Do you struggle with wild and rampant emotions interfering with your trading? This tip particularly helped me with day trading and quick scalp plays. It’s especially useful for traders who enjoy taking quick trades, but with speed comes a greater demand for controlling emotions in real-time. I learned about this great recommendation from the book The Daily Trading Coach by Brett Steenbarger.
To be in the flow state or in the zone when trading, you need a quiet mind that’s focused on the present task. This means avoiding little, distracting, and noisy thoughts that flit in and out of your head. Meditation practices can help with this. I remember countless times in my early years of trading when I was overwhelmed not only by the trading itself, but also by my seemingly uncontrollable barrage of random ongoing thoughts.
I wondered how I could get a handle on my thoughts and overall mindset. I felt like I could be swept away by my mind at any moment while trading. Whenever I gave in to the whims of my thoughts, feelings, and emotions, I would accidentally leave the door open for mental trading errors. Despite consciously attempting to curb my bad tendencies and habits, I would still fall into them. What I needed was a way to monitor myself in real-time.
Enter the biofeedback monitor, emWave by Heartmath. This small device can be clipped on your finger or ear to monitor your heart rate. As your moods and emotions start to elevate, your heart rate will vary, and the biofeedback monitor will beep to serve as a friendly reminder. It nudges you to breathe and find your center again when you are becoming too excitable, nervous, or frustrated, and need to relax.
The emWave serves as a reminder to take deep, slow breaths and to calm your nerves. It can also remind you to take a step back from the desk and stretch your legs. Ultimately, we must not let the market have an edge over us. By monitoring your emotions in real-time, the device keeps you aware and allows you to stay in tune with your current trading.
Personally, I found that using this gadget increased the odds of having a green day, as my profit and loss showed fewer red days once I incorporated it into my daily routine. It was hard to get angry or down when the monitor was reminding me to breathe. Each reminder brought a flash of my mantras to my mind and kept things in perspective. When my emWave beeped, I simply relaxed and focused on my breath.
If you have had trouble staying focused on the markets, particularly during busy trade times when nothing seems to work, the emWave monitor could be a great solution. The tips from Steenbarger’s book led me to this monitor, which really helped me to be mindful of myself. While I have been doing more long-term investing and swing trades lately, if I were actively day trading or scalping those fast-moving plays, I couldn’t recommend the biofeedback monitor more.
