Managing Your State

The state of mind in which you are in when you’re trading the markets is extremely influential to your level of trading success. Managing your state of mind to enter into your “trading zone” whenever you are looking at the markets is a skill that can be developed and mastered.

Do you have a routine or process you go through before trading the markets to ensure you are in your trading zone? If not then you’ll be surprised at how much of an impact you can make on your trading by managing your state of mind. Let’s run through some tips on how you can enter into your trading zone before you look at the markets each day.

Firstly, you need to know what it feels like to be in your trading zone. We recommend you write down how you feel when you are in your trading zone so you can remind yourself of the feeling each day before you start trading. It could include comments like; When I’m in the zone I’m feeling confident in every trade that I take, I’m in the flow of the market and have a good feeling of everything that’s going on. My thoughts are positive, my emotions are all under control and I’m at ease and decisive on trades. Just concentrate on really describing what it means and feels for you to be in the zone.

Next we recommend you to run through some mindfulness exercises to get you in the best possible frame of mind to start looking at the markets. Try out the mindful minute below:

Mindful Minute:

• Time a minute and in that minute count how many breaths you take. Normal breathing.
• Next time just really notice and pay attention to your breathing (rhythm, breath in and out, rise and fall of diaphragm).
• If you get distracted and your mind wonders, recognize the distraction and bring your attention back to your breathing.
• Can stack a few minutes together. Every minute you do this is good brain training and re wiring.

You should feel quite calm and relaxed after completing your mindful minute. Lastly we recommend you run through some visualisations of exactly what you are looking for in the markets. Close your eyes and visualise your textbook trading strategy setup in the markets, visualise clean trending charts pulling back into the buy zone and moving higher. Also think about the feelings that you get when you see these types of charts. What we are trying to achieve here is to remind yourself of exactly what you’re looking for so when you open your eyes back up and start scanning through the markets you have what you’re looking for fresh in your mind.

Feel free to add in other exercises such as more breathing exercises or anything that you think will help you reach your trading state of mind. We recommend that you run through this routine before you look at the markets each day and you will start to notice an improvement in how you are approaching the market.

Happy Trading!

The TWP Team