I write a lot about the mental side of trading and how being organized and clear about your strategies will help you to overcome the mental anguish that many traders feel.  Today I want to write about a very practical and perhaps underused strategy for overcoming obstacles in your trading.

Visualization and anchors are tools that are very often used by the most elite athletes in the world.  Golfers will often close their eyes as part of their pre-shot routine and picture the golf shot that they want to hit.  Basketball players before a free throw will bounce the ball the same number of times before executing the shot. 

I love the analogy between sports and trading, there is so much in common.  Elite athletes and traders are both very competitive people and each works hard at their craft to push their limits of greatness.  I hope that this site is wanting you to push yourself harder and earn a great living as a trader.

Visualization is the art of seeing an event take place in your mind before it happens in real life.  People that teach visualization talk about seeing as much detail as you can including colors, smells and sounds to make the image as real as possible.  I incorporate this tool into my pre-game strategy session.  I will image the perfect setup occurring and me trading it perfectly and then watch my P&L grow, then I fast forward to the end of the trading day and see my target for the day being reached.  It is important to also feel the feelings associated with having a great trade or great day, so really feel how excited you are to have reached your target for that day.  This is all in your mind so nobody will judge you so don't be afraid to be a little crazier than you might normally be.

Anchoring is a technique to get you in your peak state by doing something physical to trigger your mind and get you into a peak mental state.  You can tap the desk three times, tug on your ear, for me my trigger is simply sitting up in my chair and feeling more alert.  I have trained my body and mind that when I sit up in the way that I do, then it is time to get serious.  This is called changing your physiology and it does work.  Again, think about the basketball player that bounces that ball the exact amount of times before the free throw, that is anchoring.

Start to visualize your perfect day, come up with an anchor that gets you in the right frame of mind and you will see positive results in your trading.

• Add New
• Search

Comments (0)

Write comment

Your Contact Details:

Name:

Email: do not notifynotify

Website:

Comment:

Title:

Message:

Security

Please input the anti-spam code that you can read in the image.

Powered by !JoomlaComment 4.0 beta1

!joomlacomment 4.0 Copyright (C) 2009 Compojoom.com . All rights reserved."