Читать книгу Trading Psychology 2.0 - Steenbarger Brett N. - Страница 5

Successful efforts to master markets lead us down paths of self-mastery. This book is one guide to those paths.

Market participants have traditionally defined self-mastery as discipline– controlling the emotions that all too often distort information processing and trigger impulsive behavior. To be sure, discipline is required for any great undertaking, whether it is pursuing an Olympic medal, a business startup, or a medical breakthrough. But discipline, while necessary for success, is never sufficient. Discipline does not substitute for skill, talent, and insight. Strict, disciplined adherence to mediocre plans can only lock in mediocre results. If it were otherwise, there would be no losing automated trading systems.

I've followed and traded markets since the late 1970s. During the past decade, I have served as a full-time performance coach at two trading firms – Kingstree Trading in Chicago and Tudor Investment Corp. in Greenwich, Connecticut – and worked with many other trading organizations on a consultative basis. Through the TraderFeed blog and three prior trading books, I've had the honor of interacting with thousands of traders around the world. If there's one thing this whirlwind of experience has taught me, it's that there is far more to market mastery than controlling emotions and impulses. Sustained success requires the cultivation of a host of positive performance elements: creativity, productivity, adaptation to change, and psychological well-being. The good news is that recent research in psychology and related fields has profoundly deepened our understanding of these contributors to human performance. The bad news is that most of us in the money management world, immersed in the day-to-day challenges of keeping up with news flows and market movements, have little opportunity to sift through and apply this knowledge. As a consequence, we tend to work hard, but not smart. From the organization of our daily routines to our reviews of performance, we rarely optimize learning, independent thought, and productivity.

The unfortunate tendency to substitute quantity of effort for quality ensures that we will face a yawning gap between our real and ideal selves: between who we are and who we're capable of becoming. Trading Psychology 2.0 seeks to bridge that gap by breaking trading success down to four essential processes. In the coming pages, you will learn a simple ABCD:

A How to dynamically Adapt to changing market conditions

B How to identify and Build on your distinctive trading strengths

C How to Cultivate creative processes and generate fresh market perspectives

D How to Develop best practices that help you sustain productivity and effectiveness in your work routines

Most of all, this book is about taking best practices – the ingredients of your trading success – and weaving them into best processes. The goal is not to change you but to help you more consistently tap into the drivers of your success.

In hindsight, it's not difficult to see that Trading Psychology 2.0 is a natural extension of my previous books. The first of these, The Psychology of Trading, focused on the emotional problems faced by traders and how these mirror common life challenges. It introduced a solution-focused framework to trading: identifying the patterns that underlie our success and becoming more consistent in enacting those. My second book, Enhancing Trader Performance, adopted a developmental view of trading success, emphasizing expertise development as an ongoing process of deliberate practice that matches skills, talents, and challenges. An important implication of that work was that there are many forms of trading, each requiring unique skills and learning processes. I continue to find that many of the emotional problems faced by developing traders are the result of bolting generic learning processes onto very specific performance domains, creating frustration and suboptimal performance. Finally, my most recent text, The Daily Trading Coach, created a cookbook of psychological techniques and approaches to help traders overcome common performance challenges. An overarching theme of that book is that a primary goal of trading psychology is self-coaching. By becoming better self-observers and catching best and worst practices as they occur, we can overcome market noise with enhanced self-determination.

Trading Psychology 2.0 differs from these books in one key respect: It breaks trading success down into those four ABCD processes and explores research-based ways of maximizing them in our personal and professional lives. The book's aim is to move trading psychology beyond the usual focus on discipline, emotional control, and trading one's plans to the broader context of sustaining peak performance. Most important, the book aims to nudge traders toward what might be called meta-processes: robust routines for changing our routines and adapting trading to ever-changing market conditions.

It is not enough to find an “edge” in financial markets; as any tech entrepreneur can attest, competitive advantages are perishable commodities. Those who sustain success continually renew themselves, uncovering fresh sources of competitive advantage. That requires processes for assessing and challenging our most basic assumptions and practices. It takes a good trader to create success, a great one to recreate it. Nothing is quite as difficult – and rewarding – as letting go of what once worked, returning to the humble status of student, and arising phoenix-like from performance ashes.

What makes any performance domain worthy is that none of us will ever completely master it. There is always room for improvement in dance or golf; chess players, brewmasters, woodworkers, and racecar teams can always hone their craft. For that reason, performance activities are the consummate psychological crucible, moving us ever closer to self-mastery. This is particularly the case with trading, where the rules of the game continually evolve. What other field demands the utmost of conviction and risk-taking, but also the greatest of flexibility and prudence? In adapting to change, we embrace change, we become change. We cannot rest on individual best practices; we need best processes that yield ever-improved practice. There will always be a gap between real and ideal: between who we are and who we can become. If this book can be a resource in bridging your gap, it truly will have fulfilled its aim.

Of course, no performance journey is traveled solo. Life is a team sport and success crucially depends on surrounding yourself with the right teammates. I owe many debts of gratitude to colleagues at Graham Capital, Tudor Investment Corp., Kingstree Trading, and SMB Capital; the ever-resourceful editorial staff at Wiley; Victor Niederhoffer and the Spec Listers; and Howard Lindzon and the supportive crew at Stock Twits. The book wouldn't be possible without the many talented traders who contributed best practices and inspired the case studies. As in my prior books, the names and identities of the traders in those case studies have been changed to preserve privacy, but I want my debt to the many fine people I work with to be as publicly voiced as possible. The greatest debt, however, is to the family that has offered constant love and support through all the not-so-constant financial markets: Debi, Steve, Laura, Devon, and Macrae; their families; and most of all to my wife, Margie. She, not markets, has been the love of my life, and that has kept me sane through many ups and downs in the business. Finally, to the many readers of the TraderFeed blog a hearty thank-you for your support and all you've taught me. I think you'll find many of those lessons in the pages that follow.