One thing I’ve been thinking about in terms of Intra trading mental health are best practices to prevent bad decisions and of course drawdown.I think Sticking to a schedule is part of it, but I’m learning more and more that building relationships within the trading community can help with stress. I have a buddy who is on the verge of taking over a fund and we bounce ideas off each other all the time. It’s a great way to share frustrations and also have someone check you when you are not making good decisions due to unhealthy behavior in trading
Does your friend share some tips on how to stay feet and always capable to trade succesfully?
Regular scheduled excercise is the key, in my opinion. Schedule your training sessions around your trading sessions and account for that time in your trading plan.
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Health should be our first priority always no matter what we are doing or how busy we are.
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One great way to help with mental health is creating a Journal. Writing down not only your trades, but your thoughts/fears/excitement/stress/etc can really help relieve the stressors we go through as traders. I found it more helpful to have a physical journal as opposed to a computerized version as it gets you away from the screens.
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I have tried maintaining a journal and I cannot tell you how helpful it was. At first it may sound like nothing but once you start penning down your thoughts into it, it can be very therapeutic. Cathartic even! I make it a point to note down all my trades and thoughts, especially if lose or when I make mistakes I have realized it helps me cope better with the stress and gives me renewed energy to start trading again.
Great advice, thanks.
I have a trading journal, I may do this as well.
Hey guys.
Well, for anyone interested, I found another source that confirms the notion that the physical condition affects the mental (the brain).
Well, I didn’t buy the book, but read the sample first. And this ends up being all I need from it. In any case, the book is called “My Plastic Brain…One woman’s Yearlong Journey to Discover If Science Can Improve Her Mind” by Caroline Williams.
Well, I can’t cut and paste it here, so I’ll have to type out what I find very interesting. And again, this thread is what comes to my mind. I just have to share this with you.
" With all the controversy about brain training and meditation, it’s perhaps surprising that there is a kind of training that definitely does benefit the brain, and it doesn’t involve any thinking at all - it involves getting off your butt and moving.
Physical exercise has been shown pretty conclusively to boost memory and cognitive skills and to improve mood. In experiments where people did some kind of mental task, then either stopped and did some exercise, or sat still and had a break, people who had exercised scored better on cognitive measures that came afterward than the couch potatoes did. The explanation for this seems to come down to certain chemicals called “growth factors” that are released by the body during exercise. Growth factors seem to put the brain into a kind of super-plasticity mode, where whatever you see, do, or learn is more likely to stick.
The most important of these chemicals is a protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), which has the job of keeping existing neurons healthy and encouraging the development of new ones. The more BDNF that is around, the lower the threshold at which the brain commits to making new connections, and the less effort it takes for any new information to stick. Just one session of exercise has been shown to increase BDNF levels in the blood, but regular exercise is shown to be even better because it makes the brain more sensitive to BDNF. So if you exercise regularly, each time you break a sweat you get an even bigger bang for your buck.
As well as getting the brain ready to make new connections, BDNF - helped by another growth factor called IGF-1 - also stimulates the birth of new neurons in the hippocampus. This, too, probably puts the brain in a better place to learn new things, by adding more space to the brain’s memory drives. Exercise also makes it more likely that blood vessels will sprout up to service the newly busy area - by boosting another growth factor, called vascular endothelial growth factor, (VEGF), which specializes in building new blood vessels. And a lack of physical activity has been shown to reduce the speed at which electrical impulses pass between neurons. All in all, exercise makes for a healthy brain that is primed and ready to learn."
Well, that surely is all good and nice huh?
All we have to do now is get off our butts.
Awesome!
Mike
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Yup. And also to stop making excuses!
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For sure, mental health depends on physical health.
Another point is that mental health is extremely important for traders, as it can influence the trading performance. The results of someone doing routine job does not depend on his mental health, but not for the traders.
Trading is very harmful for the health as it combines two serious negative factors: lack of movement and permanent stress. To deal with them, trader must have physical activity.
It often happens that it is difficult to find free time for sport, but at the same time it is necessary. In the most of the cases, you can “create” additional time through the optimisation of the trading-related process. As for me, the steps are the following:
- Create a list of the most reliable news sources and define the infromation you are looking for, it will help to deal with the informational flood.
- Upgrade your computer - faster PC makes your work faster.
- Use software to avoid manual work. For example, you can use Evernote to write down your ideas and Forex Tester to backtest them.
- Backtest your ideas on historical data: it will save you a lot of time(and, sometimes - money).
- Write down detailed trading rules. If there is no suitable situation on the market - avoid trading.
- Spend some time on reading every day. It wil help you to understand moore and loose less.
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This paper describe the development occupational mental health in the united kingdom. It looks at the occupational medicine lie in the effect of arts trades in the psychology effects of work arose from the work of the health. The poor mental health will further impact disadvantageously on physical health an on border social and economic goals.
Thank you for post! that is so right! No waking up to trade in the middle of the night. I have been suffering from that for so long!
I actually like very much reading about this topic, because there is not much learning material about it. It might be one of the reasons because nobody can teach you to control your emotions and psychology on Forex. Each trader must find hiw own way