Winning Edge Trading: Successful and Profitable Short- and Long-Term Trading Systems and Strategies

CHAPTER 15

The Trading Personality Profile Test

In Chapter 14, we discussed various psychological theories that could be utilized for trading. We made clear distinctions about two approaches to a trader’s psychology. One, discussed and prescribed by the majority of trading (pop) psychology in the market, expects you as a trader to change who you are. They propagate different methods and recommend you to get into a “zone” or self-discipline yourself. They advise different methods such as a neurolinguistic program (NLP) to disassociate and unlearn your behavior or promote a hypothesis, or they even offer you tapes and DVDs to enforce some type of positive affirmations. Well, if they work, their effects are short-lived, since their focus is behavioral modification. The aforementioned methods all aim to modify your behavior temporarily, anywhere from a few days to few weeks. However, as soon as your stress level and anxiety rises due to the complexity of the trading decision-making process and possible accumulated loss, your behavior will revert back to who you really are.

The second approach is that which have I presented to the trading community and financial world since 2002 with my book, How to Become a Successful Trader. In this book I presented a new and revolutionary idea based on personality traits theory. I proposed that it’s futile for traders to spend so much time and energy trying to change who they are. Since about 50 percent of our behavior stems from our genetic make-up, ...