One of our traders read our blog post last night on improving your performance by watching and shared some interesting additional data. This comes from the book One Second Thought: Outsmarting your Mind’s Hard-wired Habits by Wray Herbert.
Psychologists used to think that perception and movement were two completely separate process, lodged in different regions of the brain. The common wisdom was that we perceive the world with our eyes and ears and so forth, and send that information to the mind, which processes the data and in turn instructs the limbs and lips to act in certain ways. But apparently it’s not so tidy. According to Rutgers University psychologists Gunther Knoblich and Natalie Sebanz, the latest evidence suggests that it doesn’t matter whether we’re performing or observing. Each mental task activates the mind’s mimicry heuristic.
And then came a shared passage that offers a new thought. We can learn even more by watching our own performance. Here’s why:
so the brain helps us – make us – connect to the rest of humanity, but the neurons must allow us to function as individual beings. To do that, according to Knoblich and Sebanz, we carry “common codes,” or scripts, in our mind for specific kinds of movement, such as dancing or playing a video game. … For example, the brains of highly trained dancers react more quickly and intensely to their dancing codes if they are watching the kind of dance they are trained in – ballet, say, or flamenco – than if they are watching something unfamiliar. And there is even more brain activity if the dancers are watching videos of themselves dancing rather than someone else. Knoblich and Sebanz speculate that this selective activation of the internal repertoire is what allows us to distinguish our own actions from those of others. Seeing ourselves in action has greater resonance in the neurons, even though we don’t see ourselves all that often….
What does this mean for us as traders? Watch film of your trading. For less active traders, replay your buys and sales while looking at a daily chart. You can improve your trading by watching your trading.
You can be better tomorrow than you are today!
Mike Bellafiore
no relevant positions
5 Comments on “Improve Your Performance by Watching Yourself”
Mike, I Agree 100%. I have some clients that video themselves and then send it to me and we go over it together.
Andrew Menaker, PhD.
Excellent post!
Mike,
This topic is just fascinating. Personally, I started recording myself analyzing stocks a little over a year ago. Since then, my analysis and trading abilities have improved significantly.
On another note, I recently started recording myself in various sports that I compete in. For example, racquetball is a sport that requires finely tuned form. Watching video of myself playing racquetball allows me to get a more complete picture of my swing and the nuances in my form that need attention. I am also passionate about rock climbing, which is another sport that requires good technique. After recording myself, I could really see how my body position affected my ability to move along the problem.
After reading this and yesterday’s posts about “watching yourself,” I am convinced that I need to make every effort to get video of myself doing everything I am determined to improve at (trading, sports, etc). This is certainly a subject that warrants deeper investigation.
Thanks for sharing your insight!
~ Jason
Excellent points. It’s interesting how we tend to think that tools from other professions are suited for that particular activity, and not trading. It works for sports, it works for trading.
I have a great tool on my computer which captures video of my screen. When I am about to place a trade, I hit the record button until the end of the trade. That way, I capture the level 2 box and replay it to watch the order flow again, and see how that influenced my entries/exits.
Trading offers such fascinating views on human behavior so we can all improve.
i recently installed a ceiling mirror for just such a purpose 🙂