give us the answers betrays our own lack of self-respect and self-acceptance.  When we accept who we are and where we're at, we're ready to learn from that and move ourselves forward.

=====================  

12/18/2025 - In these posts I'll outline a few spiritual strengths that manifest themselves as trading strengths.  The first of these is gratitude.  When we feel grateful for what we have and who we are, we experience overall well-being.  We know from the research on positive psychology that the dimensions of well-being contribute significantly to career success, success in relationships, and overall physical health.  

But how can we be grateful if we're losing money in markets or if our personal lives are becoming rocky?  If we view our setbacks as opportunities to learn and do things differently, then suddenly those negative events become tools for our growth.  We can be thankful for challenges that come our way, because those will ultimately make us better.

Similarly, when we're grateful for our successes, we avoid perfectionism and the nagging need to always do more.  Indeed, the energy of gratitude helps us build upon our successes and continually improve.  

Gratitude shapes our mindset and guides our development.

=======================

12/18/2025 - The life we plan is not always the life that's meant for us.

When I wrote the blog book Radical Renewal, I recognized that the needs of the ego were some of the greatest obstacles to successful trading.  The really great ideas and trades came from letting go of our needs and learning to listen from deep within.  As I mentioned in the conclusion to the book:  "Not so long ago, the phrase 'trading spirituality' would have been viewed as an oxymoron.  Among the traders I work with, there is growing recognition that how we lead our lives impacts how we interact with financial markets." 

There are precious few places where traders can talk openly about their religious/spiritual development and how that impacts their trading--and their lives.  We're all too cautious to bring up what we believe because we don't want to be seen to be preaching to others.  So that part of our lives gets left behind.  Which leaves us to trade with our egos.  Indeed, my desire to not allow my day to day work in life and markets interfere with my spiritual development led me to begin the Integrative Judaism site.

But what if there was a community where participants could share their spiritual experiences as readily as their trading experiences?  What if people shared best practices in their unique religious lives and explored how those become best practices throughout life, including trading?  What if there was a community of traders from diverse spiritual traditions and backgrounds, where everyone could inspire everyone else?

I have no preconception as to the shape such a community would take, how it would communicate and collaborate, etc.  The fun and adventure is to discover together.  If you are a trader and would like to explore the intersection of your work in markets and your spiritual/religious work, by all means reach out to me at steenbab at aol dot com and we can explore possibilities.  As always, I appreciate your interest and support--

Brett

Finding Trading Opportunity

 

12/17/2025 - So here's what I'm going to do at the SMB Trading Summit in March:  I'm going to ask all participants to bring their best and their worst.  That means that every person will review their trading in Q1 and identify what they did really well and how they did it--and they will identify what they did poorly and why it happened.  Then, during my talk and during the get-togethers, I will happily meet with attendees and provide coaching re: what links the best and worst and what can supercharge their performance in the second quarter.  Best of all, everyone will be able to learn from everyone else's lessons and suddenly we've created a team environment!  It takes a bit of courage to lay it all out there, but no one ever achieved greatness amidst safety.  Let's go for it!  (And, yes, I'll bring my best and worst as well!!)

======================       

12/16/2025 - One of the first things I recognized when I began working with truly successful traders and portfolio managers was that they viewed markets differently from others.  They looked at different things, gathered different information, and came up with different trade ideas and unique combinations of trade ideas.  That was my first recognition that creativity is essential to trading psychology.  The successful traders were excited about the hunt for fresh information and ideas and this energized their trading.

Recognizing this, I began to hold craft beer gatherings in Connecticut and Westchester County in New York.  I selected the brewers crafting the most unique beers and the sites serving the best selection of distinctive brews.  (DeCicco's stood out in that group!)  Traders and money managers from different firms joined me for an exchange of ideas and a selection of amazing beers.  The creativity of the brews definitely stimulated the creativity of the ideas shared and discussed.  Most important of all, the outings ensured that participants were not trapped in isolation and could see new and different things and gather fresh information and perspectives.  That was much better for the trading mindset than any self-help exercises!

When everyone shares, everyone goes away richer.  The great enemy of trading is isolation and stale ideas and perceptions.  Creativity is a team sport.

=======================  

12/15/2025 - When I first began working at large, successful hedge funds, I was surprised to learn that the top portfolio managers--ones managing hundreds of millions if not a billion or more--did not have win rates much greater than 50%.  This was particularly true in macro investing, where teams sought to exploit economic patterns across asset classes and regions of the world.  The reason they made money was that they were very good--and consistent--at risk management.  They didn't have a large number of big losing trades, and they didn't have big losing periods.  If they saw they weren't seeing things well, they were unusually quick to pull back and reassess.

But there was a second element to their success.  They were quick to recognize when a good idea was becoming a good trade and pouncing on it with large size.  It's not that they sized up favorite trades from the outset.  It's that they tracked their initial positions and observed when price/volume was going their way (or when catalysts made the good trade even better).  They then had the courage to take very large positions to exploit the opportunity--and continued to manage the risk tightly.  As a result, they had a few truly large winning trades/periods during the year, many smaller wins and losses, and very few significant losers.  Their profitability came from a relative handful of occasions when they had the perspective--and the courage--to take significant risk.

Years ago I met a very famous trader.  He was quite generous and asked if he could help my trading.  He asked me what the ratio was between the size of my largest trades and the size of my average trades.  I replied, "Maybe two or three to one".  He gave me a very direct look and said, "Consider ten to one".  I didn't fully appreciate his mentoring at the time.  But now I see it playing out with top traders at top firms.  Just as important to trading psychology as controlling negative emotions is the willingness to commit to opportunity.

====================

12/14/2025 - Courage is not something we hear a lot about in discussions of trading psychology.  To find new and different opportunity and pursue what others don't see and discuss, requires considerable courage.  To refine your strategies and use your losses to persevere and improve what you do:  that, too, takes courage.  True entrepreneurs are courageous:  they invest in their vision and accept the risks of failure.  No one has ever achieved distinctive success in a "me too" mode.

Indeed, what gives us the courage to take risk and harvest reward is the presence of a vision:  something that grabs us with its uniqueness.  When an idea feels special to us, we commit ourselves to seeing it through.  A positive psychology comes from vision, not from self-control exercises.

We've seen some amazingly rotational environments in the recent stock market.  What might look "choppy" when we view the broad market indexes suddenly becomes clearer when we examine price and volume action sector by sector, subsector by subsector.  A trend is a directional movement of an asset.  Rotation is the different directional movements of related assets.  Rates traders understand this well:  there are environments where central banks are in play and interest rate instruments trend, and there are environments where central banks are sitting on their hands but individual instruments will move relative to one another.  A key to success for a rates portfolio manager is knowing when to trade trends and when to trade relative value.

Many, many times large institutional participants are not broadly buying stocks or selling them, but are moving money from certain parts of the market to others, from certain countries to others.  Seeing the relative movement and finding opportunity in trading it requires a willingness to do something different from the crowd.  It requires a unique way of structuring trades.  It requires courage. 

Strengthening Your Trading By Leveraging Your Strengths

 

12/12/2025 - The subtitle of my book that will be coming out in late February is important:  Turning personal strengths into trading strengths.  We come to markets with talents, skills, and experience.  The challenge of developing as a trader is figuring out how to apply those to the various facets of trading process, from generating ideas to managing risk.  As noted below, your success as a trader will come from what energizes and excites you:  your passion will point the way to your purpose.  There is so, so much more to trading psychology than overcoming negative emotions.

Research in psychology suggests that there are four major sources of psychological well-being:  happiness (things we do that are enjoyable); purpose (things that we do that are meaningful); energy (things we do that build our vitality, strength, and endurance; and affection (things we do that connect us to others we care about).  The activities that provide our greatest success fire on all four of these cylinders.  Our challenge is to structure our trading--and the time of each day--to maximize the things that bring us joy, meaning, vitality, and closeness.

One of the strengths my research found is most closely associated with trading success is entrepreneurialism.  Great traders treat their trading as a start-up business, and they have the energy, enthusiasm, and passion that great entrepreneurs bring to their undertakings.  That is positive trading psychology--        

12/11/2025 - What we are passionate about reveals our strengths, and those reveal our values and our talents.  We don't have to push ourselves to get things done if what we're doing truly speaks to us.  Yes, there are always life's errands and to-do activities to get out of the way, but if we're looking forward to what comes after, it's never a problem to check the boxes.  Many beginning traders are passionate about making money, but that's different from being passionate about trading and understanding markets.  If those traders don't make money, they are left with nothing to support them emotionally.  They become frustrated, and that seeps into their trading.  When we identify our passions and our strengths, then we're in a position to creatively integrate those into our trading processes.  A great place to be psychologically is to be passionately involved and interested in markets even when we're not putting positions on.

=====================

12/10/2025 - What is the most important strength for beginning and developing traders?  Certainly high up on the list is emotional self-awareness:  the ability to recognize what you're experiencing at the time you're experiencing it.  This is useful in two regards:  1) it gives us the option to step back from trading when we're frustrated or confused, so that our trading does not become reactive; and 2) it allows us to more clearly recognize our intuition when we see patterns occurring in real time.  In other words, emotional self-awareness is what enables us to avoid poor trading that results from acting on impulse, but it also makes it possible to better perceive opportunity in real time.

Emotional self-awareness is possible to practice in any area of life where emotions can get us in trouble--or where they could help us respond to challenges constructively.  A great example of this is close relationships.  By avoiding reactive responding due to frustration, hurt, or overload, we can step back and deal with misunderstandings in a helpful way.  By recognizing our partner's needs in real time and empathizing with those, we can become better at reaching out and growing our closeness.

Everything in life that engages our emotions can be practice for emotional self awareness and control in our trading.  How we live either reinforces the best within us, or it reinforces our vulnerabilities.  Trading psychology is best worked on when it draws upon life psychology.

======================== 

12/9/2025 - What have been your best trades--and best trading periods--of 2025?  From generating the trade idea to expressing it, sizing it, and managing its risk, identify *specifically* what you did well in these best trades.  Very often, it is in analyzing our best trading that we can identify the cognitive and emotional strengths that contribute to our success.  For instance, a while back I analyzed my profitability as a function of time of day (since most of my trading was intraday).  Very early in the morning right after the NYSE open, I did poorly.  Later in the morning, I did quite well.  Around noon and midday, I was mediocre.  

What led to my success was patience and listening carefully to the market and understand who was involved and how--and *then* placing my trades.  I was successful only when listening--and I was specifically listening well during busy periods, because I could track the activity of the larger market participants.  Because of years of work as a trading coach, I understood large traders and their behavior patterns--and I was successful when I drew on that awareness.  When I simply tried to trade market patterns on my own, my results were basically random.

The point here is to dig deep into your best trading and figure out what makes you tick when you're successful.  The goal is not to be like anyone else; it's to be more and more like yourself at your best.

======================

12/9/2025 - Tomorrow's free webinar at 4:15 PM ET will focus on assessing your strengths and applying them to your trading. Registration will close by the end of the trading day today.

What are your relationship strengths?  What do you do best as a spouse, as a friend, as a family member?  How are you able to grow your connections with people at your work and in your community?  What makes you successful in collaborating with other traders?

This blog has covered the topic of teamwork and the value of being part of a trading group/pod/community.  But how can you best help others and best receive help yourself?  By drawing upon your relationship strengths, you can teach others (and thereby reinforce your own learning) and you can learn from others (and refine/broaden your trading).  

Your strengths as a person are the foundation for your growth as a trader.  

See you tomorrow!

=====================

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.    

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

    

Being Outstanding By Standing Out

 

12/7/2025 - Here is a very important concept:  Any success you experience as a trader will be a leveraging of success you've already experienced in some other area of life.  Success is a function of what you love (your passions) and what you're good at (your talents).  The strengths that have made you successful in the past are what you have to draw upon to find success in markets.

Now you understand why it is so damaging to look for gurus to follow for your market success.  There are many would-be gurus out there and they're in the social media business of gathering followers.  But following them almost certainly takes you away from yourself.  A true mentor or coach would get to know you and what has made you successful and then help you leverage that to find success in markets.  

There's a saying, "If you find the Buddha on the road, kill him".  The real Buddha is something that can only be found within you.  Anyone claiming to be your source of enlightenment is by definition false.

What are *your* strengths; *your* sources of meaning, passion, and success?  How can you succeed in trading by being more of who you already are when you're at your best?  These are a few of the topics we'll explore in Wednesday's webinar.  Details for signing up are in bold text below.  Thanks for your interest!

======================

12/7/2025 - I've participated in recruitment/hiring at several large hedge funds and with quite a few hedge fund teams.  The number one predictor of a good hire (and an eventual successful trader) is my reaction to their description of their trading processes.  If I am surprised by the uniqueness of what I'm hearing and am struck by the innovation of what I'm hearing, that is a great predictor of success.  Great traders do things greatly, and that means going beyond the herd.  

But I'm not sure we can do things greatly if we don't understand the strengths that make up our potential greatness.  What makes us different, special, unique, and successful?  Can we truly build something great if we spend all of our time fretting about shortcomings and problems?

In the upcoming Zoom webinar on Wednesday at 4:15 PM (see below), we'll discuss strengths and I'll share a questionnaire that helps us identify the sources of our greatness.  If our trading is not a reflection of what we do distinctively, we'll never achieve distinctive trading results.  

Hope to see you on Wednesday!

===================

12/5/2025 - What makes us stand out--and what makes us outstanding--are the strengths we bring to our relationships, our work, and our personal pursuits.  Research in positive psychology tells us that utilizing our strengths is what makes us flourish, providing us with energy, enthusiasm, and fulfillment.  Unfortunately, many times we're so caught up in our challenges and problems that we lose sight of where our strengths actually lie.  Too, we might know what provides us with joy, meaning, and purpose, but we can't figure out how to tap into those things in our trading.

On Wednesday (December 10th) at 4:15 PM ET (after the NYSE close), I will conduct a Zoom webinar on the topic of strengths.  I'll share an online questionnaire from research I've conducted at hedge funds and will help you score it and interpret and apply the results--to life and to trading.

The webinar is free and I won't be trying to sell you any coaching services.  Email me at steenbab at aol dot com and I'll send the Zoom link; registration will be limited.

Let's go!

====================

12/4/2025 - So here's what I'm investigating in my recent research:  

We can identify market breadth by tracking the number of stocks in an index that are trading above various moving averages:  5 day, 10 day, 20 day, etc.  We can also identify breadth within sectors by tracking the number of stocks in that sector trading above various moving averages.  All good:  we can see if the market is stretched and if individual sectors within the market are stretched.  That allows us to backtest how the market and sectors have behaved in those stretched conditions.

Here's the new part:  What do we learn from the variability of sector breadth?  In other words, what does it tell us when sectors have very similar breadth and when their breadth is quite different at a given point in time?  Might that variability be one way of quantifying rotational environments (sectors with highly variable breadth) versus trending ones (sectors with very similar breadth)?  Might the trending/rotational environment be an important variable in forecasting future price movement?

I have more research to do, and it's looking like differentiating rotational environments will be promising: how the market is rotating may be just as important as the fact that it is rotating.  The point here is that when we investigate new things and look at markets in new ways, we rejuvenate our trading.

When we team up with others who explore unique ways of looking at markets, we keep each other energized and engaged--and that is the best environment of all for our trading psychology.  

======================  

12/3/2025 - Successful traders ask unique questions, and that helps them generate new edges in their trading.  When I left the recent team meeting, I found myself pondering the cyclical up-and-down behavior of market indexes and wondering if shifting variability in the action of various index components is a marker for cyclical shifts.  For example, do we see more dispersion of price behavior in the components of the NYSE as we move from bull trends to topping behaviors to reversals to bottoming action?  Of course, this leads to all sorts of experimentation with measuring dispersion.  Do we do that by tracking the individual stocks?  The sectors and subsectors within the index?  How much dispersion and lack of dispersion is significant in signaling trend shifts?

I've already spent hours on the research and will spend a good amount of weekend time on it as well.  What is significant with respect to trading psychology is that asking fresh questions has recharged my interest in trading.  I find myself excited each day to see how dispersion and market behavior unfold in real time.  The excitement comes, not from P/L and certainly not from doing little psychological and stress management exercises, but from innovation and the joy of participating in a process of discovery.

When I read the journals of traders, I find some of them constructive and informative.  Rarely do I find them inspiring.  Rarely do I find traders truly excited about building and doing new things.  It's not the presence of stress and uncertainty that destroys traders; it's the absence of the joy of discovery and innovation.

====================== 

12/2/2025 - What goes into your trading that stands out?  That is truly insightful and unique?  What do you do in markets that is special?  Too often, traders look for easy answers by following "gurus" and end up doing nothing distinctive themselves.  Is this a formula for success in any area of life?  If you aren't doing something special in your trading, why would you achieve special results?  

Innovation, creativity, the ability to perceive unique opportunity:  those make for success in any entrepreneurial effort.  When we see and do unique and special things, our experience is exciting, meaningful, and purposeful.  Our efforts give us energy.  We can work on our psychology all we want, but if we're not innovating and inspiring ourselves by finding new and better opportunities, then all we'll accomplish is being more relaxed and level-headed in our mediocrity.

Those who achieve outstanding results do so by standing out, even in the smallest details of their work.  I recently met with a group of successful traders and listened to what they think about and how they think.  I went away with my head spinning, fresh with new ideas to research and pursue.  The best mentors stimulate us to ask questions we've never asked before.  

More to come...