The Daily Trading Coach 101 Lessons for Becoming Your Own Trading Psychologist

by Steenbarger, Brett N.

• ISBN13: 9780470398562
• ISBN10: 0470398566
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-03-23
• Publisher: Wiley
• More Book Details
• Purchase Benefits

Summary

Written in a practical and engaging style, The Daily Trading Coach highlights specific actions that readers can take to meaningfully improve their trading performance. The book consists of 101 lessons designed as coaching interventions, featuring techniques and homework assignments that traders can put to work immediately. The Daily Trading Coach is not only a guide to self-mentoring; it's also a motivational resource that will allow traders to start each day with concrete goals and a positive perspective. Designed as a multimedia resource that stresses the skills and techniques for self-coaching, this book will help readers help themselves throughout their trading careers.Brett N. Steenbarger, PhD (Naperville, IL), is Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, New York. An active trader and author of the popular TraderFeed blog, Steenbarger coaches traders in hedge funds, proprietary trading groups, and investment bank settings. He is also the author of the Wiley titles Enhancing Trader Performance (978-0-470-03866-6) and The Psychology of Trading (978-0-471-26761-4).

Author Biography

Brett N. Steenbarger, PhD, is Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, New York. An active trader and author of the popular TraderFeed blog, Steenbarger coaches traders in hedge funds, proprietary trading groups, and investment bank settings. He is also the author of the Wiley titles Enhancing Trader Performance and The Psychology of Trading. Steenbarger received a BS from Duke University and a PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Kansas.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. xiii
Acknowledgments	p. xvii
Introduction	p. 1
Change: The Process and the Practice	p. 3
Draw on Emotion to Become a Change Agent	p. 4
Psychological Visibility and Your Relationship with Your Trading Coach	p. 7
Make Friends with Your Weakness	p. 9
Change Your Environment, Change Yourself	p. 11
Transform Emotion by Trace-Formation	p. 14
Find the Right Mirrors	p. 17
Change Our Focus	p. 20
Create Scripts for Life Change	p. 23
How to Build Your Self-Confidence	p. 25
Five Best Practices for Effecting and Sustaining Change	p. 29
Resources	p. 32
Stress and Distress: Creative Coping for Traders	p. 33
Understanding Stress	p. 33
Antidotes for Toxic Trading Assumptions	p. 37
What Causes the Distress That Interferes with Trading Decisions?	p. 40
Keep a Psychological Journal	p. 43
Pressing: When You Try Too Hard to Make Money	p. 45
When You're Ready to Hang It Up	p. 48
What to Do When Fear Takes Over	p. 51
Performance Anxiety: The Most Common Trading Problem	p. 54
Square Pegs and Round Holes	p. 58
Volatility of Markets and Volatility of Mood	p. 61
Resources	p. 64
Psychological Well-Being: Enhancing Trading Experience	p. 67
The Importance of Feeling Good	p. 67
Build Your Happiness	p. 71
Get into the Zone	p. 73
Trade with Energy	p. 77
Intention and Greatness: Exercise the Brain through Play	p. 79
Cultivate the Quiet Mind	p. 83
Build Emotional Resilience	p. 86
Integrity and Doing the Right Thing	p. 89
Maximize Confidence and Stay with Your Trades	p. 91
Coping-Turn Stress into Well-Being	p. 95
Resources	p. 97
Steps toward Self-Improvement: The Coaching Process	p. 99
Self-Monitor by Keeping a Trading Journal	p. 99
Recognize Your Patterns	p. 103
Establish Costs and Benefits to Patterns	p. 106
Set Effective Goals	p. 109
Build on Your Best: Maintain a Solution Focus	p. 111
Disrupt Old Problem Patterns	p. 114
Build Your Consistency by Becoming Rule-Governed	p. 118
Relapse and Repetition	p. 121
Create a Safe Environment for Change	p. 123
Use Imagery to Advance the Change Process	p. 126
Resources	p. 130
Breaking Old Patterns: Psychodynamic Frameworks for Self-Coaching	p. 131
Psychodynamics: Escape the Gravity of Past Relationships	p. 132
Crystallize Our Repetitive Patterns	p. 135
Challenge Our Defenses	p. 138
Once Again, with Feeling: Get Distance from Your Problem Patterns	p. 141
Make the Most Out of Your Coaching Relationship	p. 141
Find Positive Trading Relationships	p. 147
Tolerate Discomfort	p. 150
Master Transference	p. 153
The Power of Discrepancy	p. 156
Working Through	p. 158
Resources	p. 161
Remapping the Mind: Cognitive Approaches to Self-Coaching	p. 163
Schemas of the Mind	p. 164
Use Feeling to Understand Your Thinking	p. 167
Learn from Your Worst Trades	p. 170
Use a Journal to Restructure Our Thinking	p. 172
Disrupt Negative Thought Patterns	p. 176
Reframe Negative Thought Patterns	p. 179
Use Intensive Guided Imagery to Change Thought Patterns	p. 182
Challenge Negative Thought Patterns with the Cognitive Journal	p. 185
Conduct Cognitive Experiments to Create Change	p. 188
Build Positive Thinking	p. 190
Resources	p. 193
Learning New Action Patterns: Behavioral Approaches to Self-Coaching	p. 195
Understand Your Contingencies	p. 196
Identify Subtle Contingencies	p. 199
Harness the Power of Social Learning	p. 201
Shape Your Trading Behaviors	p. 204
The Conditioning of Markets	p. 207
The Power of Incompatibility	p. 211
Build on Positive Associations	p. 214
Exposure: A Powerful and Flexible Behavioral Method	p. 217
Extend Exposure Work to Build Skills	p. 220
A Behavioral Framework for Dealing with Worry	p. 223
Resources	p. 226
Coaching Your Trading Business	p. 227
The Importance of Startup Capital	p. 227
Plan Your Trading Business	p. 231
Diversify Your Trading Business	p. 233
Track Your Trading Results	p. 236
Advanced Scorekeeping for Your Trading Business	p. 240
Track the Correlations of Your Returns	p. 244
Calibrate Your Risk and Reward	p. 248
The Importance of Execution in Trading	p. 250
Think in Themes-Generating Good Trading Ideas	p. 254
Manage the Trade	p. 257
Resources	p. 259
Lessons from Trading Professionals: Resources and Perspectives on Self-Coaching	p. 261
Leverage Core Competencies and Cultivate Creativity	p. 261
I Alone Am Responsible	p. 264
Cultivate Self-Awareness	p. 271
Mentor Yourself for Success	p. 275
Keep Detailed Records	p. 279
Learn to Be Fallible	p. 283
The Power of Research	p. 286
Attitudes and Goals, the Building Blocks of Success	p. 290
A View from the Trading Firms	p. 295
Use Data to Improve Trading Performance	p. 300
Resources	p. 305
Looking for the Edge: Finding Historical Patterns in Markets	p. 307
Use Historical Patterns in Trading	p. 308
Frame Good Hypotheses with the Right Data	p. 310
Excel Basics	p. 313
Visualize Your Data	p. 317
Create Your Independent and Dependent Variables	p. 320
Conduct Your Historical Investigations	p. 324
Code the Data	p. 327
Examine Context	p. 329
Filter Data	p. 332
Make Use of Your Findings	p. 334
Resources	p. 336
Conclusion	p. 339
Find Your Path	p. 339
For More on Self-Coaching	p. 341
About the Author	p. 343
Index	p. 345
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