Mindfulness and trading blog by Aedie Caltern

Towards Mindfulness Trading

I have referred in previous posts to some apparent contradictions that you may encounter in attempting to move towards mindfulness to improve your trading. These include using an apparently somewhat spiritual exercise as a way to make money and also the fact that the practice of mindfulness requires that you focus on your body even though your objective is what is going on in your head. I have dealt with the former of these issues in earlier posts. This post … Continue reading →

5 Questions on Mindfulness You Should Not Pursue

It’s only natural that you will have questions on mindfulness. After all, human beings dislike uncertainty, but are inquisitive. I’m sure no one knows about this dislike of uncertainty better than traders. So, you’re curious about mindfulness and want to learn about it. That’s fine, but be willing to accept the answers you receive. But there are some questions you should not pursue too far because you will not receive good answers. And if you do get any answers you … Continue reading →

7 Steps to Practice Mindfulness

Just as every long journey begins with a small step then at some stage you need to start to practice mindfulness. But wait a second. The first step must be in the correct direction or else your journey will be wasted. Or worse, it will take you further away from where you want to be. So it is important to not only make a start but to do so in the correct manner. That is where the guide comes in. … Continue reading →

The Present Moment

The present moment is the only time you have, or will ever have. That’s a fact. You cannot operate in the past or in the future. However, this is all so obvious that we seem to ignore it. We spend our time and mental capacity thinking back over what has happened and thinking forward to what will happen. The first often involves self-judgement while the latter regularly amounts to unfounded worry. We do this instead of acting and living in … Continue reading →

Mindfulness in Practice

What does mindfulness in practice look like in the everyday world? My good friend Andrew Dawson is a trader I respect. I particularly like his whole philosophy and approach to trading. And he captures a lot of this in this post where he compares his two passions: trading and gardening. The links between gardening and trading might not at first seem all that obvious to most people. But to me they are pretty strong. There are a couple of … Continue reading →

Overcome Stress

You must overcome stress if you are to have the emotional consistency that is required while trading. Mindfulness will help you do this by focusing your mind on what really matters while trading: the information that the market is providing. It does this by concentrating your mind on what is happening at the very moment when you need to make decisions. This avoids making decisions on the basis of fears or hopes about what might happen in the future or … Continue reading →

Mindfulness Meditation: what is that?

Mindfulness meditation is not the total practice of mindfulness, but it is an essential part. If you are unfamiliar with mindfulness, here is a good place to start. It’s not the whole of it because mindfulness will become part of everything you do, from the simplest of tasks to deep concentration. But you should not avoid setting aside discreet periods of time where you will meditate. Of course, just as meditation is only one part of mindfulness, so also is … Continue reading →

Meditation Techniques and Practices

There are many different meditation techniques. But, what comes to your mind when you hear the word meditation? Possibly someone promoting some evangelical adherence to an Eastern form of mysticism? Perhaps someone promoting vegetarianism? Or maybe someone sitting in an uncomfortable position and turning off from the world? A way to drop out perhaps? Or a way to rip off the gullible by dressing up snake-oil nonsense in a cloak of respectability by associating it with an ancient wisdom? You … Continue reading →

Mindfulness Trading Video

I’ve previously written about the importance of having a trading plan. I’ve also discussed the dangers of allowing your emotions to affect your decisions and the role that mindfulness can play in reducing this problem. Here’s a short video from NetPicks that discusses how mindfulness can be used to help traders to improve their performance by being aware of their emotions but remaining focussed on implementing their plan consistently. Let me know what you think by leaving a comment … Continue reading →

Mindfulness Exercises

Meditation is a core component of mindfulness exercises. This can be problematic for busy traders as it can lead to images of religious adherents sitting in uncomfortable poses. That is quite a put-off. However, while meditation is important, this image is far from the actual experience. One way to get around any block that this image of mediation may create is to understand why meditation is used. Then you can move on to understanding what it is and finally seeing … Continue reading →