Why Cognitive Behaviour Techniques Could Improve Your Trading Beyond Your Wildest Dreams

If you are an experienced trader or investor you will know that mastery is a mind game. In fact, trading and investing are about understanding crowd psychology and your own psychology , because when you fully understand how you react to events deemed to be outside of your control you are taking control of yourself.

This very simple fact is easy to write about, and I have written about it a lot, yet putting the theory into practice is quite a different matter. Particularly in the recent market turmoil the emotions and consequently the trading strategies of even many seasoned traders have been pushed to their limits.

The reason for this is also equally simple, yet most traders or investors lack the innate understanding of universal laws and how to apply them to get the results they are after. You see, we insist on seeing everything through the eyes of separation. We believe that we can observe events with clear beginnings and clear endings.

For example many market analysts compare this bear market with the bear market of 1929. They put time and price delineations in their analysis and believe that this will priduce an accurate model for future market moves.

Please don't get me wrong. Cycle analysis is a very valuable tool, yet nothingever repeats in quite the same way. The best analytical skills will fall short if you are not in harmony with yourself. Being in harmony with yourself means that you can accept every aspect of you, including fear, anxiety , stress, self doubt and other negative emotions, as well as happiness , exuberance, joy and optimism. In other words you will have a very wide and expanded view of the real you.

All emotions, good and bad, are an expression of our existence which lets us understand our world, for we cannot experience joy without knowing unhappiness and so on. Yet we insist that joy must always win. We must always think positive and all will be well. By contrast we resent unhappiness and similarly negative emotions.

These assumptions are huge misconceptions and a total aberration of your reality. They will also cause you to create skewed results in your trading, investing as well as in your life in general. It is a fact of live that there is always going to be good and bad, up and down. Bear markets and bull markets in different degree cycles. After all the markets only reflect mass consciousness and nothing else.

In your trading and investing you are mirroring the mood of the masses and the mood of the present moment. You are also making educated guesses of the future development of the general mood based on an understanding on universla laws. Provided you are in harmony with yourself and the world you will be good at this.

To the extend that you are able to accept the above and, if need be clear your own fears and anxieties which after all are simply an expression of what goes on in the world at large you will be able to assess market movements correctly and become a persistently good trader or investor.

Now, clearing your anxieties and fears does not mean that you will never ever experience negative feelings and emotions any more. It means though that you will be able to observe them without having to react to them. You will be able to see them simply as a part of the limitless possibilities of an infinite universe.

Cognitive behaviour therapy, or should I say cognitive behaviour techniques are a wonderful tool to expand your self awareness. Increased self awareness gives you peace since the more you can see of the canvas that is your life, your trading or your investing, the more choices you will have to react, or not to react, as the case may be.

Knowledge, if applied correctly is power, and that goes particularly for the knowledge of yourself, because through the looking glass of your own actions and emotions you are getting a glimpse of how the universe works. Understand this principle, it will give you a sense of control.

Knowing that you can control things induces feelings of peace and calm. You need both if you want to navigate the increasingly volatile markets which will be here with us for a long time to come. This is the cycle we are in. You and I individually are not big enough to influence the cycle, but we can influence and work on our own mind sets and eventually the tide will turn for all of us, that's called momentum. And for those of you who trade, this is the essence of momentum trading.