Stoic Trading: Emotional Control
Discipline, self-command, and emotional control
in trading
Humans have struggled with impulse and emotional control for centuries.
In Meditations, Marcus Aurelius wrote:
“Frame your thoughts like this. You are a mature person, you won’t let yourself be enslaved by this any longer, no longer pulled like a puppet by every impulse, and you’ll stop complaining about your present fortune or dreading the future.”
We can tell by the tone that Marcus was obviously disgusted by his recent spell of overtrading the Dow futures…
NO LONGER A PUPPET
But seriously…
You wouldn’t let another man push you around, you wouldn’t allow another person to dictate your emotions, so why do you let your thoughts?
As traders, we tolerate behaviour from ourselves we’d never accept from anyone else.
- The brutal self-talk
- Not doing what we said we would
- Slacking on the prep work
- Giving in to impulse
- Moaning about our current equity curve
For many traders, emotions are running the show, and they’re letting them.
Mastery begins when you learn to take control and say no to things that don’t serve you:
No to that “just one quick trade” urge.
No to the impulse.
No to the “I’ll review my journal later” bs.
As Marcus so perfectly put it:
“No longer pulled like a puppet by every impulse.”
It ain’t easy… trading tends to bring out the worst behaviours like nothing else.
But that’s exactly why the prize is so big.