The last post took a look at developing your uniqueness as a trader, focusing on developing new sources of data and new ways of viewing the markets. However, in reality, there are many ways in which we can uniquely approach the markets. A successful money manager recently shared with me ways AI can improve the risk/reward of trading. Another trader uses complex options structures to filter out market noise and take advantage of long-term trends. But one trader who wrote to me asked a unique question about exclusivity: Can we find a unique edge in how we approach our trading psychology? Specifically, he asks, are there ways we can become better at listening to our inner voice?
This is a very difficult question and issue. On the one hand, we can view our negative self-talk as an inner voice and allow our worst emotional patterns to control our trading. On the other hand, we know that intuitive pattern recognition often manifests itself as an inner voice. When do we listen to this voice? When do we challenge this voice and replace it with a more useful voice? Consider the example of regret. Is this a useful incentive that enables us to learn from our mistakes, or does it drive us into the rearview mirror and interfere with what is happening in the here and now?
How can we innovate in addressing our trading psychology?
Consider the quote above from Craig Revel Horwood, choreographer and dance show judge. What he is saying is not just to follow your inner voice, but to listen to that voice If it comes as you follow your passion. In other words, it is the understanding of being in a state of flow during an activity we are passionate about that leads to the intuition of the inner voice. If we don't have passion about something, we won't arrive at any meaningful intuition about that thing. Plumbing? Growing watermelon? stud? I've never been involved in any of those, and guess what? I have absolutely no intuition about how to do this well.
When we are immersed in passion, we experience things in new ways and generate new perspectives. It is the depth of participation that generates breadth of vision. Anything we do to fully immerse ourselves in markets will enable us to see new things and innovate. As Radical Renewal Online suggests, we find our inner voice, not by listening to the chatter of our ego and its self-talk, but by fully engaging with what speaks to our soul. Ego self-talk is something we do automatically. True intuition comes to us.
And feelings of remorse? When we are fully immersed in the markets and feel remorse, chances are good that we can turn the mistakes we made into a lesson learned and real growth. Regret may not be a good thing, but as radical renewal points out, it is a path to growth in almost every spiritual tradition. The process of failure and repentance is completely different from automatic, thoughtless self-criticism. The first is the path to growth; The other interferes with our performance.
Only by fully participating in the activity we love can we find and follow our authentic inner voice. We find our uniqueness as traders when we are immersed in and fascinated by the markets.
Additional reading:
How can we improve our access to intuition
The role of intuition in trading decisions
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