iq-testing

emWave in Golf Digest

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We often talk about how stress man­age­ment is as impor­tant as cog­ni­tive train­ing for brain fit­ness. We have also seen how traders can improve their per­for­mance by learn­ing how to man­age emo­tions of anx­i­ety and fustration.

Golf Digest has just pub­lished an arti­cle on how golfers can see their game improved thanks to stress man­age­ment pro­grams. Golf Digest’s Edi­tion includes the arti­cle Play­ing with heart: Peb­ble Beach’s top teacher wants to choke­proof your game, explain­ing how Laird Small, direc­tor of the Peb­ble Beach Golf Acad­e­my and the 2003 PGA of Amer­i­ca Teacher of the Year, has been using these pro­grams for a num­ber of years.

Even more inter­est­ing­ly, it also relates how [Read more…] about emWave in Golf Digest

Best practice for top trading performance: biofeedback (EmWave personal stress reliever)

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Brett N. Steen­barg­er , Ph.D. Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor of Psy­chi­a­try and Behav­ioral Sci­ences at SUNY Upstate Med­ical Uni­ver­si­ty, active trad­er for over 30 years, for­mer Direc­tor of Trad­er Devel­op­ment for Kingstree Trad­ing, LLC, author of The Psy­chol­o­gy of Trad­ing and the new Enhanc­ing Trad­er Per­for­mance, and of the blog Trader­Feed: Exploit­ing the edge from his­tor­i­cal mar­ket pat­terns, is writ­ing a great col­lec­tion of best prac­tices for traders (many of which are very rel­e­vant for all high-pres­sure occupations).

He wrote a great arti­cle a few weeks ago on the val­ue of biofeed­back in achiev­ing self con­trol, and now deep­ens the dis­cus­sion with this best prac­tice for traders.

Both arti­cles are a fun read-here go some quotes from the most recent one

  • “This best prac­tice describes biofeed­back as a tool for per­for­mance enhance­ment among traders. It empha­sizes that the role of biofeed­back is to keep us in touch with our (implic­it) knowl­edge, not to elim­i­nate emo­tion from the deci­sion-mak­ing process.”
  • “we want to con­trol the lev­el of cog­ni­tive and phys­i­cal arousal so that we retain access to exper­tise that is already present. Biofeed­back is a pow­er­ful tool for achiev­ing such cog­ni­tive and phys­i­cal con­trol.”
  • “Through struc­tured prac­tice, peo­ple can learn to sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly improve their abil­i­ty to enter and remain in states of calm focus. Such abil­i­ty is impor­tant to trad­ing (and many oth­er per­for­mance activ­i­ties), not because it elim­i­nates emo­tion, but because it pre­serves our access to the somat­ic mark­ers that rep­re­sent our mar­ket feel. The heart rate vari­abil­i­ty feed­back is par­tic­u­lar­ly user friend­ly, because it is com­put­er based and can track progress both in prac­tice ses­sions and in real time performance.”
  • “Using the Freeze-Framer pro­gram, audi­ble sig­nals tell the user when he or she is expe­ri­enc­ing high, medi­um, or low “coher­ence”, which is a mea­sure of emo­tion­al reg­u­la­tion. On-screen games require the user to keep a float­ing bal­loon in the air, for instance, based upon sus­tained medi­um and high read­ings. I recent­ly had an inter­est­ing expe­ri­ence dur­ing one feed­back ses­sion: I sus­tained a high lev­el of the bal­loon, but then clicked a wrong but­ton on the screen and erased my data acci­den­tal­ly! After that frus­tra­tion, it was *much* hard­er for me to keep the bal­loon in the air. It was a nice illus­tra­tion of the impact of frus­tra­tion even sev­er­al min­utes after an event.”

You can learn more about this best prac­tice for Traders and oth­er high-pres­sure occu­pa­tions where learn­ing how to iden­ti­fy and man­age our emo­tions and lev­els of stress is crit­i­cal for performance.

Blog Carnivals, Thanksgiving and Mission Accomplishing

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Big par­ty today. Car­ni­vals everywhere. 

Car­o­line and I admit we are quite biased. We see the world through our own lens­es. Which, these days, means a lot of pas­sion for the sci­ence-based Brain Fit­ness Rev­o­lu­tion. We have been try­ing hard to com­bine fun brain teasers with seri­ous posts on how brain research is start­ing to influ­ence Edu­ca­tion, Health and Train­ing, and are thank­ful that these efforts are start­ing to pay off-Mis­sion Accomplishing!

The week­end start­ed very well. Kevin from IQ Cor­ner and Tick­Tock­BrainTalk had brought great ear­ly aus­pices by intro­duc­ing a Sharp­Brains feed box into his blog. A num­ber of trad­ing blogs, includ­ing Brett Steen­barg­er’s and Trad­er Mike’s, enjoyed our posts on trad­er per­for­mance and biofeedback.

Today has been the full Car­ni­val day. [Read more…] about Blog Car­ni­vals, Thanks­giv­ing and Mis­sion Accomplishing

Trader Peak Performance and biofeedback programs

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Brett Steen­barg­er, the renowned expert in Trad­er Per­for­mance and author of the blog Trader­Feed: Exploit­ing the edge from his­tor­i­cal mar­ket pat­terns, among many things, just post­ed a kind note on our Peak Performance/ emo­tion­al man­age­ment solu­tion for traders.

He says: “This is the first biofeed­back appli­ca­tion that I’m aware of that is unique­ly mar­ket­ed to traders. I’ve used biofeed­back to mon­i­tor my body’s lev­el of arousal dur­ing trad­ing and have found it to be quite useful.”

How does this work?

Frustration vs The Zone

Traders, or any­one involved in very com­plex and rapid­ly evolv­ing envi­ron­ments, need to make split sec­ond deci­sions based on sound log­ic, instead of emo­tion­al impuls­es. It is not easy to deal with frus­tra­tion, for exam­ple, when a trade doesn’t go the way we antic­i­pate. Stress can also cause us to miss new pat­terns in the mar­ket, there­by pre­vent­ing us from adapt­ing to, and suc­ceed­ing in, new circumstances.

A biofeed­back-based Peak Performance/Stress Man­age­ment pro­gram may be use­ful, because a tool such as The Freeze-Framer biofeed­back sys­tem pro­vides real-time visu­al feed­back on our “inter­nal per­for­mance” and helps us iden­ti­fy and learn how to man­age the emo­tion­al arousal that can dis­rupt exec­u­tive func­tions: judg­ment, plan­ning, ana­lyz­ing, and rea­son­ing. The graphs above show the dif­fer­ence in our body rhythms between frus­tra­tion and the smooth tar­get pat­tern of “The Zone” in an opti­mal learn­ing process and peak performance.

For more infor­ma­tion on Trad­er Per­for­mance, an inter­view with Brett Steen­barg­er, or to buy this this pro­gram, click on Brain Fit­ness Pro­gram for Traders. You may also want to learn more about find­ing your trad­ing niche.

Enjoy,

Alvaro