On April 20, something occurred that was unprecedented in the history of financial markets: The price of oil went negative. It wasn’t the case that the cost of a barrel had fallen to some scary-low number. It actually went below zero, meaning there were traders out there who would pay you to own oil. It…
Take five underemployed pilots. Give them intense markets training, add in an investment portfolio to experiment with, pit them against a control group from other backgrounds, and see what happens. That is what a small London-based trading firm did in August, hoping to prove the “discipline, control, process and self-awareness” that pilots show in the…
If this doesn’t make you day then you are probably dead from the neck up.
In presentations regarding trading psychology and why traders find it so hard to be profitable, I often refer to a paper titled An analysis of the profiles and motivations of habitual commodity speculators by W. Bruce Canoles, Sarahelen Thompson, Scott Irwin Virginia, Grace France (Journal of Futures Markets Volume 18 Issue 7 October 1998) This…
Recently I chatted with David Hobart who is a former prop trader turned high-performance coach to professionals around the world. Click on the player image below to be taken to the interview.
The number one problem I currently hear from portfolio managers, team members, and traders in financial markets is “burnout”. That’s not surprising, given the list of challenges from 2020: Keeping up with markets that have changed trends multiple times within the year; Maintaining perspective amidst uncertainties regarding COVID-19 and implications for health and safety; Working…
Italian psychologist Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini was once asked why people keep making the same mistakes. He said: Inattention, distraction, lack of interest, poor preparation, genuine stupidity, timidity, braggadocio, emotional imbalance, ideological, racial, social or chauvinistic prejudices, and aggressive or prevaricatory instincts. More here – Collaborative Fund
For most fund managers there is nothing more important than adopting a long-term approach. This enables them to insulate themselves from the noise and random fluctuations of financial markets, and hopefully exploit them. Yet for many this is simply not possible. Perverse and misaligned incentives, the desire to measure everything over meaningless time periods and…
Recently I had a chance to catch up with Jack Pelzer and Dan Hodgman of Limit Up where we talked about all things trading psychology. You can find additional episodes of their podcast here. It was actually wonderfully refreshing to sit down and talk to two younger traders who were not obsessed with the prospect…
To get into the Mentor Program, you need to register for Priority Notification. Make a pact with yourself now that no matter what the economy is doing, you’re determined to become an ultra-versatile trader capable of sniffing out hidden profits in the sharemarket. It’s that’s what you’re after, we can show you how to…
Trading is a difficult profession – its difficulty comes not so much from mastering the technical aspects since these are always overstated by the magic indicator fools but rather in coming to terms with the psychological and emotional difficulties that arise. In part, these difficulties arise because of perceptions as to how easy trading is…
There are many worthwhile candidates on Wall Street for the Greatest Trade of All Time. There’s Jesse Livermore’s bet that the stock market would fall in 1929. He pocketed something like $100 million in profit, akin to $1.5 billion today. There is George Soros’ 1992 bet that the British pound would fall against a basket…
Here are a few highlights from our conversation: I think of philanthropy as something that is not genetic, it is learned, and it was something that my dad reinforced pretty much from the time I was a kid. I’ve always had this view that success is not a straight line up. If you read the stories of…
It was getting dark when I hit the first riffle of my trip down Utah’s Green River in a canoe. My plan was to set out while it was cool and log some mileage before nightfall, but dusk came on quicker than I thought. Because I’d been in a rush to launch, my gear wasn’t…
