The reason I asked is I've been around these forums many years. It's common to hear guys say the key to trading is behavioral finance and psychology. Yet, I have yet to read one person elaborate on exactly what "behavioral finance" and "psychology" mean, when it comes to trading. In my experience, I would say successful trading is pretty much 98% psychology and "human behavior" in terms of its application to finance, but I seriously doubt people who dote these concepts around know what they're talking about...
They are both contributors to prudent risk management which is the only true edge in successful trading.
There's a connection between self-confidence and willpower as noted by many psychologists. Thus, when someone loses their self-confidence...there's no willpower or very little to help regain that lost self-confidence because they are connected. The issue isn't so much about trading. In contrast, the issue is about how people in general react to money especially if stress is involved. There's been lots of studies, research involving this especially in the behavior finance arena. Its amazing how someone for example manages rising gas prices, rising food prices and so on versus how someone manages their trade positions and how they view the markets. Its scary to see how similar the reactions are in different types of situations. Our brain is just wired in a way that most people (including traders) are not able to good decisions regardless if we have only a few seconds to do such or a few weeks. In contrast, when there's a step from individualism to a team decision process...things begin to change and there's better decisions. Therefore, it only makes sense to me for use retail traders to have a team or approach trading with a strong network of communication especially while trading because as soon as we get stuck on that individual decision making process...we're less likely to succeed. Yeah, sure there's the few that are able to overcome that natural wiring in the brain involving decision making. These individuals are less dependent upon a team and can succeed without such but like I said...only a few fit that category.
Lots of literature out there about these topics including University classes devoted specifically to such in references to Universities that have trading rooms and classes about such (e.g. Penn State, George Washington, Univ. of Texas, MIT, Carnegie Mellon Univ., McMaster University and many more). http://universityfinancelab.com/gallery/ Many of these state of the art multi-million dollar trading rooms and classes are lectured by top people in the financial world, guest lectures via top institutional trades and all sponsored by top financial firms...very common to lecture topics about behavior finance and psychology of trading. The link above is mainly U.S. but the European universities seem to be more fitted for such although there are more behavior finance/psychology companies in the U.S. doing business with Wall Street. I'm a little perplex why you're having problems finding any information that elaborates what "behavioral finance" and "psychology" involving trading. Its so important, there are companies (past 10 years) completely devoted to such that its a 700 million dollar industry per year and growing... Many of these firms are hired as consultants to the biggest Wall Street and European financial firms. I names several of these companies in an earlier post at this forum involving another topic about institutional trading firms that view algorithms and behavior finance as the next step to their longevity in a debate with Maverick74 about the importance of such...he had the view it wasn't important even though Wall Street obviously thinks the opposite. Yet, getting it down to the retail trading level is more difficult in my opinion because of that "individualism" mentality that makes it very difficult for retail traders to connect to "team identity". Our inability to understand this is the reason why ourselves is the key component to our trading. Seriously, take a look in the journal threads where someone openly admits they have a discipline problem or unable to stick with the trading plan. What do they do instead, they get all kinds of advice about tweaking their trade method or they spend more time on their trade signals...very little time on themselves as a trader. By the way, I know a handful of institutional traders that have quit their jobs for whatever reasons or layed off during the 2008 - 2009 financial crisis to then become retail traders. Almost all of them continue using their network (team) that they had develop as a professional trader...a network (team) that helps with the retail trading. Thus, they remain well connected and they are less likely to approach trading as this "lone wolf" mentality that typically is seen among retail traders.