Hypnosis in Trading

After making some recent mistakes in my trading, even as early as this week, and not having the patience to let winners run, I have been looking into ways to improve my trading psychology. I started trying hypnosis last week. Before you laugh, let me explain.

I first read about hypnosis in trading in the book New Market Wizards by Jack Schwager, an awesome book. In the book is an interview with Robert Krausz, a trader and member of the British Hypnotist Examiners Council. In the book, Robert talks about how he began using hypnosis to improve his trading. He realized there were psychological reasons why he wasn’t trading well, mostly hesitation due to fear of losing. He explained:

If you have truly back-tested a methodology and are employing an effective trading plan, your conscious mind is already aware of its validity. It’s your subconscious mind that prevents you from taking correct action in the market.

With hypnosis, he was able to quickly bring his trading to break-even, then finally to become a successful trader. One of the reasons he cited that a lot of traders give their earnings back is because they feel they don’t deserve their earnings, and hypnosis can help with his.

The more closely the conscious mind is aligned with the subconscious, the easier it is to generate winnings. To keep those winnings, however, your subconscious mind must believe only one thing that you deserve your winnings.

Of course, he is quick to point out that hypnosis alone will not help a novice trader become an advanced trader, anymore than hypnosis would help a novice chess player become an advanced chess player. He goes on to say:

If you don’t have a methodology and trading plan, all the hypnosis n the world won’t help you.

I then read a blog entry about a well-known trading blogger who listens to an MP3 of affirmations he uses to help his trading. That seemed ridiculous to me initially, but the more I thought of it, the more it made sense.

Finally, I had a personal experience with hypnosis not long ago, and saw how affective it could be. I was experiencing a prolonged bout of insomnia. There were nights where I wasn’t sleeping at all, and when I did, it was just a couple of hours. For those of you who have had this, you know how grueling this can be. After a couple of weeks, I went to see a doctor. He performed a blood test, and the results came back showing there were no physical problems. I tried some prescription pills, which did work, but began losing their effect after a couple of weeks. Since there was no physical cause, I knew this was a psychological problem. There was nothing unusual going on in my personal life, so I wasn’t sure what was causing it. One night, I decided to take a look at hypnosis and stumbled upon HypnonsisDownloads.com. I downloaded their MP3 Cure Insomnia and tried it the next night, and it worked! I would fall right to sleep after the end of the audio, which was only about 15 minutes long. After several nights, I no longer needed it or any medications, and have been sleeping soundly ever since (I know this sounds like a commercial, but it's not. I am not part of their affiliate program or associated with them.). So naturally I began to wonder “What else can hypnosis do?” I was browsing through their site, and saw they had an MP3 called Traders Mind. I thought I would give it a try.

The verdict:

I am not sure. I am certainly trading calmer this week, but don’t know if I would attribute it to the hypnosis MP3. The guy on the MP3 is not a trader, and I didn’t expect him to be. Obviously, he doest talk about strategy, but talks about trading like a professional, which means planning your trades and not giving into the fear and greed and not looking back after the trade, something I do a lot. Pretty obvious stuff. I plan to continue using it for awhile and see if I notice any resuts. I would be interested in knowing what other traders use to improve trading phsycology.