Trading HVA’s

When traders think about trad­ing psy­chol­ogy, they think about the neg­a­tive – things like fear, greed and other unwanted emo­tions that impair trad­ing or lim­it­ing beliefs that work against reach­ing goals.  Cer­tainly, trad­ing psy­chol­ogy deals with uncon­struc­tive emo­tions and thoughts.  How­ever, there is another side of trad­ing psy­chol­ogy, the pos­i­tive psy­chol­ogy that can help traders develop the men­tal skills needed for trad­ing.  This is what I call High Value Actions.

High Val­ues Actions (or HVAs) are actions that bring high val­ues to traders.  HVAs are actions that:

  • are under the trader’s control
  • relate to the process of trading
  • help expand the trader’s abil­ity to read and trade the market
  • put the odds of mak­ing suc­cess­ful trades in the trader’s favor
  • help bring about trad­ing con­fi­dence and more pos­i­tive emo­tions to traders

In a nut­shell, HVAs help the trader keep atten­tion and focus where it needs to be – on the actions most impor­tant to trad­ing – not on the neg­a­tive emo­tions and thoughts that pop up some­times auto­mat­i­cally when mak­ing a trade.  By know­ing and con­cen­trat­ing on the actions that have high value for traders, traders can improve their abil­ity to trade well and even­tu­ally reach new lev­els of suc­cess.  Far too often, a trader’s focus is mis­placed.  When atten­tion is placed on wor­ri­some thoughts and uncom­fort­able emo­tions, traders are dis­tracted and trad­ing becomes a strug­gle with emotions. 

HVAs come directly from the affir­ma­tive aspects of sport, human per­for­mance, and pos­i­tive psy­cholo­gies.  HVAs are pow­er­ful tools devel­oped specif­i­cally to help build the trader’s per­sonal trad­ing skills.  They lead to worry-free trad­ing, put traders “in the zone,” and so that traders can reach a bet­ter under­stand­ing of what is hap­pen­ing in the market.

There are many HVAs a trader can mas­ter in the process of becom­ing com­pe­tent and suc­cess­ful. We can break down HVAs into three main trad­ing areas:

  1. high qual­ity preparation
  2. effec­tive exe­cu­tion of trades, and
  3. accu­rate assess­ment of trades made and trad­ing actions taken.

High qual­ity prepa­ra­tion HVAs that get you ready for trad­ing would include devel­op­ing a trad­ing plan, locat­ing areas of poten­tial trades for the next day, set­ting per­for­mance goals and prac­tic­ing performance-related men­tal skills.  Exe­cu­tion HVAs involve such actions as iden­ti­fy­ing the trade, assess­ing risk-reward, entry tech­niques, and trade man­age­ment, among other activ­i­ties.  Accu­rate assess­ment HVAs include eval­u­at­ing trades and not­ing where improve­ments in trade setups and trad­ing per­for­mance can be made.

Below are the links to sev­eral tools that can help you develop HVAs: 

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