Rande Howell

zdo Certainly you have to break the herd motivation. In fact, a great trader is riding the wave of that herd mentality. Once the herd is heading in a particular direction the shift between buyer and seller shows up in the moment. For the vast majority of people, the mind of the trader has to be trained to disrupt the biological tendency to get sucked into the head mentality or the wave. It is at this point that the trader can learn to access the psychological skill sets that allows him or her to trade in the zone. This takes awakening to mindfulness. Until that is developed, traders will stay in their mindlessness and follow the herd. And lose like the herd. Rande http://www.tradersstateofmind.com

This has not been my experience with traders. Certainly they initially seek to find the Holy Grail "out there". And somewhere along the line they find that their trading is shaped by the beliefs they hold about their worth, inadequacy, and fears of loss that have been embedded into their way of perceiving the world. And, until they take full responsibilty for the results they produce, they are not in a position to reorganize the self for more effective trading. Until they learn to manage their fear, growth of potential as a trader is compromised. Part of this is biological (discerning uncertainty as different than fear) and part is psychological (the way they interprete the markets). The brain and mind were not built to trade, the brain and mind have to be trained into a new way of perceiving and acting to be successful in trading -- unless you got lucky and born that way; in that case, count your blessings. Here is a link to an interview from the Money Show about this. MoneyShow.com: Video Rande Howell www.tradersstateofmind.com

BlowFish Sorry, it wasn't recorded. The Money Show is a little weird about that kinda stuff. But they did do a video interview with me that show be available now at their website. Also the workshop was essential the same presentation I give at my webinar this coming Thursday at 5:30 PM EDT. I can send a copy of that to you. Just log onto www.tradersstateofmind.com and hit the "Contact Us" button and ask me for it. You could register for it, but most Europeans get the recording due to the time difference. Be well, Rande Howell

Thank you. It was also nice to put a face and personal interaction into our shared memory. Without using compassion, a trader faces an uphill climb moving beyond the organization of self that currently trades. Compassion is the emotion that opens us to our deepest potential. If you are a trader, you will need to have self compassion to re-organize the self into the trader you can be. Thanks. Rande

Certainly the naive mindset of a beginner dies a quick death. And certainly at pattern of failure can be set up based on that loss based on conditioning. And I think it goes beyond that. What I find in people in transition to trading is that stuff they covered up well before trading comes to haunt them in trading. It becomes a sharp knife to the psyche. One that was well avoided before trading. Beliefs are revealed as either workable in trading or alibies that blow up trading accounts. Rande Howell

zdo A friend and former client of mine, who now trades on a substantial scale with a 65% win rate and a 3:1 ration between profits and losses, wrote to me recently and said, "Most traders lose before they begin trading. They enter their day in a cloud of fear attempting to "not lose". This mindset sets them up for failure." Until he mastered his psychology, he did not put up these numbers -- so clearly the re-organization of the mindself of the trader can have a powerful impact upon his/her trading. This guy also teaches trading methodology and recognizes that it is the mindset, the beliefs and perceptions, of the trader is what drives the methodology in trading. Both are essential to produce consistently successful results. Some learn the two together, and some learn after struggling for years how to integrate these two aspects of trading into a unified field. It really does not matter to me what comes first or last. Sooner or later, traders have to face their psychologial demons courageously rather than avoid them. It is in this learning from the mirror of the self that trading essentially is that the trader learns what drives them to trade. Rather than a passion for trading, often it is a cover up their own sense of inadequacy, worth, or sense of mattering. These folks seek the Holy Grail "out there" and have not looked inwardly for the source of their strength. The market can be cruel to this mindset. Until this core material is reorganizated into high functioning beliefs, suffering will continue for the majority of traders. To those that seem to breeze through and "get" trading without the introspection, good for you. You are the exception. Consider yourself blessed and go in peace. To the vast majority of traders who have the technical skills, but are lacking essential skills for peak performance trading, managing psychology is an essential aspect of becoming a successful trader. When you consider that large numbers of people are entering trading as part of this economic downturn and the age bias downsizing in American businesses, more and more people will be entering trading ill-equipped. The very psychological skills that lead them to a modicum of success in their past career will turn on them and become enemy in trading. As long as fear is the dominant motivator of action, trading will suffer. No amount of technical skill decouples the perceptual map laid down by fear. It has to be faced and reorganized. Rande Howell

Join us on Tuesday, Sept. 14 at 5:30pm EST (New York Time)/2:30pm PST -- it's free and you need to just register in advance here: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/568166601 Most traders know how to trade, but their emotions cloud their judgment and sabotage their efforts in their intense drama of trading. In this workshop you will learn how to hurdle the 8 roadblocks that keep you from developing the mindset necessary to move from mediocrity to mindful trading for peak performance. You will discover how regulating your emotional nature frees your mind from the fear, self doubt, greed, and impulsivity that bar you from higher levels of trading performance. From this new position you will see how to develop a calm assertive mindset that allows you to trade from a disciplined, impartial, patient, and courageous state of mind – the Trader’s State of Mind. About Rande Howell: Rande Howell, MEd, LPC conducts emotional regulation, mindfulness, and peak performance training for traders. He maintains a clinically licensed practice in Charlotte, NC where he teaches the skills and tools for peak performance training and personal development globally. In his past he has also successfully taught emotional regulation skills in prison, community mental health, and corporate venues. He will be a Featured Speaker at the Las Vegas Futures and Forex Traders Expo (Money Show) in September.

FXGirl What most traders say to me is this, "I know how to trade, but my emotions get in the way." There are numerous methodologies taught that give a trader a technical edge. And, when capital is not at risk with simulated trading, they are able to trade effectively. However, when their money enters the game, the edge is lost. They cannot separate biologically based fear from a higher order risk management. The edge, the Holy Grail, is within them. It is the re-organization of belief that shifts the perspective so that they can act from a peak performance state of mind. If they have not become competent in a methodology with which they can manage risk, you are right, they do not have an edge to begin with. Here, I'm assuming that the trader has invested in his/her platform and methodology and are learning how to develop the psychological skills to use them under game conditions. Rande

IMHO We disagree. But I am not wrong. We are constantly creating the conditions of our experience in trading. Our belliefs, living as dialog in our mind, create the world we see. This is what you trade. Anything else is a fabication. If your trading account is growing, then in, black and white, can assess your compentency in the current organziation of the self that you are trading. My observation is that few people are so currently orangized as to trade well. Cutting out all the BS lies the simple fact, are you profitable or are you seeking? Your beliefs trade. Most of the traders I work with have been trading for a good time and still sabotage themselves. If practice were the answer, then simulated trading would be a good indicator or success. It's not. Re-organzing the self to produce a competent trader is . Rande

zdo -- having some problems getting to post, so going to the general thead. Not sure what an oxegenmoron is. I know what an oxymoron is though -- and conquering the self, in my work with traders, is central to them becoming consistently successful. Traders appear to have to either confront their fears that manifest in trading or conquer impulsivity wiring that short circuits the desired impartial, disciplined, patient, and courageous state of mind required to produce peak performance trading. The first layer of fear (say fear of loss in trading) is rarely the deeper fear that drives the belief system of the person. It is out of this belief system that the fear of loss springs. Being that the brain is organized to avoid discomfort first, traders (like other human beings) are forced to confront and then conquer their deeper hardwired beliefs of inadequacy, unworthiness, and not mattering that manifest as trading fears (those 9 roadblocks I address in my webinars). This is what I call core material. And for me, there is an internal struggle within each of us that trading forces us to confront. This is the "conquering the self" to which I refer. The impulse part is hardwired circuitry that is laying on top of the belief system embedded in neural pathways. Fortunately this can be disrupted by understanding the core concern that triggers the circuitry to produce an emotional cascade called an impulse. That can be interrupted using emotional regulation training, but the trader still has to conquer, then re-organanize their belief system. It is this belief system that trades using the tools of platform and methodology. Out of the totality of possibility that the market represents, it is the belief system that actually interprets what is actually seen. To re-organize the self, the belief system that creates the particular construction of the self, requires courage. The brain simply does not want to change a perceptual map once it is created. It is the deconstruction and re-organization of this core material that I call conquering the self. Trading simply forces you into battle within the self -- or you continue losing capital. Hope this makes sense and is useful. Rande

Hey zdo I still observe this forum, but I found that everytime I entered a conversation, there were a bunch of trader psychologists joisting with one another. Didn't seem productive to me. And, yes, to another very mindful reader, this is a social media avenue. And it has to be evaluated as such. The real driver is whether people want to re-organize their psychology so that they can trade effectively. Few people come into trading equipped from a mindself point of view to be consistent traders. It has to be learned -- if you want to master trading, you will have to conquer the self. If people are seeking to grow as a trader, then I certainly want to be part of that conversation. Will part of that motivation be to expose my work to them -- yes, it will. Rande Howell

I have compassion for you. Trading has a unique way or forcing us to look at ourselves. Most folks invest a number of years into their development with their platform and methodology before they conclude they to re-organize themselves before they can master the tools of their trade. Check out Traders Laboratory - Professional Traders Community - Rande Howell. It may help.

The biggest road block to trading success is the "you" doing the trading. And our avoidance of confronting ourselves. Rande Howell Index of /

zdo. Probably preference. It is our mindset that interacts with our methodology. That is, our beliefs and hidden biases are the blinders that we interpret through. We can hold on to many stories (fish tales) about performances in most domains of our lives. But in trading, your trading account reflects directly on your competence in managing your psychology of trading. It helps to cut through the clutter and take responsibility for what ever story you are about trading. It's hard to stay in avoidance when you are taking responsibility for your trading account. By moving out of avoidance, we can observe what we are stuck in -- and grow from the experience. Rande Howell

Ulli -- So true. I use the balance in the trading account as the measure. The trading account cuts through all the stories and it is black and white about effectiveness. And as a benchmark measure, I use the win percentage and the ration of profitabiltiy of wins to losses to measure progress. At the bottom, a successful psychological plan is used so that you can stay on trading plan. And you are assessing the market through your beliefs, biases, and states of mind that is your personal psychology. So looking at the trading account is an excellent way of gauging the strength of your trader psychology. If you're on plan and profitable, then your psychological plan is proceeding in an effective direction. Rande Howell

ZDO -- Not sure I understand your question about Primary Process. I interpret Primary Process as the hardwiring of pattern that produces a stable perceptual map of the world. It is asserted that 75% of our organization of self is complete by the age of the 3 rd year of brain development. The real primitive pattern embedment does not go away, and, yes, parallel pathways can be build (habits and trained perceptual fields) to run concurantly with the old perceptual map. Fortunately, the brain and emergent mind have a tremendous level of plasticity to them. It is this aspect that offers us the capacity to change our ways of observing and interacting with the world we are creating. Our histories may never disappear, but we are able to become participants in the design of our futures. So we can alter the movement of our histories into the future. And trading is a great platform for this. You get real time feedback on your biases and beliefs about the decisions you make. We can become observers of the thought patterns (what I call voices on the stage of the self) and begin to choose which part of our internal dialog we feed and nuture. Becoming comfortable with uncertainty is essential for this. Rande Howell

You're right we appear to come from different orientations. The research psychologist Kegan noted that it was not the orientation that mattered. What mattered was the empathy or compassion that the therapist had for the client. That was the defining criteron that he comfirmed produced change in people. Stosney's and Dan Hill's work greatly impacted my work with people. After he retired from the University of Maryland and went public, something changed. The last communication I had with Stosney was a letter threatening a law suit for incorporating his work (which I learned in extended workshops from him) into the methodology I use to interrupt pattern. I couldn't understand (still don't) why he didn't incorporate breathing and self-soothing strategies into his emotional regulation process. It had proven highly effective while working with the populations I was working with then. These were adolescents and their families where the client could not be maintained in public schools or was about to be removed from the family due to mental illness -- fairly serious stuff. Once you peeled the layers away, it still come down to the quality of the attachment relationship that morphed into various conditions as the brain and mind aged. So RAD was a common dx unfortuately. I use a term, attachment disruption, to describe less horrific adaptations to the attachment process. I moved out of this arena as I realized that opening the mechanics of the attachment process was one thing, but the parents mostly were incapable of safe attachment. I consider the mind to be a stage where various voices from within the self give rise to the internal dialog we hear as our thoughts. Most of us are only conscious of a small portion of this internal dialog. Expanding our undestanding of this phenomena helps awaken the giants that are dormant within us. And it helps us to unfuse our identity to limiting conversations occurring in the mind. To do this, emotional regulation has to occur simply to take the body out of aroused states and to calm the mind. When that is done, we can begin to awaken the observing self. That's were we find these parts of the self, such as the impartial sage, and they can be incorporated into our internal dialog. Examing and deconstructing our beliefs about who we are leads to the ability of managing our states of mind. Sage is such a state of mind -- and is useful in trading. Regarding producing inquiry. Rather than try to write about a hypethetical trader, I written a number of articles that lay out certain aspects of the process I use. That might be easier building a scenero on a post. Let me know. Now it back to attacking the killer thorned vine from hell that has engulfed part of wooded area of my land. Rande Howell

This is going to take a detour from pure psychology of trading. Regarding fear as a motivator of attachment in babies. This is based both on Steven Stosney's Emotional Inteligence work (while at University of Maryland) around the organizing emotions of shame, guilt, and fear of abandonment as the bio-emotive mechanism that organizes and re-organizes attachment among humans. Compassion is also a core emotion, but it is the parent's response to the baby and it certainly organizes the child's developing brain around secure attachment. Both are involved. In his reseach he found that there are 3 pathways that an emotion can take when triggered - attach, avoid, approach. Attack is assoicated with anger. Avoid is associated with fear. And approach is associated with compassion. The key is training the brain to shift the pathway that the emotion takes or at least create parallel pathways so that the learned response can collapse original impulse from taking over the cognitive process of a person. Mary Ainsworth demonstrated the power of fear of abandonment (what most of us would recognize as disconnection or a sense of isolation) on toddlers seperated from their mothers -- and the repair attempts of the mother to self sooth the triggering of abandonment in Ainsworth's Strange Situation experiment. Fundamentally when you look at the four attachment styles defined by her, you can see many of the disorders and brain dysregulation so medicalized today are simply grown up versions of the primitive disruption to early attachment and the adaptation the brain makes to compensate. I spent a number of years cutting my teeth on Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD), ADHD, ADD, ODD, depression, anxiety, and Intermitent Explosive Disoder and concluded it was not nature that "caused" the dysregulation of neuro systems. In fact, I came to understand that when most of the ADD and ADHD clients were treated for anxiety and establishment of safe attachments -- the symptoms came under management without the aid of further medications to externally alter brain chemistry. It was anxiety that was causing the distraction, not an organic brain dysfunction. This is explored in the book, Driven to Distraction. Having worked with a number of Bi-Polars, I also understand that chemically altering brain dysfunction is essential -- when appropriate. Having worked with these populations before I became involved in personal development and peak performance has helped me greatly distinguish brain dysfunction from adaptation -- and how to help a person brain the brain to produce a different mind. Drug companies spend billions of dollars in an attempt to convince people that negative feeling state are brain dysfunctions that need an outside agent to regulate. I have found that our brain is a pharmacy -- and we can learn to become the pharmacist. Yoga and meditation systems (including mindfulness) are age old methods of regulating brain function. We would be wise to incorporate modern variations to regulate our brain and emotions. Back to trading and the brain. The key in my work is first regulation of emotiion and state of mind, then it is awakening the aspects of the self that create a state of mind conducive to peak performance in trading. After all the heavy Emotional Intellence and Cognitive work, a foundation is laid to work from empowered Jungian archetypal elements of the psche. If you have not developed the inner courage to face your fears, they will bite you. And if you have not learned to invoke the impartiality of the sage, it will be difficult to become emotionally disengaged from the body's triggering to negative emotional states and neurally embedded beliefs that limit performance.

Hey FXGirl -- Evolutionary and neuro- biology of social mammalians place the mother emotion of survival at fear. Avoidance of threat is for more useful than attacking a threat or approaching the threat. Attachment between mother's and baby is built around fear of abandonment or isolation. Babies become distressed when seperated from the safety and care of mother. This is the amydala and limbic system that drives our emotional nature. And our biological nature cannot discern between biologically grounded fear and psychological discomfort. The limbic system was created 50 million years ago while our neo-cortex (creating a psychology of being) only came about around 1.5 million years ago. This is the underpenning of the limbic's triggering to fear and its step child, anger, to overwhelm the rational thinking of the neo-cortext. What many call brain dysfunction is about our brain adapting us to environmental response. Once the pattern is established, it locks in and easily sweeps "normal" functioning away. These are the assumptions that emotional regulation training is built upon. Emotion is powerful and controlls the kind of thinking that is possible for our brain and our mind. Think last time you were fearful and angry and notice the thinking and predictions you did. Calming the body and mind gives us the opportunity to choose the state of mind that we will respond from rather than react to. In trading, only about 5% of traders are successful and most report that some form of fear is at the base -- even fear of missing out on a trade. As we learn to trade beyond the pull of our primitve fear responses, a whole new world opens up. It was always there, but it could not be seen because our vision was clouded by our fear or our denial of fear. Remember, Wall Street is built around fear and greed. It really doesn't operate rationally. That's that 50 million year old brain at work. Rande Howell

FXGirl -- My interest is not the technology, rather it is the beliefs, assumptions, and biases that open or close posibility in the mind's eye of a person. Helping people awaken to the power of their histories and moving beyond the grip they have on people's creation of their lives is deeply fulfilling to me. Once people "get it" that they can step out of blindly being sweep along by their histories and can powerfully influence the creation of their world, people find the confidence, hope, and courage to become designers of themselves. Trading is such a powerful platform for this. There are many different successful methodologies -- it's recognizing the mind (identity) as fluid, not static, and developing it to interact with the technology that I find great satisfaction in. Finding people to help a trader do this is a tad more difficult than find a trading methology (if followed) that is successful. Rande Howell

Hey BlowFish -- Organic brain dysfunction is far from the typical brain (and mind) of a trader. In the same way an athelete trains both body and mind for peak performance, so does a trader "train" body and mind (I would add the spiritual also) to move from adaptations of the brain (and its emergent mind) that blind us to becoming more effective observers of our self fulfilling prophesies that biase what you "see" and interpret as you engage the market. And in the same way the brain influences mind, the mind can be taught to shape the brain. This intersection is the beliefs, attitudes, biases that we bring to the market. If we don't learn to be mindful of them, they control our perception of (and performance in) the market place of trading. In emotional regulation training you literally retrain the brain's archetecture and chemistry. You no longer react in the historical patterns that created the organization of the self you would call you (and its dysregulation). In calming the brain and mind, much more becomes available to us. Some might call this brain surgery, but I prefer to call this growth. Trading forces the issues like few other endeavors do. In most of the domains that we act in, we can deceive ourselves and rarely get real time feedback about the effectiveness of our beliefs and states fo mind. In trading, the influence of your fears and your biases will give you real time feedback about how well your beliefs shape outcome. This is why I like working with traders. The ones who want to make a living at trading have to develop the courage to do self examination so they can develop the states of mind that create efffective trading. If they want to survive and prosper they really have to develop the self. Suffering, in trading or in other domain of life, comes from our avoidance of discomfort and change. Transformation comes from embracing our capacity to change and evolve. My hope is that this helps you understand the interconnections of brain, mind, beliefs, and states of mind -- and how they impact performance. Rande Howell

Your beliefs, your states of mind, and your biases (who you think we are) become embedded in the neuro pathways of your brain. It is from this interfacing substrate called your brain that your mind emerges. When you recognize the dominant emotion that the brain (and mind) organize around is fear and that you are biologically and psychologically biased to avoid our fears, it is an easy jump to understand why trading can expose our lack of skills for managing our fear and denial of fear -- and why only 5% of traders actually make money consistently. What fears drive a person's psyche while trading? Fear of loss, fear of inadequacy, fear of not being right, fear of self sabotage, and fear of missing out. ALL ARE UNAVOIDABLE. You may blind yourself to them, but, in trading, your trading account will have final judgment. The avoidance of fear may turn into grandiosity, but underneath the arrogence is fear. All are powerful emotional states that overwhelm your thinking and the maintaince of states of mind conducive to effective trading. The key in developing an effective personal psychology for the innner game of trading is to first develop the courage to face your fears. That affords you the opportunity to reorganize your understanding of the self. This has tremendous impact on performance in trading. Then, developing the skills to invoke particular states of mind for performance, opens the possibility of designing the states of mind that you trade from. Each of these states of mind come with a self fulfilling prophesy machine called the brain. The Holy Grail is not the trading plan (there are many effective platforms and plans around). Emotional state and state of mind management is the greatest skill a trader will ever develop. Rande

Object Relations and Attachment Relationships have to be tease apart in the way I work with people. Attachment understanding has grown immensely since the 1960's. What we know is that attachment is needed for all social mammalians for survival. When the the fundamental needs for Cherishment and Connection are broken (and this will happen) a disruption to secure attachment is experienced by the adapting brain. To the brain this is a matter of life and death and only later does it become psychological. Being that the brain is primarily organized around fear (fear of loss, fear of missing out, fear of failure), we can begin to see how our more primitive adaptions to survival become a liability in trading. The neural pathway has produced a familiar pattern that becomes the box of our comfort zone (perceptual map) and suddenly, there we are, trading from fear, impulse, or greed (fear of losing out). It is these biologically based patterns that we have to learn to observe and disrupt so that we can call up more empowered part of our being. It is in this regulation of emotion and motivation that opens the door to the development of an empowered self. Until we learn to manage our biology, our psychology will be overwhelmed. Rande

I can understand that. I know very few people who willingly will practice self honesty with themselves. Most are initially forced to acknowledge that they are going to have to examine themselves. Simply would have avoided it if it were possible. When you take on an attitude of curiosity then self inquiry becomes a great way of reorganizing the self into higher functioning. From my experience with working with people, a train wreck or two is required to wake up to the need for self honesty. Maybe that's why only 5% of traders actually make money trading. They've stopped hiding from themselves and are genuinely curious about the possibility of who they can become. Rande