Trade Mindfully: The Critical Skill of Mindfulness in Trading:

Trade Mindfully

My book, Trade Mindfully, is the first book to detail the benefits and application of mindfulness in trading.  It’s at the printers now and is due on the bookshelves December 3^rd.  You can pre-order for quick delivery, and the Kindle version is now available, if you prefer the electronic format.  Here is a link to the book in both formats at amazon.com:

Although the book covers several trading psychology topics, mindfulness is a featured mental skill all traders will find of great benefit.  The book covers the ways in which mindfulness is useful for trading.  In this post, however, I’ll first step outside of trading and highlight one of the most recent findings related to mindfulness to illustrate the value and importance of this mental practice.

Recent Important Mindfulness Meditation Research

In a study just published in the journal Cancer, researchers looked at female breast cancer survivors who had completed medical treatment for the cancer and were experiencing high levels of stress. They were randomly placed into a mindfulness meditation group, a psychosocial support group or a control group for a three-month period.  Compared to the control group, women in the mindfulness and emotional support groups had greater telomere lengths at the end of the study.  Telomeres are nucleotide structures at the end of chromosomes that protect and buffer our genes from damage.  Over time, they become shortened due to ongoing cell division.  Shortened telomeres are associated with ageing, risk of disease and mortality; longer telomeres are protective against disease and the effects of ageing.  Through mindfulness practice, we can reverse telomere shortening and extend cell life-span. That’s pretty impressive.

Mindfulness is Not a Fad

Mindfulness is considered such an important new field that Ivy League school, Brown University has just created the first undergraduate program in contemplative studies.  Students are not only learning about the academic side of mindfulness meditation, but are also practicing it as a part of the curriculum.  Other American universities have established programs in contemplative science.  The University of Wisconsin, for example, has created the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds to study how meditation and mindfulness can directly help humans.  The University of Massachusetts Medical School has been a pioneer in research and clinical applications of mindfulness-based stress reduction, and UCLA has a research program in mindfulness.  These are just a few of many American universities focusing on the science and practice of mindfulness.  European universities are also deeply involved in mindfulness research and practice.  The University of Oxford has been an early investigator of clinical applications of mindfulness, especially in depression.  Researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, for another example, have just published brain imagery research showing how the brain works while meditating.

The point is, mindfulness is not just a passing fancy or fad.  It has real substance.  It is why I focus on mindfulness in Trade Mindfully.

Benefits of Mindfulness in Trading

Mindfulness in trading can be of significant benefit to traders.  Mindful trading will positively impact traders and their trading in a number of ways:

• Reduce loss aversion
• Mitigate the disposition effect (i.e., cutting winning trades short and letting losing trades run)
• Help traders get into “the zone”
• Reduce the negative effects of cognitive biases and heuristics on trading decisions
• Directly reduce stress
• Help traders see the market more clearly
• Increase awareness of the trader’s internal state and how it impacts their trading
• Increased ability to maintain focus on the market and the trading task at hand while trading, even when emotions are running hot
• Increase internal emotional regulation
• Other positive effects on trading and trading behavior

Mindfulness as it applies to trading, the benefits traders can derive from mindfulness and much more are all detailed in my new book, Trade Mindfully: Achieve Your Optimum Trading Performance with Mindfulness & Cutting-Edge Psychology.