Steenbarger: Two Self-Destructive Behaviors

Dr. Brett Steenbarger highlights two self-destructive behaviors that many traders tend to engage in:

(1) Trading addiction
(2) Impulsivity (aka Overtrading)

"Two self-destructive behaviors come to mind immediately the first I would call trading addiction people can be addicted to trading just like they can be addicted to gambling and for much of the same reason not everyone trades to make money some people are trading for thrills and excitement and those people do get in their own way."

"The other self-destructive behavior I would call impulsivity. When people make impulsive decisions because of frustration. They lose some money, the markets are not moving very much and they become frustrated and out of that frustration they feel a need to trade. In fact, traders call it overtrading. They make those impulsive decisions where they don't really have an edge in the trade and they end up 01:38 losing money as a result."

You can find Dr. Steenbarger's books on Amazon.com:

Trading Psychology 2.0: From Best Practices to Best Processes (2015)
The Daily Trading Coach: 101 Lessons for Becoming Your Own Trading Psychologist (2009) 
The Psychology of Trading: Tools and Techniques for Minding the Markets (2002) 

Peter Brandt: Mental Game Of Trading

Peter Brandt is a professional trader and he has been trading futures and forex for 42 years.

Video duration: 7m11s

Peter Brandt starts with a few pertinent questions to describe what trading is really all about.

"Have you ever had five straight losing trades, ten straight losing trades?"

"Have you ever been in a situation where you wonder whether you're ever gonna win again?"

Peter Brandt considers that there are two dangerous periods in the life of the trader:

"The two most dangerous periods that can enter into the life of the trader and how they affect you in slightly different ways but important ways and the two things are severe draw downs and the second thing is a severely profitable period of time because they also can be very dangerous."

In this video Peter shares his worst drawdown experience:

"My year worst year as a trader was 2013 in which I lost 13 percent but that was part of a drawdown that lasted 15 months. For 15 months I was in the drawdown and it was agony."

Peter Brandt has written a great book. You can find it on Amazon:

Diary of a Professional Commodity Trader: Lessons from 21 Weeks of Real Trading (2011)

Brett Steenbarger: The Importance Of Deliberate Practice In Trading

Video duration: 3m19s

Record date: August, 2018

Dr. Brett Steenbarger considers trading as a performance activity similar to sports or chess:

"What traders need to focus on is that trading is a performance activity no different from sports no different from chess acting and so in any performance activity it requires practice it requires feedback about how we're doing efforts at getting better and better and so we see successful traders going through a certain kind of learning curve where they're constantly learning from their experience changing what they do improving what they do redoing relearning always evolving."

 Brett also stresses the importance for traders to work in teams:

"One of the techniques that's worked very well with the developing traders I've worked with is to learn in teams (...) Traders will team up and learn together. They will keep a journal of their results, have a daily report card that they keep about what they've done well, what they need to improve and they share that with each other so that each trader is learning from everybody else which doubles or triples the learning."

You can find Dr. Steenbarger's books on Amazon.com:

Trading Psychology 2.0: From Best Practices to Best Processes (2015)
The Daily Trading Coach: 101 Lessons for Becoming Your Own Trading Psychologist (2009) 
The Psychology of Trading: Tools and Techniques for Minding the Markets (2002) 

Steenbarger: 3 Common Trading Problems

Dr. Brett Steenbarger identifies three important common trading problems:

(1) performance anxiety
(2) impulsivity: impulsivity occurs when we act before we think
(3) failure to adapt to changing market conditions

Video duration: 9 minutes

Record date: July, 2009

You can find Dr. Steenbarger's books on Amazon.com:

Trading Psychology 2.0: From Best Practices to Best Processes (2015)
The Daily Trading Coach: 101 Lessons for Becoming Your Own Trading Psychologist (2009) 
The Psychology of Trading: Tools and Techniques for Minding the Markets (2002)