In ten years deep breathing, meditation, whatever you want to call it, will be seen as important to your health as diet and exercise. Breathing for 10 minutes each day is a habit to implement to improve your trading.
Welcome back to our new series 30 trading habits in 30 days.
Today we share habit #6- breathe.
Each day after I teach my 11AM mentoring session, I close my office door, turn my chair around, take off my glasses, and breathe. I focus on my breath going through each part of my body from my toes to the top of my head.
Why? How can this help my trading?
In this information age, we are challenged to process massive amounts of information quickly and accurately. As traders we must process the information from the market at lightening-fast speeds and data dump-loads of volume. I am an information athlete.
One of the most famous world’s asset managers and the founder of Bridgewater Ray Dalio in Principles attributes his success in part to daily meditation practices he has been doing for years.
Deep breathing helps the trader in the follow ways:
- process market data more clearly ($GPRO on the open)
- make better trade decisions ($BABA with $YHOO news midday)
- stay calmer during stressful challenges ($ADBE spike on Friday)
- focus for longer periods of time
- more mindful of when trading on tilt
- improve awareness of when in your A+ trades ($SPY failure on Fed day)
- increase happiness
- improve your social life
- improve productivity
- heighten brain function
This exercise may seem a little strange to you at first, but if you stay with it the benefits are powerful.
The Second Week of More Mindful Trading
The Third Week of More Mindful Trading
Mindfulness meditation improves cognition: Evidence of brief mental training
*no relevant positions