The Parts of Your Trading Mind You Never Train
Following Chris Capre's last article on trading and meditation, we can now learn how to handle our 60,000 thoughts per
After working as a broker on Wall Street for 2 years, at a hedge fund for 1 year, trading my own money for 15 years, as well as training traders for the last 8, I’ve seen one consistent pattern amongst struggling traders.
By and large, they spend 90% of their time training with the charts, reading books, watching videos, leaving approximately 10% for their trading mindset.
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The Thinking-Analytical Brain
Regardless of how their currency of time is spent, one variable tends to be constantly
present – they are training only one part of their ‘mind’, particularly the ‘thinking/analytical’ part of their brain.
While we are doing analysis, looking at the price action context, determining the impulsive and corrective moves, the type of trend and what levels are key, it is this ‘thinking’ brain we are using by and large.
This is our ‘conscious mind’, the internal thoughts we are ‘aware’ of, all done inside the neo-cortex (latin for ‘new brain’).
Technically, the neo-cortex is the most ‘evolved’ portion of our brain. All of our choices on what to trade, calculating risk, or doing our price action analysis is done via the conscious mind. Most of this type of thinking is done in the PFC, or the ‘Pre-Frontal Cortex’.
One would think that using the most ‘evolved’ and ‘analytical’ portion of our brain would be the best weapon for trading. And herein lies the great twist and irony.
Only 5%
On average, each person has about 60,000 thoughts a day. This translates to about 41 thoughts per second. But of these 60,000 thoughts we have from one waking morning to the next, ~3,000 (or 5%) we are actually ‘conscious’ of.
If you think about it, this makes sense in our everyday lives. Who needs to consciously ‘think’ about how to brush your teeth, go to the bathroom, turn on the computer? Most of us don’t, and this is because the neural networks for such actions are ‘subconscious’ and thus automatic, i.e. a ‘skill’.
On top of this, the most ‘evolved’ portion of our brain can only think one conscious thought at a time. It can do this really fast, but only one.
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How Does This Relate to Trading?
Tying all this back into our trading reality, if you spend most of your time analyzing price action in the now, reading trading books and watching trading videos, by and large, you are only training one portion of your mind (the conscious mind).
The problem with this formula is that it leaves an imbalanced trading mindset. A subconscious mind that is not properly trained, never digging into our unconscious mind and self-image, will leave us vulnerable to a) repeating the same trading mistakes, and b) inconsistent execution (which in turn hurts performance).
Both of these mental errors could be due to not properly training our subconscious mind, but they can also be caused by our unconscious mind and self-image.
These are the parts of your trading mind you never (or rarely) train.
Where Consistency in Execution Comes From
There is only one place consistency in execution comes from – the mind. To have consistency in your execution, you’ll need balance and consistency in your mind.
By training only with our ‘conscious’ mind, we’ll have an imbalanced trading mindset, and that by itself will not lead to our trading goals.
Hence, I’ll end this creative with two questions:
1) How much of your training time do you focus on your trading mindset?
2) From this time you work on your mindset, how much is dedicated towards your subconscious and unconscious mind?
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Hello Chris, I totally agree with you, but is there any chance that you can be more specific and suggest some exercises or examples of how we can train our mindset in a subconscious level? that will be very helpful, useful, not just know what is missing, but know how to field the void on that training area.
Hello Chris, I totally agree with you, but is there any chance that you can be more specific and suggest some exercises or examples of how we can train our mindset in a subconscious level? that will be very helpful, useful, not just know what is missing, but know how to field the void on that training area.
Hello Adrian,
Well the goal of this article was to bring awareness to something most traders are not aware of. In some later articles, I’ll go over 1-2 methods to train your mind on a sub-conscious level, but I already have several articles and methods talked about on my website.
Kind Regards,
Chris Capre
Hello Adrian,
Well the goal of this article was to bring awareness to something most traders are not aware of. In some later articles, I’ll go over 1-2 methods to train your mind on a sub-conscious level, but I already have several articles and methods talked about on my website.
Kind Regards,
Chris Capre
Hello again Chris
Thanks for reply to my message. Ok, I would really like to read about those methods, what is your website?www…?
Thanks again pal
Hello again Chris
Thanks for reply to my message. Ok, I would really like to read about those methods, what is your website?www…?
Thanks again pal
@Adrian,
My website should be in the bio section of this article, but it is 2ndskiesforex.com.
Let me know if you have any issues or questions (can send q’s to me via Info@2ndskies.com)
Kind Regards,
Chris Capre
@Adrian,
My website should be in the bio section of this article, but it is 2ndskiesforex.com.
Let me know if you have any issues or questions (can send q’s to me via Info@2ndskies.com)
Kind Regards,
Chris Capre
Forex trading ask for suitable aptitude in those looking to jump into this money making profession. Contemplating over price action context, impulsive and corrective moves determination, observing and analyzing trends are basics, but trainers and academies lays more stress on just thinking and calculating just the empirical side. It takes more than that.
Forex trading ask for suitable aptitude in those looking to jump into this money making profession. Contemplating over price action context, impulsive and corrective moves determination, observing and analyzing trends are basics, but trainers and academies lays more stress on just thinking and calculating just the empirical side. It takes more than that.
@Jack, Yes, there are certainly more skills to trading, but the goal of this article wasn’t meant to list them all, just to give a few examples and how our mind, training and the three parts of our mind affect performance in all these areas. Forex trading is a mental performance discipline which means all the activity (including ‘aptitude’) comes from the brain and the mind. ‘Aptitude’ as a quality (especially based upon the brain and mind) is not fixed. It is in flux and changes on a spectrum based on our thoughts, actions, emotions, training and more. How the… Read more »
@Jack, Yes, there are certainly more skills to trading, but the goal of this article wasn’t meant to list them all, just to give a few examples and how our mind, training and the three parts of our mind affect performance in all these areas. Forex trading is a mental performance discipline which means all the activity (including ‘aptitude’) comes from the brain and the mind. ‘Aptitude’ as a quality (especially based upon the brain and mind) is not fixed. It is in flux and changes on a spectrum based on our thoughts, actions, emotions, training and more. How the… Read more »
Hello Jack, what you mean when you say that it takes more than that? What is THAT? i guess i kind of follow you. I mean, i have allways thougth that trading for a living is the most dificult thing on earth,(even more if you trade with leverage the room for mistakes is almost 0%) and the ones that succed in the mission are to buzzy trading, making money. Respectfuly i begin to think that there is no single trading trainer who has truly succed on trading for a living. I honestly hope im wrong and i am open minded… Read more »
Hello Jack, what you mean when you say that it takes more than that? What is THAT? i guess i kind of follow you. I mean, i have allways thougth that trading for a living is the most dificult thing on earth,(even more if you trade with leverage the room for mistakes is almost 0%) and the ones that succed in the mission are to buzzy trading, making money. Respectfuly i begin to think that there is no single trading trainer who has truly succed on trading for a living. I honestly hope im wrong and i am open minded… Read more »