Review: Working Through the Ups and Downs of Trading
New book preaches self-development
Traders Magazine Online News, March 8, 2010
Know thyself is more than a philosophical concept. It also applies to trading professionals as well as anyone else, the author believes.
So when markets are melting and tons of trades are going bad, it is critically important that the financial professional understands himself or herself.
Traders shouldn't ask themselves how to succeed. Before the hows, they should ask why they are in trading. That's one of the themes of this interesting, slender self-help book for traders entitled, "8 Ways to Great: Peak Performance on the Job and in Your Life."
The author is Dr. Doug Hirschhorn. He is a performance coach who works with traders. But he believes his eight basic principles can apply to anyone in any line of work. He contends that that each trader must find his or her "why."
Seeking the why is a positive way to approach one's professional life, the author argues. It goes to the essence of who we are. The why explains the reason for working in a profession, according to Hirschhorn, who documents his training techniques through stories of trading success.
For example, after one of his trading students had applied his principles over a few years, he reviewed why he had huge success. The trading professional now had several billion dollars in assets and had 75 people reporting to him. Hirschhorn reminded him that he had focused on answering the question of why he was a trader.
"You said," Hirschhorn told him, "you wanted to be the best you could be because you loved the challenge and excitement, you loved playing the game, and solving the puzzle."
A former trader on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade, Hirschhorn concluded that it is the excitement and the challenge of the profession that motivate the best traders. Pride and the typical trader's need to compete, he argues, are ultimately the most important factors in the making of a first class trader.
World-class traders, he argues, aren't in the difficult game of trading solely for the money-a challenging game in which even the best traders only win on 53 percent of the trades-because the most successful of them have already achieved financial independence.
By contrast, the trader who first asks himself how to be successful before finding the whys, the author says, inevitably sets up roadblocks to success. One starts reviewing all the various steps to success. One quickly concludes there's too many steps and that it is likely unachievable.
This is a negative approach to problem solving and in life. Too many hows can overwhelm almost anyone in any profession, the author writes.
