Freud & Trading

I’m feeling nervous & impulsive about my first trade. I’m also sub-consciously seeking approval from my loved ones and not getting it.

Therefore I’m battling to make sure logic is the decision driver and not emotion. Today I have identified a few possible trades within a market which is probably going bull. However a cold dispassionate look at the trades shows they have flaws, nor are they my favoured pattern (NR7). A similarly cold look at the market suggests the bull turn might be short lived with resistance above the indexes current positions. Therefore I won’t be trading today.

Rather I’ll be preserving my capital for a better opportunity. As confidence is important I am preserving that too by looking for a first trade with a high probability of success.

As an aside I wondered what Freud would make of it. In Freud’s model the human mind has three components.

1) ID - inner desire. Childlike impulses to satisfy wants.

2) Super-Ego - the conscience

3) Ego - whose task is to balance ID & the Super Ego. To find a balance between primitive drives (ID), morals (SE), and reality.

As a trader my base impulse is to make money. The ID is telling me to get into the market and get some filthy lucra this minute. My Super Ego is saying hang on think about the possible consequences. You could lose all your money, disappoint your family & lose face in front of your friends.

My heroic Ego is mediating between the two with it’s beady eye on reality. It’s telling ID that you may want it right now but that has consequences. It’s telling the Super-Ego that the ultra-safe approach instilled by my caring parents will preclude all action and therefore won’t satisfy any basic wants. And it is saying to both ID & Super-Ego that there is a logical reality to this problem which if interpreted correctly can put probability firmly on our side.

Trading is as they say 90% psychology.