In This Episode
- What A.D.D. really means
- How to overcome these tendencies
- Specific tips for traders who like to do many things at once
How to Overcome A.D.D. Tendencies to Succeed in Trading
Some people consider themselves A.D.D. and that may or not be true. However, the fact remains that some personality types don't like to sit still.
Learn what our experience has taught us about “Attention Deficit Disorder” and our best tips for overcoming these tendencies.
Read the Transcript:
Hugh: Hi, Walter. What do you think about this concept of ADD? Some people say ADD is getting in the way of “me-trading-successfully” what do you think of that?
Walter: That is an interesting idea. Here in the spaceship, we have no place for ADD. Everyone has to know their place.
Hugh: Can't go off anywhere.
Walter: No we will all die, that's right. You know what is interesting about that? I had this Professor in Graduate School who was talking about how his idea was that ADD was this construct that we have and it's kind of like a new idea. Unlike in the past — he was very evolutionary sort of biological you know that was sort of his bent on Psychology — and he was saying that those guys would have been in the past the lead hunters, the king of the tribe, the one that got the most crocodiles you know from the river that sort of thing.
The ADD guys and he said that what was happening is we were creating a new environment for people like the classroom. We were supposed to sit still, look up, pay attention and listen to the teacher. All that sort of stuff and so it was like we had these hunter-gatherer bodies that were kind of put into this new situation. So in other words, the diagnosis is the problem. The ADD diagnosis is the problem.
So the next step is what about trading? All right, here's what I think about this. You can construct a situation where your ADD is mitigated and you can also channel it. If you have like a checklist you go, “Okay, I have to have all these things lined up for me to take a trade with this system” and you have someone every week to check this. “This is okay. Let's see which trades you took. Show me your checklist. Show me what happened. Show me why you took the trade, why you didn't. Why did you risk this much?”
So you have checks and balances. You have a list of things you know you should do for every trade and then you have someone that's going to look over it every week and say, “Well, did you do what you said you were going to do?” The other thing is if you really have a lot of ideas percolating, why not just channel those into your system building?
I think that's the real, that's the love like the creative output for traders can be in system building and coming up with ideas and looking at different things. How can you use those ideas that you have you know to take a trade. So I really think that you should separate it.
So you should become very demented in the way that you trade and the way that you keep your records. The way that you score yourself on your trades and then you can become more creative in the way that you kind of create strategies and come up with things to test. To me, that's the key.
Hugh: Hey there! I hope you find this episode useful. I just want to let you know that Walter and I give away something valuable every month that helps traders improve their skills. You can enter to win by simply leaving an iTunes review and leaving a comment on our YouTube videos.
At the end of each month, we'll look at the comments and reviews from the month and we'll pick a winner at random. Each comment and each review counts for one entry during the month that it's pitted.
So, if you're interested in that, be sure to enter after this podcast is over. Alright, back to the episode.
Walter: If you need to have a small money account where you actually take live trades on your creative ideas, you can even try that. Again you know, try and keep them in records. So you’ll know which ideas are working for you and which aren't; kind of you know track that, tag that. So that's what I would say. What are your thoughts on that?
Hugh: I personally don't think there's such a thing as ADD. I think it's just a ploy to sell more drugs. Like you said it is those people who are the you know the movers and they need to be kinesthetic and they were the hunters back in the day. I think that the education system just is not built for them. Like you said, it's not tailored to that type of learning and they're geniuses in other ways but they aren't like book learning geniuses.
On top of what you said, that's a good thing to go through also but I think maybe consider, if you're that type, consider day trading. Just day trading for maybe like an hour a day and that kind of fulfills your need to flip between different pairs. You're kind of like on the hunt and then you just spend that one hour of discipline trading and then you can go on and do something else for the rest of your day.
So that's another thing that I think could help that type of personality but the bottom line is, I don't think there is such a thing as ADD. I think it's just a different learning style.
Walter: You just need to constrain your different areas because going off the reservation when it comes to trading, can really hurt. Like that's a bad thing and you know inevitably I get these questions from traders. When they say, “Have you ever just taken trades based on where you think the market's going to go?”
I am like, “No.” Maybe when I first started trading we did that. I remember my roommate when I was trading he was like, “Oh no! Oil is going up man. Oil is going up” you know stuff like that. I was like, “What? Where's the stop loss?” Do you know what I mean? That sort of thing and I think if you keep it penned up, it's the way to go. Like in the right area.
Hugh: Right parameters.
Walter: Yeah.
Hugh: Okay, cool. Thanks, Walter.
Walter: Thanks.
Hugh: All the information in this podcast is for educational and informational purposes only and is not trading or investment advice.
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