COACHING
MINDFULNESS AND TRADING “For
trading, I
FX think it’s just unbelievable how
mindfulness helps you to stay here and not to think about past or future.” FX Trader after 4 Weeks Mindfulness Practise
I have been using Mindfulness approaches with my clients over the last 12-18 months and as I stated earlier have noticed a slowly increasing trend of traders and portfolio managers taking up yoga and meditation in order to enhance their well-being and performance.
In his presentation at the NeuroPsychoEconomics Conference in Rotterdam in 2012, Mark van Overveld from the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University Rotterdam, presented the findings of research done with traders utilising mindfulness based approaches to enhance trading performance. His key findings were:
• Mindfulness is associated with changes in areas of the brain relating to emotion regulation, response control and deliberate decision-making.
• Mindfulness seems very relevant for traders • Increased attention • Reduced stress • Useful for managing emotions (such as fear and anger) • Helps learning to accept emotions instead of acting on them • Awareness of emotions allows for adequate emotion regulation • Mindfulness facilitated financial decision-making in terms of risk-taking and timely loss-aversion
• Mindfulness helped individuals balance risk-taking and loss prevention.
defeating or self-destructive behaviours are attempts to escape, avoid or get rid of unwanted thoughts and feelings and mindfulness based approaches can be very helpful with improving this. “When I am trading it is like I am watching from outside myself, a 3rd person perspective.” Commodities Trader Post-Mindfulness Coaching
MINDFULNESS TRAINING
“Mindfulness is a habit, it’s something the more one does, the more likely one is to be in that mode with less and less
effort...It’s a skill that can be learned. It’s accessing something we already have. Mindfulness isn’t difficult. What is difficult is remembering to be mindful.” John Teasdale, Leading Mindfulness Researcher.
Mindfulness is a skill and as Teasdale states a habit, it is an action, and to get better at it you need to practise it. There are many ways in which you can practise your mindfulness, too many to go into in this article. If you were to go on a mindfulness course then central to your learning would be a formal sitting meditation where you would learn to still your mind and experience some calm, although there are many different kinds of mindfulness practise including lying, and even walking ones. Mindfulness can also be introduced into your everyday life by taking time to eat, drink and even exercise more mindfully, paying attention to your experience.
Exercise: Mindfulness of Breathing
Of real relevance for traders is this statement from Chaskalson in ‘The Mindful Workplace’. ‘Mindfulness practice promotes mindful responding as opposed to mindless reacting to events’. In trading terms, traders who are more mindful will be more able to respond to the market rather than simply react to their thoughts and emotions experienced as an outcome of the market. Most impulsive, self-
In this practise you are going to use your breath as a focus of your attention. The aim is to sit comfortably and then simply allow your attention to settle on the sensations of your breathing, following the rhythm and speed of your breath, the movements of your chest and abdomen, feeling the flow of air in and out, just noticing. When your mind wanders – as my own mindfulness teacher Michael Chaskalson author of ‘The Mindful Workplace ‘likes to remind me ‘as minds do’ – just notice where it went and then ‘gently and kindly’ bring your
FX TRADER MAGAZINE April - June 2013 33
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