Are you trading like a dog or a wolf?
The book “The Hour Between Dog and Wolf: Risk Taking, Gut Feelings and the Biology of Boom and Bust” obliterates many of the myths we carry around about ourselves and our trading decisions. Here are the corrections from author John Coates.
- Our bodies and our brains are so interconnected, think of them as one organism.
- Our physiology and neurochemistry change with winning and losing trades
- Our decision process is in play long before we are aware of it
- Our pre-attentive processing is far more powerful than our conscious thought
- Intuition is about powerful pattern recognition
- Our communal and interconnected biochemistry sets us up for the boom and bust cycles
What can you do about the destructive aspects of our biochemistry? The good news is that our increasing knowledge of neuroscience supports the developing community of transformational psychology, including our model of Mind Muscles™ development.
After two decades of floor trading on the U.S major exchanges and having lived through the major boom and bust cycles, the themes in this book hit home. It both fits my personal trading experiences and supports the foundations for my work with traders and building new Mind Muscles™ to improve their trading success.
“On a winning streak we can become euphoric, and our appetite for risk expands so much that we turn manic, foolhardy and puffed up with self-importance. On a losing streak we struggle with fear, reliving the bad moments over and over, so that stress hormones linger in our brains, promoting a pathological risk aversion, even depression.”
With this, Coates then builds his case for the physiological changes that happen in our bodies when we win and when we lose and the impact of this synchronized hormonal dance that produces our larger boom and bust cycles. This book not only felt right personally, but he backs up his work with hundreds of footnotes.
The hour between the dog and the wolf is the transformation we all experience under pressure when we are primed and ready to act. And this transformation can destroy trading careers and trading institutions or create great wealth. Neuroscience and the models this book builds is an excellent foundation for improving trading behaviors and profits.
The stories alone make this book a must read for the serious student of trading. The exciting part of the book for me is how we use this knowledge to make these changes.
This is where Mind Muscles™ takes us from information to transformation in our personal and trading careers. As I continue to build the Mind Muscles™ training programs both with individual coaching and online training, this books broadens the foundation that we can leverage together.
My work is increasingly physiologically oriented and this produces faster and better results. If you haven’t already done so, I invite you to start building your awareness Mind Muscles.™ Creating real time awareness of the state of your body, feelings and thoughts is the start of a powerful process that leverages these experiences positively.
Click here to read the free exercise.
When you are ready, please click here to set up a time for a free no hype conversation about improving your trading.
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