Last week I was fortunate enough to spend the day in Mayfair at the Westbury Hotel (a lovely location if you’re ever in need of one!)
The reason? Myself and Malte Kaub from the Traders Leadership Council were delivering an all- day seminar for ActivTrades on ‘Blink! The power (and the pitfalls) of instantaneous decisions in financial markets’.
We spent the day explaining the background (from Malcom Gladwell’s book Blink!) and how we could use our trading actions and results to help us evolve towards consistency in our own trading. We made people aware of the need for expertise in any environment and about the impact of cognitive and heuristic biases in our decision-making.
It was a hugely enjoyable day and the feedback we received was tremendous.
We were also filmed and interviewed by MarketTrader.TV during the day and you can watch their report on the day by following the links for Market Programme 11. (You may even see me scrabbling my way through my first TV interview!)
FXTraderPauls Trading Adventures 
April 26, 2013 at 5:21 pm
Very smooth Wallache!
A most pertinent topic. The psychology (or was it the greed/fear/revenge) was what got the better of me and that led me to stop trading.
I was thinking about my current interests in counselling and how they might be applied to the psychology of trading. I was wondering how Mindfulness might work for traders. If I was still trading then I would probably give it a go but maybe it could help reduce the internal chatter. Using Mindfulness practices traders could ‘interrupt’ those little unwanted messages we tell ourselves and stay present to the trade’s goals.
There’s another ‘externalising’ practice that one might also use but would be a way of coaching traders much like a counsellor provides the scaffolding for a client to move from one place thats seen as a problem to another more preferred place.
Anyway, just a thought. Hope all is well mate.
Regards
Ryno
Sent from my iPhone
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April 26, 2013 at 9:08 pm
Hey Ryan,
Great to hear from you! You make some good points, all of which are valid for Traders. Mindfulness is an immensely useful state to encourage for traders (and everyone else). Maybe you’ll have to practice it and then see it how it affects your own trading.
Great to hear that the counselling work is going well for you mate. Nice one!
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