THE BENEFITS OF MEDITATION FOR TRADERS

Let’s start saying that I’m no expert in meditation and there are infinite resources online about it. But I have practiced for many years and I can testify about its effect on me and what helped me improve, especially trading related. 

First time I read about meditation was in a book. I don’t recall the book name but I remember the example used to explain the benefits of it. It was saying something like this: our mind is like an ocean where thoughts are the waves that agitate water and make it difficult to see through, with meditation you learn how to calm waters and transform your mind in a quiet and transparent lake where it’s so easy to see fishes and everything else inside.

That’s exactly the main effect I feel when meditating. Clarity: the most underrated edge in nowadays’ society where we’re bombarded by a continuous flux of information: news, notifications, interruptions and so on. Naval elaborates pretty nicely in this quick thread. Have a read if you fancy.

Day-trading requires quick decision making and a sharp focus. Meditation can help traders to develop greater mental clarity and focus, allowing us to approach our work with a calm and collected mind.

I trade only one pair and basically just one setup (with slightly different variations). Most of the year I trade only one kill-zone: London Open. I realized that doing less brought me more. In order to do that and get there, I had to improve tremendously in patience and discipline and I can guarantee you that without meditation I wouldn’t have achieved such skills. 

Be aware I’m not saying that meditation is the holy grail of trading (or anything else in life), but it’s a big boost when it comes to process and focus. It’s just an important piece of the puzzle, at least my puzzle.

I’m pretty sure that there are plenty of people that don’t need meditation at all in their lives. They may be calm by nature, relaxed, not stressed and content. I’m sorry but I wasn’t like that. My irl work is pretty frenetic and I get bombarded by calls and messages, my mind is almost never at rest and I always have had issues to focus on for longer than 10-15 mins. I remember struggling to read books, I used to read pages and then suddenly realizing that I couldn’t recall what I just read because my mind was elsewhere. My eyes were scrolling but my mind wasn’t absorbing. Well, meditation helped me to fix that big time. I’m still lacking in focus, I’m no robot now and far from being perfect – but way much less on the clouds than before, and what’s even nicer is that now I clearly realize when my mind shifts elsewhere instead of being distracted without even knowing it. It’s definitely not easy to explain until you feel it. It’s about being conscious, present.

So how do I exactly meditate? The most simple way to explain my meditation process is that I sit for 15 mins every morning right after waking up (before checking anything: phone, charts, etc); trying to not think about anything, if I can’t then try to focus on conscious breathing. Many times my mind goes elsewhere, as soon as I realize that I’ll bring it back to being calm and emptiness. It won’t be easy, especially the first weeks if you decide to try. But you’ll get better and better with time and you’ll start to notice the benefits. As everything in life you can’t expect to feel better after one or few sessions. You got to dedicate some time. It’s the same as gym, you won’t have a bigger chest after two workouts. Meditation is like a gym for your mind.

I know there are many apps out there to help you with guided meditation, I’ve actually tried many of them but it felt a bit like gamification and kind of against meditation principles in itself. I don’t want to meditate to score points. I want to meditate to detach exactly from this type of stuff. So adding an extra app with timer, notification and levels feels a controversy to me. But hey: to each their own. If it works for you then go for it.

There’s a video that explains meditation perfectly. I watched it several times and I suggest you do too. Alan Watts is a guru in the field and I really like his version.

To conclude, I think in terms of a trader: meditation is the most asymmetric bet you can ever try. You literally spend no money (just invest some time of course) and the rewards can be immense. Ten minutes a day can literally change your life and help you make better decisions and become calmer. Sometimes it happens to me that I won’t meditate for a few days while traveling or on certain occasions and I instantly notice myself rushing into poor decisions making poor ones. Just need to sit back, refund my calmness with a few sessions. I barely skip sessions, it happens sometimes while in hangover for whatever party I had the night before, ngl nobody’s perfect. Surely not me. But still, I do my best to keep the habit in place and it works (for me).

I hope this helps, we speak soon.