Category: Psychology

If you suspect that you may suffer in your trading style from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), complete the self-test form, by printing the text out. Simply circle either yes or no in answer to the questions. Once completed, show the results to your Doctor.

Post Traumatic Disorder Self-Test

Yes No Have you experienced or witnessed a life-threatening event that caused intense fear, helplessness or horror?
Do you re-experience the event in at least one of the following ways?
Yes No Repeated, distressing memories and/or dreams?
Yes No Acting or feeling as if the event was happening again? (flashbacks or re-living it).
Yes No Intense physical and/or emotional distress when you are exposed to things that remind you of the event?
Yes No Do you avoid reminders of the event and feel numb, compared to the way you felt before?
Yes No Do you avoid thoughts, feelings and conversations about the event?
Yes No Do you avoid activities, places or people who remind you of it?
Yes No Have you blanked on parts of the detail?
Yes No Are you losing interest in significant activities in your life?
Yes No Are you feeling detached from other people?
Yes No Do you feel as if your range of emotions is restricted?
Yes No Do you feel as if your future is diminished in terms of marriage, children or a normal life span?

Are you troubled by two or more of the following:
Yes No Problems sleeping?
Yes No Irritability or outbursts of anger?
Yes No Problems concentrating?
Yes No Feeling ‘on-guard’?
Yes No An exaggerated startle response?

Having more than one illness at the same time can make it difficult to diagnose and treat the different conditions. Illness that sometimes complicate an anxiety disorder include depression and substance abuse. With this in mind, please take a moment to answer the following:

Yes No Have you experienced changes in sleeping or eating habits?

More days than not, do you feel:
Yes No Sad or Depressed?
Yes No Disinterested in life?
Yes No Worthless or guilty?

During the last year, has the use of alcohol or drugs:
Yes No Resulted in your failure to fulfill responsibilities with work, school or family?
Yes No Placed you in a dangerous situation, such as driving a car under the influence?
Yes No Been responsible for you being arrested?
Yes No Continued despite causing problems for you and your loved ones?

Reference: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, Washington DC, American Psychiatric Association.

Also i feel that traders should look into the nutritional deficiencies in the industrialized world along with whatever else they are doing for their PTSD. Omega oils, hyaluronic acid, collagen, phosphatydlyserine are largely gone from the diet and they are all brain nutrients. Load up on those, you will notice differences in just days and over a few months you will be a lot better off. The PTSD thing is way magnified if your brain is not healthy IMO.

Do you trade to:

make money or
to make maximum profit?

Interesting.
After a lot of discussions about this topic my friends answered, its 2:1 in favor of making money vs. maximizing profit. I think the responses reveal a mental status not oriented to win by default.

So, who will explain all the fierce discussions regarding “superior” trading styles or techniques, as well as the self-deprecating topics about leaving money on the table, getting stopped out, etc?

Of course to answer that question you need to understand the subtle difference between making money and maximizing profit!

My guess, many traders are not being honest with themselves…

Whether you are just starting out or have recently experienced a major loss, Forex trading fears can strike the best of us. While it is healthy to reserve some caution when making any kind of investment, true fear can cause you to pass up some lucrative moneymaking opportunities. Below are five ways to overcome your fright and become a zen-like Forex master.

Don’t Stop Trading
The best way to fight your fears is to face them and investing is no different. The longer you wait before you trade again, the harder it is to get back in the saddle.

Start Small
If you are hesitant about risking your money on a big trade, then you need to take baby steps. Trade small in micro lots until you feel a little more comfortable, and then move onto larger investments.

Always Trade With a Stop.
This is practical advice and will keep you from losing any more than you are comfortable with. Granted, no one wants to lose any money, but you can set your daily limit with a stop.

Back Up Every Move With Research
You should be trading with a strategy rather than using your emotions to make decisions. Although sticking to a strategy may not guarantee you money, it will increase your odds of earning a profit and restore your confidence.

Accept the Inevitability of Loss
Whether you are trading as a hobby or a profession, you will eventually lose money. Nothing is certain in the Forex market and there aren\’t any secrets to exploit for your advantage. Therefore, you need to accept the fact that every winning streak will come to an end.

Unless you adopt a more stoic approach to your trading, you will be wrought with anxiety. If Forex trading is truly that agonizing for you, even after heeding the above advice, then perhaps it is time to find a new way to invest your money. However, most bouts of Forex fear are temporary and due to inexperience or a recent loss. By staying diligent and sensible with your trades, you should be back to a healthy state of mind in no time.

By-line:
Heather Johnson is a freelance finance and economics writer, as well as a regular contributor for CurrencyTrading.net, a site for currency trading and forex trading information. Heather welcomes comments and freelancing job inquiries at her email address heatherjohnson2323@gmail.com

Trading forex can give you wealth beyond your imagination…
Just look around you…
Don’t give up

…riches are just around the corner…
…keep on fighting…
…until your last fricken breath you take…
…first you gotta believe it…
…then imagine it…
…then put it into action…
…place greed first…
…I simply adore all of you…

4 Foreign Forex Terms (Helpfully Translated from “Fed-Speak” into English)

When Ben Bernanke, the current Chairman of the US Federal Reserve Bank, makes a statement on behalf of the Fed, it often seems as if he is speaking a foreign tongue. In fact, he learned this language at the knee of one of its creators, former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan. The cryptic prose employed by Greenspan throughout his extended reign over America`s central bank often perplexed the general public, and this style has been deftly mimicked by Mr. Bernanke during the initial phase of his period in office. As this style doesn`t seem to be going anywhere (and because Rosetta Stone hasn`t come out with a system to learn Fed-Speak yet), we must take the first steps towards understanding this idiom on our own. Here then are four commonly used and commonly misunderstood terms used by the Fed and their corresponding meanings, usefully translated into simple English.

1. “Unit Labor Costs”
Though this phrase might seem unfamiliar to most everyday investors, it is actually one of the more straightforward used by the Fed and is relatively uncopmlicated to parse. In simple terms, unit labor costs represent the labor costs required to produce a single output unit. This is by necessity a rather vague term, as neither the amount of output nor the type of good or service is specified. The term is not intended to be of much practical use, so anytime that the Fed employs it, you are better served to look at the conceptual argument that is being made. This phrase is most often employed when the Fed is addressing the issue of inflation, which is directly affected by labor costs.

2. “Aggregate Demand”
At its most basic level, monetary policy is essentially determined using an equation that contains only two variables: aggregate supply and aggregate demand. Again, this is a fairly conceptual term as it is unfeasible to quantify the aggregate demand of an entire economy. However, an examination of both sides of this equation in basic terms can provide insight into key economic indicators. Again, this term is often employed by the Fed when commenting on the rate of inflation. When aggregate demand increases relative to aggregate supply, prices inevitably rise. Therefore, escalation in aggregate demand can lead to accelerated inflation rates, while a decrease in aggregate demand can suppress inflation.

3. “Firming” or “Tightening”
Firming and tightening are simply affected terms employed by the Fed when they don`t want to use straightforward terminology to identify a hike in interest rates. When interest rates are high, both individual consumers and businesses are less apt to borrow money, which generally slows the economy. The opposite is true when rates are low. Therefore, the phrase “loose” money policy has come to be closely associated with low interest rate and a money policy described as “tight” is now basically synonymous with high interest rates.

4. “Resource Utilization”
Resource utilization is one of the most inherently esoteric phrase that you will ever hear employed by the Fed, but an examination of the terms reveals that the concept is actually rather simple and straightforward. The phrase refers to the literal utilization of capital and labor that are required to produce goods and services. The Fed prefers to see a bit of an excess in available inputs, meaning that the economy is not performing at full capacity. While this results in a certain amount of waste, it also alleviates pressure on prices. This is clearly at odds to how all but the most incompetent executives want to have their businesses run, which is as efficiently as possible. The Fed, however, tends to fret when factories are operating at or near full production and unemployment is low, maxing out resource utilization. When this occurs, the Fed frets, supply often becomes relatively low compared to demand, and skyrocketing prices ensue.

By-line:
Heather Johnson is a freelance finance and economics writer, as well as a regular contributor for CurrencyTrading.net, a site for currency trading and forex trading information. Heather welcomes comments and freelancing job inquiries at her email address heatherjohnson2323@gmail.com

Forex is all about how to hit the next ball correctly rather than worrying about something of a distant future. The next ball may be for 2 pips or 20 pips or 200 pips or 500 pips depending on a trader?s style.

Anything is possible in Forex.

I am useless as a daytrader. Corrections may take days or longer to complete.

Good quality info is everything in this game.

Bottom picking in the Usd/Jpy is the Mother of all risky trades.

We learn how to trade till we stop trading and we learn from each other everyday. That is the beauty of trading and life in general.

Do not worry about what market will do. Just worry about what you will do when market reaches your “pain point” or “happy point”. You will have an easier life as a trader that way.

Forex players can operate quietly, but they cannot hide their moves in those charts.

Good morning. Yes, no liquidity and no conviction by players make the market look like a vagrant loitering in his usual area. Good forecasts and trades.

Good sleep is essential for good trading but most of the traders I know of seem to sleep with one eye open.

I had a problem - closing my winners too soon. The problem here is that you are trading the “price” and not “order flow”. I actually had the same problem, and after some mentorship, i learned that i was trading the “price”and not the “order flow”. You are exiting positions simply because of a price/target is getting printed, and not because the order flow is changing.

Try to focus on the order flow (example: if its a bull market, try to find signals that tell you that the order flow is starting to go bid, then exit, dont just exit because its hitting a certain price number).

Great article. This is the paragraph that caught my attention:

“Cloninger has trained rats and mice in mazes to have persistence by carefully not rewarding them when they get to the finish. “The key is intermittent reinforcement,” says Cloninger. The brain has to learn that frustrating spells can be worked through. A person who grows up getting too frequent rewards will not have persistence, because they’ll quit when the rewards disappear.”

This makes me think of the records of many great performers, whether traders or athletes such as Roger Federer or Michael Jordan. They all had to confront massive frustration, and win that battle first before moving on to new heights. Roger spent 3 years losing match after match, many of them in the first round before he dug his heels in, made a 180 turn in his attitude (he used to yell, throw his racket like many, even pros, still do today) and developed his groove. MJ had to overcome the negative praise of his coach who told him he wasn’t good enough for his high school team to go practice countless hoops in his yard. Michael Marcus, or Mark Cook both had to blow up and learn to deal with failure before etching the neural paths in their brains that would allow them to keep their risk small and stay in the game long enough to reap the profits.

I think this is what it comes down to: some traders will learn to deal with failure and others won’t. It seems that success is really contingent on the trader’s response when he is in that dark pit of a drawdown, he either fights back and develops proper trading/mental skills or gives up immediately/slowly. The brain has to learn that frustrating spells can be worked through and I think it takes time for those neural paths to be etched in. No wonder pros usually say it took them years before things started to click. But that’s why they’re pros, they had the risk control skills and persistence to keep at it through the learning curve. The majority cannot do this.

Those coming from a ’smart’ reputation and prior success in previous businesses are particularly disadvantaged, because of the reasons stated in the article.