About Dr. Gary

Dr. Gary Day­ton stands apart as a trad­ing psy­chol­o­gist in his use of the Mindfulness-Acceptance-Commitment (MAC) approach to peak per­for­mance, a model of human behav­ior based on cutting-edge psy­cho­log­i­cal research.  In his thought-leader arti­cle, Fear Not: A Mind­ful Per­spec­tive for Traders pub­lished in Stocks, Futures, and Options Mag­a­zine (Decem­ber, 2009), Dr. Day­ton intro­duced traders to the prac­tice of mind­ful­ness to help them over­come fear and other unwanted trad­ing emo­tions and explained how mind­ful­ness can help traders develop the con­cen­tra­tion and focus needed to trade suc­cess­fully.  Dr. Day­ton pub­lished another arti­cle in the June 2010 issue of SFO Mag­a­zine, Take Con­trol of Your Trad­ing: Focus on High-Value Actions, where he shows traders how to stay focused on crit­i­cal trad­ing actions rather than suc­cumb to ‘emo­tional hijack­ings’ while trading.

After learn­ing trad­ing strate­gies, Dr. Day­ton found that the num­ber one chal­lenge for traders is the strug­gle with the men­tal and emo­tional side of trad­ing.  Nearly every trader tries to con­trol his or her emo­tions, but this is usu­ally inef­fec­tive and often becomes prob­lem­atic for the trader.  The strug­gle with unwanted emo­tions and the erratic trad­ing actions that result may be a pri­mary rea­son why 90% of all aspir­ing traders fail.  Dr. Day­ton uses the MAC model to help traders focus on what mat­ters most for his/her trad­ing and avoid engag­ing in dis­tract­ing emo­tional and men­tal chatter. 

Through sem­i­nars, work­shops, and coach­ing, Dr. Day­ton, and his com­pany Peak Psy­chol­ogy Inc., help traders over­come the psy­cho­log­i­cal pit­falls unique to trad­ing, while at the same time help­ing traders develop the opti­mal mind­set needed to be suc­cess­ful.  He focuses on both cor­rect­ing prob­lems as well as teach­ing spe­cific pro­fi­cien­cies required to build mas­tery in trad­ing.  Dr. Day­ton applies state-of-the-science knowl­edge in mindfulness-acceptance, cognitive-behavioral, and sport psy­cholo­gies, along with research find­ings from behav­ioral finance, to help indi­vid­u­als sys­tem­at­i­cally develop peak per­for­mance skills and abil­i­ties.  His ulti­mate goal with each indi­vid­ual is to instill the abil­ity to become one’s own peak per­for­mance coach. 

A trader him­self, Dr. Day­ton under­stands what goes through a trader’s mind and can effec­tively com­mu­ni­cate with them.  He inte­grates his knowl­edge of advanced psy­chol­ogy with trad­ing to make it eas­ier for the trader to under­stand.  His approach to trad­ing psy­chol­ogy is focused on help­ing the trader build the metal skills nec­es­sary to trade suc­cess­fully.   In his work, Dr. Day­ton guides the trader through the ele­ments of deep or delib­er­ate prac­tice, a model of elite per­for­mance based on 35 years of research in indi­vid­ual performance.

An active trader since 1999, Dr. Day­ton has traded equi­ties, com­mod­ity futures, the finan­cial index e-mini futures, and options, e-mini S&P futures mar­kets, apply­ing Wyck­off method of mar­ket analy­sis. He is an expert in Wyck­off analy­sis and the lost art of chart read­ing, in which the tech­ni­cal aspects of the mar­ket are read with price bars and volume.

A fea­tured speaker in work­shops and sem­i­nars, Dr. Day­ton helps traders learn the men­tal and emo­tional side of trad­ing through enjoy­able and enlight­en­ing hands-on exercises. 

Dr. Day­ton is a psy­chol­o­gist and holds a doc­tor­ate in clin­i­cal psy­chol­ogy and a cer­tifi­cate in human performance/sport psy­chol­ogy from Rut­gers Uni­ver­sity.  He is Pres­i­dent of Peak Psy­chol­ogy, Inc., a con­sult­ing firm that spe­cial­izes in devel­op­ing “peak” per­for­mance in traders.   Dr. Dayton’s web­site is www.TradingPsychologyEdge.com