THE BODHISATTVA TRADER

daily trading meditations

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The Limits Of Self Belief

At most places where I have worked as a trading coach, I have been involved in the hiring process. That has given me a fair amount of experience with interviews and interviewees.

What I can tell you is that the correlation between a candidate's self-professed passion for trading and the actual time/effort they spend understanding markets is close to zero.

The correlation between a candidate's stated confidence in their trading and trading methodology and their actual results is also about zero.

The most confident candidates I've encountered—those who target returns not achieved by even the most successful portfolio managers I work with—almost never can objectively document consistently good returns.

Candidates who come in with their actual, verifiable results, document their risk-adjusted returns, and clearly outline the limits as well as the promise of their methods are very often the ones who excel.

Promising candidates detail their trading processes, not their promise.

As outlined by recent research, it all seems as though confidence doesn't necessarily breed success. Interestingly, the self-reported writing skills of college freshmen has been going up over decades, while actual writing ability has dropped.  Students rate themselves much higher in drive to succeed now than two or three decades ago, but the average time they spend studying has dropped meaningfully.

Whereas modesty was a common norm decades ago, it is now understood that successful people have to project confidence and tremendous self-belief. This has led to a kind of ambition inflation, in which—crazily—above 75% of students rate themselves as "above average" in their drive to succeed. One wonders whether that proportion really exhibits either drive or success.

Genuine confidence comes from hard work and hard experience: putting in the time and effort to achieve mastery and getting knocked down enough times to know—deep in your soul—that you have what it takes to succeed. It springs from that "grit" factor described by Duckworth. Stated confidence without the hard work, without the experience, and without the demonstrated grit is self-promotion at best, delusion at worst.

The old pros know: it's when you think you're special that markets are most poised to prove you wrong.

Brett Steenbarger, TraderFeed March 21, 2014

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Small Steps, Large Changes

In the recent post on why changing oneself is so difficult, I drew on the work of Kegan and Lahey, who emphasize that our "competing commitments" can make us immune to change. They make the point that our "big assumptions”—our deeply-held beliefs about ourselves and the world—can stand in the way of implementing desired (and desirable) changes.

If I hold a deeply held belief that everything I do is destined for failure, then it's understandable that part of me would hold back from taking risks even though another part of me wants to take a calculated leap. If my belief is that it is selfish to make money and focus on success, it's not surprising that I won't sustain the drive to achieve in business or in markets.

Amazingly, Kegan points out, people can be told that they need to take pills or else risk death—and yet a majority won't comply with doctors' orders. That's not because they don't want to live. It's because a competing drive makes it difficult to change their behavior.

I had the honor and pleasure this afternoon of speaking with a wise rabbi from Beth Medrash Govoha in Lakewood, NJ. BMG, if you don't know about it, is a very unusual place, where students gather to study in self-organized groups and select their leaders—a place where the entire goal is learning for learning's sake.

The rabbi and I discussed change and he made an excellent point: You can look at an ideal behavior—or someone who is ideal—and that can be inspiring. But most of us are far from ideal and need to change one action at a time. If you want to be a more generous person, you start by doing one generous thing each day. No big change—just a step in the right direction.

Now it turns out that this is how people overcome many forms of anxiety, such as phobias and PTSD. They very gradually, but very steadily, face the thing they are afraid of and build one successful experience after another. Each step is not a large one, but after a while people are facing things they could never have tolerated earlier.

If you're not working on change daily, you're not working on change. And if you try to accomplish massive changes in one day, you run the risk of activating competing motivations and derailing your efforts.

When change is each day in small ways, you gradually experience yourself in new ways...and soon that experience becomes part of your identity. Most people are not immune to change. They are immune to big changes. The key to remaking yourself is to find the small steps that add to big changes without setting off alarms.

Brett Steenbarger, TraderFeed March 20, 2014

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Changing Your Self: Why Change Is So Difficult

Making changes in life—and in trading—can be scary. Every change is a voyage from the more known to the less known.  The pull of habit and safety can become a weighty anchor, grounding us when we long to soar.

This morning, a wise trader suggested to me that people don't fail to make changes because they lack motivation or because they have some need for self-sabotage. Rather, people long to make changes and still can't sustain change because they have other, hidden commitments.

When you desire to change your trading or your lifestyle or your relationships but find yourself stuck re-reading old life chapters, it is because something in those chapters pulls you back. Disrupting your overt motivation to change is a hidden motivation that has been operating in the background all along.

The trader who cannot bring themselves to take more risk has a hidden commitment, perhaps for safety. Until that hidden commitment is actively engaged and addressed, it will work at cross-purposes with the desired goal.

How do you happily integrate hidden commitments with personal goals? The first step is to become aware of those commitments—and to recognize that they are there for a (usually good) reason. In the next posts in this series, we'll examine the change process and how traders can bring their real selves closer to their ideals.

Brett Steenbarger, TraderFeed March 19, 2015

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Getting More By Giving More: Creating Positive Spirals

Overnight I received an email from my son Macrae.

Crae *never* emails. We text, we talk on the phone, but no email for this millenial dude.

But Crae emailed overnight and expressed a heartfelt interest in connecting with his siblings and their kids via Skype. His reasoning was impeccable: we have large family reunions annually, but this way we could be more connected by the time we actually connect in person.

Now you have to understand, Crae is in the middle of a challenging job hunt and has a fair amount on his plate. But out of the blue he emails and thinks about connecting with those he cares about.

It turns out that people all around the world have similar stories to tell about reaching out, caring, and giving. Check out the "stories" page on the I Like Giving site. It's all about people feeling good about doing good.

In Barbara Fredrickson's research, she found that people who practiced lovingkindness meditation daily experienced physiological benefits in terms of greater heart rate variability and psychological benefits in terms of greater well-being.

But here's the catch: practicing lovingkindness meditation actually led to a greater number of loving experiences in subsequent daily life—which then *added* to well-being and physiological benefit.

In other words, reaching out to others in thought led to reaching out in action, which led to more good feelings and more reaching out: a positive spiral.

How many traders, consumed by the challenges of their profits and losses, stay isolated in front of their screens, thus facing a negative spiral?

Instinctively, Macrae realized that to overcome personal challenge you have to look beyond personal challenge and broaden your universe. It's one of psychology's great paradoxes: When you're not getting enough from life, it's time to start giving.

Brett Steenbarger, TraderFeed March 19, 2014

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The Real Reason Traders Struggle With Discipline

If there's a single theme that dominates discussions of trading psychology, it's discipline.

Traders are routinely encouraged to control their emotions, stick to their processes, keep journals, whatever. If you lapse in your trading, it's because you're not sufficiently disciplined. Call it the puritanical approach to trading: if you don't stick to the straight and narrow, yours is a failure of willpower and commitment.

Research provides us with a different picture, however.

Willpower is a limited resource, tied to glucose levels in the brain. When we exercise willpower in one set of circumstances, we can become depleted for the next ones. Spending hours in front of a screen is an activity tailor-made to deplete willpower. Overtrading and breaking one's trading rules, from that perspective, is less about self-sabotaging and more about the limits of our capacities for self-regulation.

The good news is that willpower really is like a muscle, in that it can be built over time. Until your willpower muscles are of bodybuilding quality, however, an important trading practice is simply getting away from screens and renewing one's energy and focus. Quick exercise, a drink of lemonade, a power nap—all are ways of restoring discipline.

Ironically, it's often the most driven performers who drive their willpower into the ground, leaving themselves frustrated with themselves and their performance. It helps to think of trading more as a distance race and less as a sprint: pacing oneself is key to finishing the race.

And how far can one train one's willpower? Check out the feats of David Blaine or watch the Penn and Teller movie “Tim's Vermeer." It may well be the case that the reason passion for one's work is essential to success is that only such passion provides the gym time needed to build world class willpower muscles.

Brett Steenbarger, TraderFeed March 17, 2014

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Optimism And Trading Performance

Harry Truman defined pessimists as those who make difficulties of their opportunities, whereas optimists make opportunities of their difficulties.

It turns out that optimism is an important variable in the response to stress.

This post points to research suggesting that people who are optimistic have more stable levels of cortisol (stress hormone) than pessimists. Interestingly, optimists with high pressure jobs start their morning with higher cortisol levels. This suggests that stress hormones can produce distress—and they can get us going. High pressure might not imply high stress if we feel optimistic about what we're doing.

Here's an excellent article summarizing evidence that optimism is the most important predictor of emotional resilience: the ability to weather adversity. Summarizing the research of Barbara Fredrickson, the author makes the point that, in a positive mind state, you're more primed to notice positive things and act on them. In a negative state, you're more likely to be defensive and narrow your field of vision.

Seeing the whole market field is not just a matter of looking at more charts and indicators; it's also a function of the cognitive set with which we process the information.

The answer to successful performance is not to simply don rose-colored lenses. Optimism does not mean ignoring challenges—that is denial. Rather, an optimist finds opportunity in challenge. We can't always feel good about outcomes, but we can find meaning and value in the process of learning and developing from those outcomes.

Brett Steenbarger, TraderFeed March 16, 2014

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Embracing Your Obstacles

There will always be people in life who envy you, who resent your success, who are threatened by your accomplishments, who do what they can to sabotage your efforts.

Those include people in a workplace who place politics and "optics" over productivity and innovation. Those also include naysayers who don't dare admit the possibility of achievement because that would undermine their excuses, their failure to make a difference.

You know who your friends are when you reach a breakthrough success. Your friends are ready to celebrate with you: they share your joy. Those who cannot celebrate with you? Perhaps they're struggling with their own demons. Perhaps they are burned out and exhausted. That doesn't necessarily make them horrible people. They just can't be your friends.

It's natural to feel anger and resentment toward those who stand in your way and seek to undermine your success. I've seen people consumed by hate, plotting revenge and wishing nothing but harm on those who have hurt them. Sadly, they fall prey to the very negativity they resent in others.

But you can use liars, naysayers, and mediocrities to make you stronger. Here's a simple exercise:

When you find yourself in a negative mindset, talking to yourself in frustrated, angry, and discouraged ways, close your eyes, take a few deep breaths, and visualize the person who has been most destructive toward you—the person you most resent. Vividly imagine his or her face and imagine that he or she is saying to you the very negative things that you're saying to yourself. Feel what it's like to have that other person berating you, putting you down, telling you that you can't succeed, that you're a loser, that you're no good.

Suddenly you feel angry. You don't want to hear that kind of message from anyone—and certainly not from the person you most resent! With your eyes still closed and that image still vivid, imagine telling that other person off, standing up for yourself, and putting things in a much more constructive light. Now you're angry at the negativity, not at yourself. You're refusing to talk to yourself the way an enemy would speak to you.

Holding anger and resentment can indeed be a poison. Channeling it toward the patterns we want to change distances us from those patterns and frees us from them. We won't want to own a pattern that we associate with someone destructive. Very often, the first step in a change process is becoming so disgusted and angry with our old ways of doing things that we're propelled into new ways.

Those who have wronged you can make you stronger. In vowing to never be like them, you set a positive course for yourself and free yourself from bitterness—secure in the knowledge that living well is the best revenge.

Obstacles are like weights in a gym: when lifted, they make us stronger.

Brett Steenbarger, TraderFeed March 15, 2014

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Self-Talk: Coaching Ourselves For Trading Success

There is no more important coaching relationship than the relationship you have with yourself.

How do you talk to yourself when you start your day? When you are in losing trades or drawdowns? When you are traversing your learning curve?

Our self-talk creates our most immediate psychological environment.

Do you talk to yourself the way you would speak with a loved one or a dear friend? Do you motivate yourself? Inspire yourself? Challenge yourself? Support yourself?

You wouldn't want to work for an employer that wasn't constructive, motivating, inspiring, challenging, and supportive. Why would you settle for that as your internal workplace?

Successful traders, I find, may or may not make use of formal coaching, but they are generally good self-coaches. They know when to give themselves a kick in the pants and when to be their own best friend.

I've long defined my work as a psychologist as comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable. That's also not a bad formulation for effective self-talk: staying constructive when things go wrong and challenging ourselves when things go right. Effective self-talk is much more than empty positive thinking: it's staying constructive no matter how challenging life and markets become.

Brett Steenbarger, TraderFeed March 12, 2014

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Why Grit Is Important To Trading

Suppose two traders applied for a position at your firm. One has a history of very consistent success with a winning strategy. The other has gone through ups and downs across many markets but maintained profitability over time. Which would you be inclined to select, if that is all you knew about the candidates?

It turns out that research from Angela Duckworth and team finds that “grit"—perseverance in the face of setbacks—is a significant predictor of future success. Indeed, a study of spelling bee winners found that those who sustain the greatest deliberate practice and display the greatest grit are most likely to succeed.

The trader who has known nothing but success has little to fall back upon when markets change and fat tails create large losses. The trader who has been through winning and losing has cultivated resilience and is most likely to be emotionally prepared for losing—and prepared in his or her risk-taking.

A great formula for success: embrace setbacks and continually learn from them.

Here's a talk on why passion and perseverance outweigh IQ as a determinant of success.

Want to measure your grit? Here's a short test designed by Professor Duckworth.

Brett Steenbarger, TraderFeed March 11, 2014

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Creativity And Greatness In Trading: Perspectives From Dean Keith Simonton

One of my favorite books is Greatness: Who Makes History And Why by Professor Dean Keith Simonton. Readers unfamiliar with Simonton's work can get a taste from this article on creativity as blind variation—a Darwinian explanation of creative genius.

Simonton points out an interesting facet of creative genius: about 50% of creative ideas come from the 10% of contributors in a field who are most productive. One would think that creative geniuses bat out one creative masterpiece after another. That, Simonton's research finds, is not the case. The hit rate for the greatest geniuses—the ratio of works deemed creative masterpieces versus not masterpieces—is no higher for the geniuses than for their lesser competitors.

Those we come to know as great don't get that way by hitting home runs every time they come to the plate, so to speak. Rather, they go up to the plate more often: they produce many more works and a relatively constant proportion of those works end up becoming historical contributions. In other words, the signature characteristic of creative geniuses is prodigious productivity: they produce many more works than their peers and so are more likely to produce "mutations" that pass the test of natural selection.

What makes eminent contributors to their fields so unusually productive? Simonton observes that they are absorbed in their work and put in unusual numbers of hours doing what fascinates them. To paraphrase Seykota in the Market Wizards interview, they don't just have talent: the talent has them. This absorption in their work is a big part of what gives them the deliberate practice hours to achieve expertise.

The traders who I've seen maintain career success are also those who are absorbed by their talent. Their unusual productivity shows up in the constant flow of new ideas they generate and their continuous efforts at improvement and adaptation. One of the best tests of a trader is what they do when markets are closed. The best are absorbed in markets, whether markets are trading or not: theirs is a passion for mastery, not just a need to trade.

Brett Steenbarger, TraderFeed March 11, 2014

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Finding An Edge In Changing Markets

Many traders talk about having an "edge" in markets. Few actually measure and identify the sources of that edge.

Let's say that roads never changed: there were never detours, road closings, new roads, etc. In such a situation, one would never need a GPS to get to work. One's memory and experience would be the source of edge: the driver could follow the same course and always arrive at the destination successfully.

Now let's say roads changed routinely: the roads that were best to get to work one week might not be open or available the following week. In such a rapidly changing environment, one would lean heavily on an updated GPS. Without the guidance of the machine, it would be hit or miss as to whether one's past course would lead to the destination successfully in the future.

Now imagine a driving educator who tells you that all you need to get to work is a chart of the roads, called a map. You're very excited, because this will tell you how to get to work each day. But the map never changes when roads open and close, so the best the map can do is aid your detours. But even the detours suggested by the map might be closed...

Fortunately, there's a driving coach who tells you that your problem is that you lacked the discipline to follow your map and shows you several exercises to be a better map follower. The coach even shows you higher resolution maps to guide your commute.

But the maps never change and the roads do.

Much of my work these days consists of building better GPS systems for markets: systems that tell you when markets are changing, how they are changing, what drives the changed markets..

The GPS doesn't replace the driver; it informs the driver. The more roads change, the more important the GPS becomes.

Meanwhile, drivers keep working on their map reading...keep running into detours...keep seeking out those coaches when frustration boils over...

Brett Steenbarger, TraderFeed March 8, 2014

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Creativity, Ted Williams, And Finding Your Trading Strike Zone

We've all had the experience of perceiving little opportunity in markets.

Is there actually little opportunity, or are we in the wrong mindset to perceive opportunity that is there?

It's an important question. Successful traders study themselves, the way Ted Williams studied his hitting as a function of where the pitch fell within or around the strike zone. That study told Ted which pitches to swing at and which to let go.

As a trader, how well do you know your strike zone?

It's only after understanding your sweet spots that you can properly differentiate between markets that have little opportunity for you and occasions when you are in the wrong frame of mind to perceive and act on legitimate opportunity.

It turns out that exercise has a beneficial impact on creativity. Creativity also benefits from sleep and from positive mood.  How you manage your personal life ends up being quite important to your ability to generate promising ideas.

But all the creativity in the world won't help if you're swinging at pitches outside your strike zone.

Brett Steenbarger, TraderFeed March 8, 2014

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Sustaining The Right Interpersonal Environment

I just drew this chart on the fly. Imagine we're describing different kinds of people. The Y-axis captures whether the person predominantly talks about the world around them, ideas, and inspirations vs. talks about themselves. That Y-axis also captures a positivity dimension: many people who talk about ideas are supercharged by those ideas. Many who are self-focused come from a position of need, even/especially when they are in self-promotion mode.

The X-axis captures whether the person mostly wants things from you and is in a taking mode vs. a sharing/giving mode where there is back and forth and true reciprocity.

I've color-coded the quadrants. I find that the upper right, green quadrant is one that renews my energy. The lower left takes quite a bit of energy. A big part of success and happiness is surrounding yourself with the people and things that give you energy and minimizing the things that deplete energy. This is especially true in one's romantic life.

One reason I like the idea of creating your own trading groups is that you have the opportunity to generate an oxygenated work environment. It's amazing how much growth and learning can occur when you're around growing, learning people. It's much easier operating with the right internal, psychological environment if you're in the right interpersonal environment.

Brett Steenbarger, TraderFeed March 9, 2014

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Finding The Right Trading Mentorship

One of the themes emerging from the responses to the recent poll is the need for mentorship in trading. My experience is that this is a crying need among independent traders. At many money management firms, a junior professional with unique skills can join an existing team and add value from the start by applying those unique skills. That creates a situation where the junior professional can learn at the trader's side, both through observation and direct instruction.

The best mentorship I have observed has come from trading teams. What is typically called "trader education" can provide useful information and perspective, but rarely has the ongoing element of deliberate practice needed for expertise development. Even at trading firms mentorship can be spotty, as traders are typically compensated for their trading, not their training of others.

In my experience, Charles Kirk stands out as a dedicated mentor. He works with a subset of members to provide mentorship, but—in an inspired stroke—also requires advanced students to serve as mentors to the newbies. I have seen a similar dynamic at work at SMB, where there is considerable use of video resources on top of live mentorship from advanced students. Neither of these is free or cheap, but then again, neither is a quality education at any institution of higher learning.

Many sites in the blogosphere do a good job of education/training, even if it's not the same as trading side by side with a mentor. Two that I've mentioned recently are Brian Shannon at AlphaTrends and David Blair at Crosshairs Trader; please feel free in the comments section to suggest others.

I continue to believe that the development of virtual trading groups is a promising way to go for many enterprising independent traders. Connecting with just a few other dedicated learners and committing to sharing the learning can supercharge learning curves for all. The key is identifying the right fellow students: ones who are truly committed to be teachers as well as students. A valuable function of online communities is the opportunity to connect with like minded fellow travelers on the path of trading development.

Brett Steenbarger, TraderFeed March 4, 2014

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Stress Inoculation For Traders: Preparing For Opportunity By Embracing Loss

Credit once again to Despair for that little piece of life wisdom. Optimism is great, but becomes a problem when it overshadows realism. On the Crosshairs Trader blog, David Blair makes the point that trading is all about “misses”: being prepared to be wrong. What is important, he suggests, is envisioning—and preparing for—scenarios of both winning and losing.

Stress inoculation is a psychological technique in which a person is exposed to negative or stressful scenarios and helped to cope with those before those scenarios actually occur. This has been used in the preparation of soldiers for battle and is a very useful exercise before getting into market positions. Visualizing what could go wrong and how you'd respond to it can make the difference between acting decisively in real time vs. being caught emotionally unprepared in the headlights.

Indeed, once you figure out how to deal with a trade going south, you can even figure out where there might be opportunity in the situation. Ironically, it is by embracing the option of loss that we can free ourselves to identify the next round of opportunity.

Brett Steenbarger, TraderFeed March 3, 2014

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The Naomi Principle: Overcoming Trauma

This is a post about trauma and a unique way to overcome anxiety reactions after very stressful events. It is yet another way that I learned something about psychology from one of my animals, as we saw with Mali and Mia.

When we adopted Naomi, she was a traumatized kitten. She was visibly shaking in her cage and did not want to be petted or held. Once out of the cage, she hid under anything available and would not come out. Her level of fear was beyond anything I had seen in a cat. People clearly were a threat to her and she was always on guard.

We tried everything to encourage Naomi to interact with us: soft voices, no sudden movements, reaching out with food, you name it. My first success was getting Naomi in our bathroom and then closing the door. Without a place to hide, she went behind the bathroom curtain and shook. I slowly moved the curtain away from her and she reached out to touch the moving curtain. I moved the curtain a little more and she again went after it. We continued this game for quite a while, with me giving her a little stroke, then moving the curtain, and Naomi going after the curtain.

Interestingly, during the curtain game, she forgot to be afraid. She stopped shaking and was content to have me stroke her. This continued for a while until I picked Naomi up and put her on the bed. She was very alert and wary. I placed my hand under the cover and moved it around. She immediately pounced on the hand. I scratched the sheet under the cover and she went after the sound. The game continued for quite a while—and for a number of days—until Naomi was comfortable being in the bed with us. To this day, she enjoys going after my hand under the covers.

If you met Naomi now, you'd think she was a shy cat, but not a traumatized one. Somehow she went from reacting to people as dire threats to playing with them. How did that happen?

No amount of coaxing or bribery with food could get Naomi out of her shell. She only overcame trauma by tapping into a motivating stronger than her fear: her natural hunting instinct and curiosity. Making the environment more safe—by itself—did not break through her fear. Rather, she overcame fear by replacing it with a different emotional experience and processing the world through that new experience.

This, then, is the Naomi Principle: strong negative emotions can best be overcome by replacing them with strong positive ones. The most efficient and effective way to reprocess emotional experience is through new and powerful emotional experience.

This is why we hold funerals: the power of bonding with those closest to us can overcome the grief of having lost a loved one. Some years ago I underwent emergency surgery for a near-ruptured appendix. Interestingly, my recovery was accelerated by the fact that the person sharing my room had obvious emotional problems. I became so concerned about helping my roommate that my physical discomfort was an afterthought.

As the recent post suggested, outsized and unplanned losses can have traumatic emotional repercussions. How do you overcome those and get back to trading markets normally? The answer is to tap into positive sources of motivation that are stronger than your fear response. After difficult losses, I will double down on research and investigate new markets, new patterns. Inevitably I'll find something new, something promising. Like Naomi, I'll pounce on it: my eagerness to learn takes over. Before long, I see something so promising that I have to trade it—and I'll return to markets with fresh perspective and resolve.

The Naomi Principle recognizes that our deepest passions transform us, whether it is by tapping into our creativity, our spirituality, or our love for others. It is difficult to be traumatized and mesmerized at the same time. Bringing out the best within us goes a long way toward overcoming the worst we've been through.

Brett Steenbarger, TraderFeed March 1, 2014

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The Importance Of Psychological Risk Management

The function of risk management is not only to preserve your capital; it's also to protect your emotional well-being. Traumatic responses to market losses are the unacknowledged dark underbelly of trading. As I suggested a while ago, few in the trading industry find it in their interest to discourage overtrading. If anything, the emphasis is on apps and ubiquitous links to make it ever easier to place trades. I have yet to find newsletter writers who will pound the table and emphasize that there is little opportunity in the current market. That is not the message readers want to hear if they want to trade—and you always have to please the customer...

Here's a nice checklist that covers some of the signs of trauma that I've seen among traders. No, that trauma is rarely at the level that one would see in the full-blown post-traumatic responses of war veterans. Rather, it's more subtle, as in overreacting to small drawdowns after having taken large losses, finding one's mood rising and falling with P/L, and impaired risk-taking.

Oversizing one's positions and portfolio creates drama and drama can lead to trauma. If your trading is truly planned, with maximum losses anticipated and wholly acceptable, there should be little drama in your trading. Yes, drawdowns will be disappointing and annoying, but they will not throw you emotionally. They will not impair your next round of trades.

If you have experienced a drawdown and are finding it emotionally difficult to come back, you know that your psychological risk-taking has been excessive. Ideally, you want to be learning from your losses, not reeling from them. Risk management keeps you in the game financially, but also psychologically.

As I mentioned in the last post, Naomi (above) came to us as a traumatized kitten. She could not tolerate being near people.  I can only guess what had happened in her past. Now she is a sultry beauty who sits next to me on the kitchen island while I respond to mail and research markets. How did she make that transition? The next post will look at ways of overcoming traumatic responses—in markets, and in other areas of life.

Brett Steenbarger, TraderFeed March 1, 2014