BarroMetrics Views: Trading and Stress

Trading successfully is as much a matter of feeling as it is about reason and logic.One of the major reasons I like Denise Shull’s material is because she brings to the trading arena information that few others talk about.

D’Amasio and others have shown that we make our best decisions when our logic and emotions are in concert. We also know that stress that results in the ‘flight, flight or freeze’ response is the enemy of optimal trading results.

In this blog, I’d like to consider some ways of dealing with stress.

First off what is stress? It’s the feeling we experience which says: “You can’t cope! Disaster is here or just around the corner!”. At this point, the 3F response is well in control and we will act in the way that creates the results of  a self-fulfilling prophecy.

It seems to me that a fundamental tool to combating stress is self-awareness: knowing our values,  emotional strengths and weaknesses. I am a big believer of the idea through observation of the results our behaviour brings, and comparing the results with our stated outcomes (Vision and Goals), we catch the ‘tail  of the rat’ that leads us to identify our default futures - the subconscious and automatic responses that may no longer be serving us.

So, our first lines of defense are our the statements of Visions and Goals, and the review of actions to assess whether they lead to or away from the statements. In the process we discover otherwise unknown patterns of thought and behaviour that impede our own success.

The second line is preparation - and here I find visualization of immense help. A visualization practice run that utilizes sight, sound, hearing and feeling creates the neural pathways for the proposed behaviour.  Consequently when the time comes to ‘do’ the action, we’ll find it much easier.

Refer this blog post to a friend or colleague…