AT THE CLOSE
How can a busy trader fit mindfulness practice into the trading lifestyle?
Traders know that market movements can play havoc with their emotions and concentration. Letting go of concentration-breaking emotions before sitting down to the trading desk can make the difference between a winning trading day and a losing one. Whether you are a high-pressured daytrader watching half a dozen positions on your monitor all day, or a buy & hold fundamentalist pouring over company financials, mindful moments in your trading day can sharpen your focus for more efficient and profitable trades.
What is mindfulness?
Nyanaponika Thera, in his book The Power Of Mindfulness, described mindfulness as “the clear and single-minded awareness of what actually happens to us and in us at the successive moments of perception.” Traders understand that attention to market activity and research associated with due diligence requires discipline and some degree of separation of emotions from the facts.
David S. Ludwig and Jon Kabat-Zinn, in an article published in the Journal Of The American Medical Association, stated:
The current age has been referred to as one of “continuous partial attention.” E-mail, cell phones, and other technology invade nearly every moment of waking life. Economic pressures demand ever-increasing productivity, even as time to enjoy the fruits of labor declines.
Such external distractions, along with internal distractions like worries, frustrations, depression, anger, and fear, join forces to gnaw away at the trader’s concentration and discipline. Busy traders know such moments interfere with rational trading.
Jerome Groopman, author of How Doctors Think, observed that knowledgeable and educated doctors’ misdiagnoses could result from faulty thinking, snap judgment, and stereotyping, despite their education and knowledge. He proposes that paying attention to the process of thinking might help reduce such errors.
Likewise, traders, subject to internal emotions and external distractions, can benefit from practicing mindfulness, as can anyone. Traditional mindfulness practice from Buddhism dates back more than 2,500 years. Today, medical therapists teach techniques of mind-body stress reduction (MBSR), a concept created by Jon Kabat-Zinn.