Recently I have begun experimenting with a computer program (HiJaack Pro) that captures graphic images of my trading screens for ready use as flash cards. An additional feature assembles these images into "movies" that can be viewed on demand. Such a technology has the potential to greatly expand the number of implicit learning trials, as each trading day can be captured as a number of minimovies. The advantage to capturing the data in moving form is that it potentially sensitizes the learner to the unfolding of the patterns and the sequences that precede tradable market behavior. Conducting the trials with the same data and the same displays that one would experience in trading could be expected to enhance the transfer of implicit learning to real-time trading.
A second set of technologies with the potential to accelerate the development of trading expertise is biofeedback. If, indeed, the learner gains more from the implicit learning trials by maintaining a high level of focus and concentration, then any techniques that expand one's focus could meaningfully increase the efficiency of learning. At present, I am experimenting with forehead temperature feedback as an indirect measure of blood flow to the brain's prefrontal cortex. As cognitive scientist Elkhonon Goldberg emphasized in his text The Executive Brain, this region is largely responsible for our concentration, decision making, and other executive functions. To the degree that the activation of the frontal lobes can be increased, executive control over behavior and the ability to process new information is potentially expanded.
Goldberg cited a range of evidence suggesting that the exercise of brain regions contributes to their development, including cognitive exercises that enhance the functioning of the frontal lobes and that forestall the deterioration associated with aging. He envisions gymnasiums for the mind, which promote cognitive fitness. Rather than attempt to cultivate specific mental processes, Goldberg asserted, people might try to actually reshape the brain. The intensive use of biofeedback to exercise the brain regions responsible for concentration may be among the most promising ways in which traders can maximize their learning and develop expertise. Perhaps it is possible to accelerate this development to the point that the normal 10 years needed to achieve expertise could be reduced significantly.
Is it possible that trading techniques, executed faithfully, could actually reshape the brain? I believe so. In a remarkably encyclopedic text, Zen and the Brain, neurologist James Austin traced the biochemical and structural changes in the brain as a function of Zen meditation. His comprehensive review points to glutamate (an excitatory amino acid neurotransmitter) and GABA (an inhibitory transmitter) as key players in the reshaping process. It is interesting that GABA is created from glutamate with the aid of an enzyme, GAD (glutamic acid decarboxylase). Research suggests that about 40 percent of all nerve cells are GABA producers and another 30 percent produce glutamate. Austin referred to these transmitters as the yin and yang of neurology, in that they largely control the inhibition and the excitation of response patterns. Injected GABA, for example, will inhibit aggressive and hyperactive responses in animals; reducing GABA will create hyperexcitability. Among humans, benzodiazepine medications (minor tranquilizers, such as Xanax and Valium) enhance the transmission of GABA, reducing agitation.
Austin noted that if excess glutamate from nerve cells overactivates the receptors from the next (postsynaptic) cell, it causes this cell to die. Among the sites most affected by such glutamate production are those responsible for the creation of stress-activated peptides that serve as messengers to the hypothalamus and amygdala. Austin hypothesized that "repeated, deep extraordinary states of consciousness" may "etch" the brain by selectively destroying nerve cells, including those involved in "dysfunctional, overemotionalized behavior" (p. 656). Moreover, glutamate receptors in nerve cells appears to modify the excitability of the next cells, improving memory and task performance among animals.
Goldberg cited research in Russia that found that L-Glutamic acid, of which glutamate is the sodium salt, improves functions associated with the brain's frontal lobes, including insight and time sequencing. The Zen practitioner may thus create traitlike changes in personality both by etching away negative emotional response patterns and by selectively enhancing cognitive abilities.
A variety of techniques in addition to meditation, such as hypnosis, may also expand focus and concentration and thus aid the implicit learning of market patterns. I am convinced, based on my personal experiments with the Philip Glass music, with the sound-and-light machine, and with the biofeedback that some of the best mental gymnasium exercises consist of cultivating and sustaining highly extraordinary mind states. The acceleration of learning may very well depend as much on the learner's state as on the organization of the material being presented. At present, I am experimenting with biofeedback not only to stay in the zone, but also to explore zones of various depth and intensity. My goal is to determine whether staying in these zones during trading can ultimately enhance learning and performance.
My working hypothesis is that the repeated, intensive performance of mental gymnastics alters the balance of information processing between brain hemispheres. Cutting links a variety of psychopathologies to the relative overactivation of one hemisphere and the suppression of the other. Anxiety and depression are most clearly linked to right-hemispheric activation; schizophrenia and other thought disorders appear lateralized to the left hemisphere. Each hemisphere plays a unique and crucial role in cognition. As V. S. Ramachandran and Sandra Blakeslee noted, the job of the left hemisphere is to create belief systems or models and to fold new experiences into this system. That is the "interpreter" discovered by Michael Gazzaniga and Joseph LeDoux. The right hemisphere is responsive to abnormalities in experience that conflict with existing models. For that reason, Ramachandran and Blakeslee refer to the right hemisphere as a devil's advocate.
Traders clearly need the ability to form mental models of the market (left hemisphere) and to quickly revise these when anomalies occur (right hemisphere). This requires a distinctive set of cognitive gifts: the ability to be highly attuned to experience, to assemble robust mental maps (trading plans), and to flexibly modify these maps on the basis of experience. These are among the same gifts that distinguish practitioners in other fields, from chess players to psychotherapists to fighter pilots. It would not surprise me if careful study of expertise in these fields yields further insights into the characteristics and the development of superior traders.
Conversely, a great deal may be learned about problems in trading by studying people who lack these capacities. Allow me to propose a "Trader's Syndrome A" that typifies traders who appear to have difficulty in creating and modifying plans. This syndrome is characterized by:
•Inattention—The trader has difficulty sustaining attention and demonstrates distractibility and low task vigilance.
•Behavioral disinhibition—The trader tends to be impulsive, responding rapidly and inaccurately to tasks.
•Deficient rule-governed behavior—The trader exhibits difficulties in adhering to task rules and demands.
Now consider the converse of this trader's syndrome, Trader's Syndrome B. It is characterized by:
•Hypervigilance—The trader rigidly locks onto a limited set of stimuli, losing forest for trees.
•Behavioral inhibition—The trader tends to be overanalytical, experiencing paralysis when it is time to act.
•Inflexibility—The trader becomes overly focused on task rules and demands, losing flexibility in responding.
Trader's Syndrome A is taken from Russell Barkley's diagnostic criteria for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Syndrome B is an apt description of an anxiety disorder. The extremes of these "syndromes" capture the majority of problems faced by traders. In performing mental gymnastic exercises that strengthen the functioning of the executive centers, the frontal lobes, people may cultivate a path between these extremes. This path may best be described as flexible focus. It is a state familiar to those who have undertaken meditation or biofeedb
ack disciplines.
Goldberg cited a variety of evidence to challenge the notion that the adult brain loses its plasticity. He noted that adult rats, placed in an enriched environment with wheels and toys, develop 15 percent more neural cells than unstimulated mice. What, however, if traders can create their own stimulations, accelerating developmental changes that might otherwise occur over 10 years of training? This truly is one of the most exciting frontiers in the psychology of trading.
THE QUEST FOR MARKET MASTERY
When Jack Schwager asked Market Wizard Ed Seykota what advice he would give the average trader, Seykota's response was instructive. Give your money to a superior trader, Seykota advised, and find something that you are truly good at. When Schwager asked how the average trader could transform himself, Seykota responded that average traders do not transform themselves—only superior traders do that.
In years of reading literature on trading and the markets, I have come across few better pearls of wisdom. Find your passion: the work that stimulates, fascinates, and endlessly challenges you. Identify what you find meaningful and rewarding, and pour yourself into it. If your passion happens to be the markets, you will find the fortitude to outlast your learning curve and to develop the mastery needed to become a professional. If your passion is not the markets, then invest your funds with someone who possesses an objective track record and whose investment aims match your own. Then go forth and pour yourself into those facets of life that will keep you springing out of bed each morning, eager to face the day.
It is far better to struggle in the service of one's dreams than to find instant success at meaningless work. The greatest joy in life, George Bernard Shaw once wrote, is being used for a purpose you recognize to be mighty. The greatest fields—those that are a calling and not a mere job—give one room to expand and develop oneself. There is only one valid reason for trading the markets, just as there is only one valid reason for being a psychologist, a dancer, or an architect: because it is your calling, the arena that best draws on one's talents and passion for self-development.
It is in this context that trading and investing can be truly heroic activities. The anthropologist Joseph Campbell has studied heroic myths across various cultures and has discovered a common underlying theme. The hero is one who faces a worthy, but daunting challenge. Unable to easily vanquish his foe, the hero must descend into the underworld to gain a boon that allows him to achieve his ends. This descent is frightening and fraught with peril, but it hardens heroes for their eventual conquest.
If traders are to be successful, they must fight sobering odds and surpass the efforts of many competitors. They are not automatically equipped for the challenge. Their descent into the underworld requires that they face their personal demons, fighting those cognitive and emotional tendencies that would distort their efforts at identifying, understanding, and trading market patterns. If they are to succeed, they must become more than they are; they must exercise a control and a mastery well beyond that demanded by ordinary life. Like the mythical Greek hero Hercules, successful traders will find their clubs insufficient to kill off the many-headed monster Hydra; like Theseus, the mythical King of Athens, they will be tempted by the Sirens as they avoid the perils of the marine monsters Scylla and Charybdis. As with Hercules, too, their success will come from their ability to accept assistance and to employ new weapons. Like Theseus, they will avoid the Sirens' song and navigate the narrow path only through steely self-discipline.
This mythic challenge also provides the joy of competitive games and sport: With each match, the combatants enact a new heroic struggle, facing new foes, digging deeper into themselves as they descend into their own underworlds of risk, reward, pain, and ecstasy. As spectators to the sport, people vicariously share in the athletes' adventures, thereby absorbing a measure of their heroism. In cheering for the exploits of an Olympic hockey or soccer team, fans place themselves in the spiritual shoes of their heroes, ennobling themselves in the process.
There are few arenas left in life where the independent individual can enact the heroic struggle. The Gold Rush of the late 1800s captured the imagination of the public because it so thoroughly embraced Campbell's heroic myth. An individual could cross the desert and face myriad dangers in order to strike it rich. Over a century later, the emergence of the Internet promised a similar boon, where individual entrepreneurs could pioneer a worldwide medium and reap magnificent rewards.
These thrilling pursuits, however, are exceptions to the rule. More often, people live and work in large social units, fulfilling highly circumscribed roles, where their unique contributions are difficult to assess. People enjoy a security of job and home unknown to Hercules or Theseus but also have few direct outlets for their heroic impulses. In small ways, people can face and overcome challenges on the golf course or in pursuing the next round of sales targets, but the grand dimensions of heroism are missing. There can be no greatness without danger, no uplifting conquest without a facing of the underworld.
This, I believe, is the eternal allure of the markets. With a reasonable stake and an online account, each person can undertake his or her own gold rush and enact the highest entrepreneurial quest. Like salmon that swim upstream to spawn, sperm that pursue the egg, and prospectors who dig for precious metal, many will be called and few chosen. It matters not. What matters is the dignity and the dimension of soul conferred by one's noblest impulses. It is not desirable to rule in hell or to serve in heaven; far preferable, to paraphrase Ayn Rand, is to fight for tomorrow's Valhalla in order to walk its halls today.
If this book has offered a few signposts for your journey, it has achieved its goal. Many great-souled individuals have walked this path before you and me. Learn from their example and, especially, from the greatness within you. There are times right now when you, even in small ways, achieve the glory of the gods. Absorb the lessons from these. And when all your cunning, understanding, and tools fail you, find the benefactor who will hand you the torch that will sear the Hydra and the mirrored shield that will allow you to view and kill the hideous Medusa.
If you can remain pure and steadfast in your pursuits, you will face more than your share of risk and uncertainty, loss and lost opportunity. At the end of it all, however, I am confident that you and I will sit around a great table and bask in the eternity of the slain heroes who gather in Valhalla.
Bibliography
Albert, R. S. (1992). A developmental theory of eminence. In R. S. Albert (Ed.), Genius and eminence (2nd ed., pp. 3–18). Oxford: Pergamon.
Alexander, E, & French, T. M. (1946). Psychoanalytic therapy: Principles and applications. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Austin, J. H. (1999). Zen and the brain: Toward an understanding of meditation and consciousness. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Barkley, R. A. (1990). Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: A handbook for diagnosis and treatment. New York: Guilford.
Borges, J. L. (1964). Labyrinths: Selected stories and other writings. New York: New Directions.
Branden, N. (1997). The art of living consciously: The power of awareness to transform everyday life. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Brandstätter, H. (1991). Emotions in everyday life situations: Time sampling of subjective experience. In F. Strack, M. Argyle, and N. Schwartz (Eds.), Subjective well-being: An interdisciplinary perspective (pp. 173–192). Oxford: Pergamon Press.
Campbell, J. (1973). Hero with a thousand faces. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Castaneda, C. (1975). Journey to Ixtlan: The lessons of Don Juan. New York: Pocket Books.
Cleeremans, A. (1993). Mechanisms of implicit learning: Connecticut models of sequence processing. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Cleeremans, A., Destrebecqz A., & Boyer, M. (1998). Implicit learning: News from the front. Trends in Cognitive Science, 2(10), 406–416.
Cook, M. D. (2001). Staying alive: Trading defensively for maximum profit. www.traderslibrary.com: Trade Secrets Vid
eo Series.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1996). Creativity: Flow and the psychology of discovery and invention. New York: HarperPerennial.
Cutting, J. (1997). Principles of psychopathology: Two worlds, two minds, two hemispheres. Oxford: Oxford Medical Publications.
Davanloo, H. (1990). Unlocking the unconscious. Chichester, England: Wiley.
Diener, E., Sandvik, E., & Pavot, W. (1991). Happiness is the frequency, not the intensity, of positive versus negative affect. In F. Strack, M. Argyle, and N. Schwartz (Eds.), Subjective well-being: An interdisciplinary perspective (pp. 119–139). Oxford: Pergamon.
Elder, A. (1993). Trading for a living. New York: Wiley.
Elkin, I., Shea, M. T., Watkins, J. T., Imber, S. D., Sotsky, S. M., Collins, J. F., Glass, D. R., Pikonis, P. A., Leber, W. R., Docherty, J. P., Fiester, S. J., and Parloff, M. B. (1989). National Institute of Mental Health Treatment of Depression Collaborative Program: General effectiveness of treatments. Archives of General Psychiatry, 46, 971–982.
Ericsson, K. A. (1996). The acquisition of expert performance: An introduction to some of the issues. In K. A. Ericsson (Ed.), The road to excellence: The acquisition of expert performance in the arts and sciences, sports and games (pp. 1–50). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Fenton-O'Creevy, M., Soane, E., & Willman, P. (1999, August). Trading on illusions: Unrealistic perceptions of control and trading performance. Academy of Management Conference, Chicago, IL.
Flavell, J. H. (1963). The developmental psychology of Jean Piaget. New York: Van Nostrand.
Galton, F. (1869). Hereditary genius: An inquiry into its laws and consequences. London: Macmillan.
The Psychology of Trading Page 42