NoDoji, I always enjoy your thoughts. Your comments got me thinking of something i failed to consider in the first post. First, Do i have very specific set ups ? No, not as specific as i'd like. Alot of my time currently is being spent in trying to make my basic setups more specific to avoid hesitation. I do believe that there is an art, or better said an intuitive aspect or subconscious decision making process going on that reacts to price action faster than i at times can see, verbalize or act on. This may be debateable but i think many would agree with me. Yesterday for example shortly after the open i saw price test resistance 3 times and said to myself it 'feels ' like it wants to go lower but i hesitated because i also said to myself it's in a range and support is too close and i don't have a specific trigger. Had i sold when i felt it, i would have been very near HOD. Now nevermind for a moment that maybe my set ups are unclear or i need more experience. Here's the thing. What if under hypnosis the therapist says "on this missed trade you "felt" it was going lower. Explain what made you 'feel" that way." Is it possible ? Could i learn from my subconscious ? By bringing the two together could i learn faster and learn better set ups ? Sounds crazy and maybe my basic assumption about hypnosis possibly being able to do this is just ridiculous. Maybe a more practical idea would be to instill some of my rules better. Quick example, i still chase trades occasionaly. So under hypnosis i would walk through a missed entry and am reminded to wait for a pullback or reminded it's OK to miss trades another will come along. Maybe there's some kind of anchor or word i can use post hypnotically that will remind me to stay calm when i miss a trade. Again not sure if this is possible or if visualization exercises would suffice. I don't want to make this thread about me (although since there are such great traders in the room i thought i'd hop on the couch but I am very interested in keeping the discussion going as well as hearing others experiences .
Yes, there have been several trials with MDMA for PTSD. We have even had a clinical trial in my country at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. As far as I know, the results have been very promising. The effect of MDMA allows one to process painful memories otherwise too traumatic for contemplation. It is quite fascinating...
I have a light degree of Asperger's. I do not exhibit any obvious signs, but my brain is wired "differently". On the positive side, I have fairly good pattern recognition skills. I also am I very visual thinker, and so I "see" charts all the time. This kind of visualization helped me tremendously. As I also have a tendency to obsess over things, I would visualize "every" potential move of a given interval. After a while, I thought I had a statistically valid approach. I think this allowed me to remove myself from a lot of the stress most people suffer from when they start out. I spent over a year researching before going live. I did not use a trading simulator, I simply observed the market... You talk about hypnosis, but by addressing these issues consciously first, you will eventually correct the troubles you might have in both your subconscious and unconscious mind... Remember that it is a two-way street Trading is a probabilities game. I use pretty basic statistical analysis as the foundation for my system. But I also take a number of my trades on intuition. Those trades actually outperforms all my mechanical approaches. I assume there is a method to it, but I have yet to be able to transfer what's in my mind to a workable algorithm. When trading in such a manner, risk and money management becomes extremely important. By being well capitalized, you can avoid a lot of the mental anguish most beginning traders experience. No one wants to hear this, of course. Everybody wants to become a millionaire starting with a $1000 account...
OK, so you need to better define your setups. I like to short off lower highs, but what if there's also a higher low (symmetrical triangle-in-progress)? I had the choice of filtering out trades under those conditions or put on the trade and be ready to exit quickly and reverse if that higher low doesn't break. Hypnosis could help you define why it "feels" a certain way. Maybe you're picking up patterns that your subconscious has filed away in memory and labeled as a signal that price will do a certain thing. Or maybe you're suffering from survivor bias and only remembering when feelings led to follow through and conveniently discarding all the times feelings resulted in the opposite move. I note when I have feelings price will do a certain thing, and I note what happens next. I do this on paper in real time. End of day part of post-market analysis is determining if there's a statistical edge backing up the results of these "feelings" and if there is, I define the pattern setting it up. There's always a pattern there, even if it's hiding in a smaller time frame. I also think hypnosis would be very valuable in cementing your rules and avoiding hesitation, chasing, jumping the gun, revenge trading, and such. It's either hypnosis, which is a nominal investment, or it's "touch the hot stove way too many times", which gets very expensive in a hurry! P.S. If price touched resistance 3 times and is near support, you did the right thing not shorting without a clear trigger
The sessions that I have gone to, the therapist does not ask questions of me on feel or anything else, it is more like a dictatorship and it is what you really want as your subconscious knows what needs to get done, but the conscious mind won't allow you to do it or not easily anyway. You can't learn what you already know, it is like breathing, you already know how to do this automatically and if you consciously try to hold your nose and stop breathing, conscious guy loses out. I am told to quickly take in information and when all rules line up, do not second guess. Am told to walk around the house once an hour or I will feel uncomfortable. You can learn faster thru attaining better concentration. Trade setups though is learned through better stat keeping in backtesting or recording more info about each trade. I had therapist instill into me that I will become sick to my stomach by placing a trade that does not contain all my rules, and it works for me. I have taken LSD twice in my life, once was spiked in a drink, woke up two states over, three days later with some gal I didn't know and in my bosses car, WOW. I still get flashbacks of that time. The other was in a controled situation and it was just too spooky to ever do again. Actually for me anyway, is reason I went for Hypnosis cause of all the unresolved issues I had with my strict religious childhood. I believe Hypnosis breaks down the protective covering of the Conscious mind and the subconscious is screaming to come out. I believe the subconscious mind is very weak unless it is fully educated and strong to overcome the Conscious covering in some areas. Example: Many men don't like to go dancing, they feel embarassed especially if they don't know how in front of many people, Conscious mind won't even let them try. Guy starts drinking 3-4 drinks which breaks Conscious mind down and now guy is wearing a lampshade and dancing to Pee Wee Herman's Tequila. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVKsd8z6scw
thanks lornz. BTW, have you read PIKHAL by Shulgin, the creator of mdma and hundreds of others psychoactives ? It's been several years but i recall it being quite interesting.
That is excellent info ! Beautiful, thanks. For now I'll stick w/ meditation, start w/ visualizations , refine my set ups then look into hypnosis.
hypnosis is probably more about dehypnotizing. here's a different tool with interesting results plus it is free! They give you access to the basic tool and if you wish you can buy additional modules that will guide you to one or more specific area you wish to solve but it is not necessary. It's called PSTEC. It's really free and available freely by the author. Nobody should charge you for those MP3. If they do look elsewhere . here's the official website http://www.pstec.org/ and download http://www.pstec.org/instructions.php Give it a shot and let us know what it did to you. Warning you! It is weird in a good way. Just try and you'll see. It will overload your brain with too many tasks at the same time and the end result is in many case astonishing. Cheers