Last time on your webinar you asked what is art therapy? It’s kind of like when a kid goes to a child psychologist and in order for the psychologist to figure out what’s going on they have the kid draw and then they can connect with the kid and help him. So same could be applied to traders. Basically it is a playful and easy way of handling the emotional aspect of trading. The bottom line is what is invested in this playful therapy would pay huge dividends down the line. Instead of learning to handle emotions while trading with live money you deal with it in a safe environment then trade and improve your results. Let’s say you have someone with the belief “It is tough to trade in these markets today”, so you could have a session where you help the trader go from “It is tough to trade in these markets today” to “It’s so easy to trade in the markets”. That’s the kind of transformation that is possible. It’s basically play therapy applied to trading.

Some of the issues I have thought of could be stuff like:

you will be a day trader

trade with real money

you will be profitable/successful

Discipline

Fear

Greed

trading news successfully

how much to trade

when to get out of position

taking profits/cutting losses

use stop loss effectively

handling stress/emotion

market is the enemy to market is my friend

dispelling doubt/fear/greed/hope

review of news/trading patterns

being on the side of the market

Rapid decision making

turn bad decisions into good decisions

working with risk capital

understanding risk and reward

covering your expenses

setting goals

business plan

when to buy when to sell

technical analysis watching patterns changes in price and volume

buy low sell high

the trend is your friend

overconfidence

reading volume

following plan

finding the best opportunity in the market

nyse

nasdaq

protection from losing money

planning trades

understanding risk and reward

considering a possibility of loss

quick reactions to the market

You said you hire and pay psychologists to help your traders with the mental game. I thought that was pretty cool. And in your book you said that you have traded in so many markets and made the money that training traders is more of a gratifying challenge to you. And that you always look for ways to improve your trading. I admire that.  (edited)

There is no question that the money invested in playful therapy would help traders find breakthroughs and increase the bottom line. Not only would it be funny but pretty useful too.

Mike Bellafiore

The PlayBook

One Good Trade