The Psychology of Trading Read online

  Perhaps this is why the immortals do not write for self-aggrandizement and why charlatans are so quick to credit themselves and deny credit to others. The greats recognize the fountainhead of their inspirations. Their dominant emotion is the humility of gratitude, of having been the recipient of gifts that can never be fully repaid.

  In this state of humility, I also gained a unique perspective on your own book. My first reading of The Education of a Speculator [John Wiley, 1997] focused on its personal story: the formative experiences that contributed to success in the markets. Upon rereading, I saw the book in a different light: as a tribute to those moral and character influences—particularly those of your father—that made for success as a human being. After this vacation, however, a wholly new reading became possible. I could appreciate your book as a broader tribute to the exemplars in your life. It is a testimonial and a statement of thanks to Arthur Niederhoffer, Jack Barnaby, Tom Wiswell, Francis Galton, and those many others who gave more than can ever be wholly repaid.

  And yet, in writing a book of tribute, perhaps we do repay at least some measure of indebtedness. Even the great ones die. Their voices are stilled, and subsequent generations never gain the privilege of sitting by their sides and hearing their words. My children will never directly encounter Artie or Galton and absorb their personal examples. Through a book of tribute, however, exemplary individuals gain a degree of personal immortality. As long as the book graces the shelves of libraries and bookstores, there is hope that the lessons taught by the greats will not be lost, that their examples can live well beyond their years.

  This is the beauty of writing a book: In telling the stories of heroes, we contribute to their immortality and immeasurably enrich generations to come. Before I went on this vacation, I vowed to write a book that informed, entertained, and enriched. Now, however, I have set the bar far higher. I will only be satisfied with a work that does justice to those who have inspired the best within me.

  As I sit here now, writing early in the morning, it strikes me with sincerity and gratitude that the only way to stand on the shoulders of giants is to hoist them on our own.

  Sincerely,

  Brett

  Trading, indeed, is a microcosm of life. If you long to develop yourself, as a person and as a trader, search high and low for the immortals. Find the heroes and the heroines who have lived their lives with passion, nourishing all who have come in contact with them. Discover those who have lived, breathed, and studied the markets, enriching the world with their ideas. Then hoist them on your shoulders, remaining ever mindful of your debt. You will be surprised how high you stand, how far you can see.

  B. N. S.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  The Woman Who Could Not Love

  Manufacturing Cars and Success

  Sue, the Survivor

  Finding Solutions amidst Problems

  Accelerating Change by Doing What Comes Unnaturally

  Going against the Flow with Sue

  Finding Solutions

  The Fearless Trading Inventory

  An Inventory of Solutions

  Enacting the Solutions

  Conclusion

  Chapter Two

  The Student Who Wouldn't Study

  Ken, the Failure

  Diversification in Life and Markets

  The Psychology of Paralysis

  Decisions and Uncertainty

  Altering the Risk-Reward Equation

  Shifting Risks and Rewards in Trading

  Music, Moods, and Pivot Chords

  Tom's Pivot Chord

  Breaking Routines

  Breaking the Routines of Trading

  Conclusion

  Chapter Three

  The Woolworth Man

  The Interview from Hell

  Observing Patterns

  Invoking the Internal Observer

  Rule-Governed Trading

  Taking Your Emotional Temperature

  Inoculating Yourself against Stress

  Effort and Emotional Change

  The Trader as Addict: Breaking Stops

  Becoming More Rule-Governed in Trading

  Using Emotion to Make the Contrary Move

  Conclusion

  Chapter Four

  Traders Out of Their Minds

  The World's Most Powerful Glasses

  Phil, the Addicted Trader

  Exploring the Dual Mind

  The Mind of the Trader

  Solution-Focused Money Management

  A Trade from the Couch

  Shifting Selves in Trading

  Stationarity and the Moods of the Markets

  Conclusion

  Chapter Five

  Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary

  Getting inside Mary's Journal

  Afflicting the Comfort Zone

  Repeating Patterns

  Changing Repetitive Patterns

  Doing What Comes Unnaturally

  Resisting What Is Best for You

  Creating Powerful Emotional Experiences in Trading

  Conclusion

  Chapter Six

  The Evil Spiders

  Communication and Metacommunication

  Metacommunications in Trading

  The Communications of Traders' Bodies

  The Mind beneath the Human Mind

  Knowing More than You Know: Implicit Learning

  Minding the Complexity of the Markets

  Conclusion

  Chapter Seven

  The Big Man beneath the Bed

  Big, Silent Walt

  Creating Powerful New Experiences

  Regression: The Mind's Time Travel

  Entering the Time Portal

  When Your Gears Remain Locked

  Novelty: The Key to Change

  Novelty in Therapy: Making Translations

  The Role of Consolidation in Change

  Walt's Consolidation

  Conclusion

  Chapter Eight

  Buried Alive!

  The Art of Timing in Therapy and Trading

  Markers and the Markets

  Markers with the NYSE TICK

  The Power of Dreams

  Dreams as Emotional Communications

  Repetitive Dreams: The Themes of Life

  Hypnosis: Accessing Other Minds

  The Waking Trance: Daydreams

  Conclusion

  Chapter Nine

  Trance-Forming the Mindscape

  The Radio Dial of Consciousness

  Changing Behavior by Changing Contexts

  Trauma and the Radio Dial

  Dr. Brett Receives Strange Communications

  Mind Experiments

  Mapping the Mindscape

  Experiments with Trading

  Conclusion

  Chapter Ten

  The Coat in the Closet

  Stopping the Morning Frenzy

  Stopping on the Way to New York

  Knowing More than We Know We Know

  Joan and Her Inner Voices

  Repairing Multiplicity

  Triggers

  Joan's Lullaby Therapy

  When Efforts at Change Fail

  Conclusion

  Chapter Eleven

  Pinball Wizardry

  Creating Models of the World

  Modeling Yourself as a Trader

  Playing Market Pinball

  Contrary Trading: Fading the Maps of Traders

  Internal Maps and Inkblots

  Maps and the Language Traders Use

  Conclusion

  Chapter Twelve

  A Session at Gunpoint

  Jack, Man in Crisis

  Facing Life's Challenge

  When the Game Is on the Line

  The Edge in Crisis Counseling

  Dr. Brett's Trading Crisis

  Creating Change by Creating New Roles

  Leaps and Tempos

  Conclusion

  Chapter Thirteen

  A Dose of Profanity


  Understanding Your Relationship with Yourself

  Dave, the Narcissist

  Regression and Multiplicity

  Narcissism and Regression

  The States of Daily Experience

  Effort and Partial Consciousness

  Achieving a Novel Mind Frame

  Changing the Posture of Mind

  Conclusion

  Chapter Fourteen

  Trading from the Couch

  Propositions for Trading Psychology

  Changing Your Mind: Applying the Principles

  Matching Your Trading to Your Personality

  The Great Frontier: Developing Trading Expertise

  Implications of the Implicit Learning Research

  Greatness and the Acquisition of Expertise

  Etching the Brain

  The Quest for Market Mastery

  Bibliography

  Chapter One

  The Woman Who Could Not Love

  Solutions are the patterns we enact between problems.

  I suppose it's only natural that you would expect a book on the psychology of trading to begin with a description of the various emotional afflictions experienced by traders. In this chapter, however, we are going to approach the topic from a different angle. We are going to adopt what is known as a "solution focus" to trading and explore how many of the answers to our problems are already occurring. If you have a template for identifying and understanding what you are already doing right, in life and in the markets, you are well on the way to creating a model for your future success.

  MANUFACTURING CARS AND SUCCESS

  Many years ago, I read something in a management text that made a lasting impression. At that time, Japanese car manufacturers were making distinct headway in their competition with their U.S. counterparts. On both price and quality, the Japanese seemed to be winning the race.

  The account I read described the difference in the management approaches of the U.S. and Japanese manufacturers. The U.S. automobile manufacturers, it appeared, were very concerned about the possibility of breakdowns on the assembly line. To avoid the disruptive effects of a breakdown, they kept the line moving sufficiently slowly to prevent any glitch from bringing operations to a halt.

  The Japanese manufacturers adopted a radically different approach. When manufacturing was proceeding efficiently, they would speed up the line until a breakdown occurred. Then they would intensively study the source of the breakdown and institute preventive measures. Over time, they identified many weak links in the production process and improved both their efficiency and their quality.

  The U.S. manufacturers looked on breakdowns as failures and on failures as outcomes to be avoided. The Japanese looked at production problems as opportunities for learning and improvement. These were two philosophies of management and two approaches to life, with very different sets of results.

  The lesson applies to trading as well as to manufacturing: Successful market participants seek out their weaknesses and learn when they fail. Unsuccessful ones avoid their shortcomings and, thus, fail to learn.

  SUE, THE SURVIVOR

  When Sue* came to my office, I knew immediately that she was not the typical Upstate New York medical student. She looked and sounded like a person from the inner city. As we became acquainted, I learned that, indeed, she was exactly as she appeared. From the clothes she wore to her street English, Sue was a student from the 'hood. Little did I know that she was to become one of the most inspiring individuals I have had the honor of assisting. She also taught me a great deal about the power of the solution focus.

  At the time of our first meeting, Sue was distraught. Her school performance was solid, befitting a young lady who had graduated with honors from a highly competitive undergraduate institution. Nevertheless, she told me in no uncertain terms that she was thinking of withdrawing from school. Her grandmother had died a few months earlier, she informed me through tears, and she could not handle that.

  Sue, it turned out, had grown up essentially without parents. Her father left the family when she was several months old, and she never knew him. Her mother suffered from a chronic crack cocaine addiction and was unable to maintain a consistent parenting role. When it became clear to child welfare authorities that Sue's mother was selling her body as well as drugs to finance her habit, Sue was formally removed from the home and placed in the custody of her grandmother. Though she was only five at the time, Sue had witnessed a parade of men in and out of her mother's life, several shootings and stabbings, and multiple run-ins with the police.

  Sue's grandmother, Nana, was a religious woman with strong ties to her church. The church congregation formed a strong social network, in which people supported one another through poverty, illness, and the suffocating absence of opportunity. Perhaps most important, it was a community that emphasized education, and Nana worked fiendishly to ensure that Sue kept up with her studies.

  Naturally shy and slight of stature, Sue could not excel in athletics, so she found early success and approval in her studies. Over the years, she stayed involved in her mother's life and, in a way, became a parent to her parent. Her greatest concerns were for the abusive relationships that punctuated her mother's skirts with the law. One particular man, Davis, put Sue's mother in the hospital several times with broken bones and multiple bruises. Sue could never comprehend why her mother would not press charges, why she would never leave the relationship.

  Perhaps because of men like Davis, Sue showed no interest in dating. Her grandmother had warned her many times of the dangers of unmarried pregnancies and the ways in which young men would be out to take advantage of her. The only way to better herself, Nana stressed, was through God and her studies.

  "I had good friends in school," Sue explained. "We used to help each other out when things were rough. Tasha's daddy used to drink away the family money, so Nana would have her over for dinner just to make sure she got fed. Nana was like that. If she saw you needed something and she liked you, she'd give you everything she had."

  "Are you still in touch with your friends, like Tasha?" I asked.

  Sue shook her head. "Tasha got pregnant and dropped out of school. She hooked up with a guy just like her daddy. Daryl got caught dealing drugs; he's in jail. Rhonda—you don't want to know about her. She's worse than my mom. The only one there for me was Nana."

  The other medical students found Sue to be aloof, with an "attitude." One professor suggested that she meet with me, indicating that the "chip on her shoulder" would make it difficult to succeed in school. In fact, Sue was warm and engaging—once you got to know her. Few people, however, were allowed inside. She had learned to trust no one, especially men. When they approached her, her instinctive reaction was to turn them aside. "I can't love anyone," she stated plainly, "because I can't trust anyone." Staying aloof was a protective mechanism, and it worked for many years.

  "So why are you telling me all this?" I asked Sue in our second meeting. "I'm a man, I'm a white guy, and I've never lived in a neighborhood like yours. Why are you trusting me?"

  "'Cuz you didn't ask me my MCAT scores right when we first met," she laughed.

  This was an inside joke among the school's black students. A number of faculty questioned the academic fitness of some of the minority students, though they were too discreet to raise the issue directly. So whenever such a student came in with a problem, the faculty would find a way to inquire about their undergraduate campus of origin and their scores on the Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT). Such questions were rarely, if ever, directed to the white students. The implication was clear: You're having problems because you shouldn't have been allowed into the school to begin with.

  "I need to be able to talk to someone," Sue said, "and I can't talk with the people in my class. We had to pair up for work in the anatomy lab, and you should have seen everyone scurry so they wouldn't have to work with me. One boy told me I would slow him down in the dissection. I told him to stand still, and I'd cut him good
to show him how fast I could open a body."

  Sue, I gathered, was not to be messed with. She was a survivor. But, now, sitting in my office, contemplating a withdrawal, she was ready to pack it all in. She could handle shootings in her neighborhood, the slights of racist students, and the ongoing spectacle of her mother's torture at the hands of a man.

  But she could not handle the loss of her Nana.

  How People Deal with Losses

  "I was doing this for Nana," Sue sobbed. "I wanted her to see me graduate. She was so proud of me for making it into medical school. She'd always talk at church about how her little girl was gonna become a doctor. And now she's not going to be there. It just isn't fair. Since she died, I haven't even been going to class. What's the point?"

  For the most part, people can tolerate losses well, whether in the markets or in life. Losing trades, lost business opportunities, lost friends—these are painful but generally not overwhelming. Far more debilitating is the loss of hope. When a trader loses a good portion of capital on a botched trade, it is not so much the dollars-and-cents impact that becomes depressing, as it is the loss of hope that one can ever recoup. I recall one trader pointing out to me that his portfolio was down 50 percent in just three months. "I could double my money now and still not be profitable," he explained in a flat monotone. Lost was his horizon for success. Like Sue, he could not find a rationale for going on.

  Although Sue valued her medical school career, she had much more invested in her education than time and effort. Success in school had come to symbolize her way of repaying her grandmother, of making all Nana's sacrifices worthwhile. Sue confided to me her fantasies of becoming financially secure someday. "After I paid off my loans," she said, "I was going to buy my grandmother a new house. I didn't want her living the rest of her life in a little apartment." These dreams kept Sue's hope and motivation alive, even as she endured troubles at home and humiliations among classmates.

  What is the significance of one's life undertakings: one's education, career, brokerage account, or 401(k) statement? It cannot be reduced to a dollars-and-cents figure. Invested in people's efforts are their hopes for a successful trading career, their dreams for a secure retirement, and their self-image as individuals competent to navigate the future. What happens when these ideals are threatened, when people's hopes and visions for the future are shattered? One of my graduate school professors, Jack Brehm, described depression as motivational suppression. Once valued outcomes are deemed unattainable, it no longer makes sense to muster the energy and the enthusiasm for their pursuit. Depression is nature's way of conserving energy, damping the diversion of resources toward ends deemed unreachable.