6/7/2026 - I once had a therapy session in which the client announced that he was depressed and wanted to end his life. He then showed me the gun he was carrying. I assumed it was loaded, and I assumed things would not go well if I called for help. My response was immediate. I showed no particular emotion and actually felt calm. I said to him, "Look, if you definitely wanted to end your life, you would have done it by now. You certainly wouldn't come here. We're here together and that tells me that at least a part of you wants to work this out. What do you say if you put the gun down and we talk about the part of you that wants to live?"To my surprise, he put the gun down and we had a great session. He surrendered the weapon at the end of the meeting and went on to make progress in therapy, including help for his depression.The point here is that when you've seen enough crisis situations, you can respond to crisis with understanding and familiarity, not with panic. If you engage in enough practice trading, you'll see plenty of moves against your positions and you'll respond with experience. In a crisis with someone I work with, I react with focus, not emotionally. It's a sense of "all hands on deck".That hyper focus during times of crisis is itself an emotion, a definite feeling. It comes from experience and the realization that you can handle adversity. The best way to handle fear and greed is focus and that only comes from practice and practice.====================6/5/2026 - Suppose you were looking for a romantic partner because you were feeling very isolated and lonely. Every part of you wants and *needs* to find someone. The odds are good that you'll jump at the first possibilities to fill your void. Need, not values, will guide your choice--and will help ensure that you never truly connect.So it is when we *need* to be successful in our trading. We define ourselves--and our life's success--by our P/L. In such a situation, the one thing we can't tolerate is sitting out of the market. We *need* to trade because we *need* P/L. Neediness begets greediness.If we need profits to feel good about ourselves, we will overtrade and oversize trades. That neediness is an emotion that no one talks about because it betrays the bankruptcy behind the quest for P/L.The measure of a trader is what they do when markets are closed and especially when markets don't offer opportunity. The great traders are motivated by curiosity and the quest for ideas; they love the process of digging deeper and seeing what others miss. In their relationship with markets, they are not motivated by need; they are motivated by values. That is what drives great romantic relationships as well. =====================6/4/2026 - One source of trading and investment ideas that I highly recommend is The Roppel Report, written by hedge fund manager Jim Roppel. The report contains many actionable growth stock ideas that are relevant to both active traders and longer-term investors. But what I really like about the Report is its psychology. One emotion that I rarely hear from traders is the sense of entrepreneurial opportunity and excitement.In my Positive Trading Psychology book, an important theme is that "You are the entrepreneur of your life". Everyone starts their lives somewhere. At that point, your life is your startup. Those who are successful in life find opportunities that excite them and give them energy. They live with meaning and purpose. An entrepreneurial life is anything but routine.When we live life as a startup, we approach trading entrepreneurially. We focus on opportunity and, when it's distinctively present, we don't just place small trades to avoid possible losses. We invest ourselves in the search and invest meaningful money in those ideas. We go for it, managing risk prudently but pursuing unusual reward.Trading psychology is not about fear, greed, and emotional stress. For successful traders, it's about taking the time to search and research opportunity and then trading with vision and entrepreneurial zeal. Life is way too short to be lived timidly.================== 6/3/2026 - Many of our emotions reflect how our minds work. For years, I've been involved in hiring analysts and assistants for hedge fund teams and for hiring hedge fund traders and team leaders. One of the emotions that distinguish the best from the rest is intense curiosity. The really great traders have an insatiable appetite for figuring markets out and discovering new relationships. This is readily apparent in the Market Wizards interviews. The great traders spend as much time absorbed in markets when the markets are closed as when they're open. Their curiosity drives them to figure out what others can't and don't see.It is precisely this curiosity that leads the great traders to develop their own unique approaches to markets. They are not copying what others are doing, and they are not trading the usual market indicators and relationships. They see something unique and their curiosity leads them to carefully define and refine the relationship and see how it interacts with other relationships. For example, one active trader I've worked with found a pattern that reliably leads market trending, but only at certain times of day. He views the market as a collection of markets, each defined by time of day and the nature of participation. Each kind of market has its own edge.Only a strong sense of intellectual curiosity can sustain the hunt for such edges. The emotions that are obvious among such traders are a sense of wonder, an excitement over discovery, and a sense of awe at the complexity that they uncover. They maintain their involvement in markets regardless of P/L and regardless of whether markets are open or closed. Their reward is the fulfillment of discovery.====================6/2/2026 - Some of the emotions traders don't talk about--or work on--are positive ones! A great example is gratitude. When a trade works out well, a feeling of thanks and fulfillment goes a long way. Research in psychology consistently finds that gratitude is an important contributor to overall emotional and physical wellbeing. In the hustle and bustle of market movement, however, it's easy to take the winning trade for granted. When we are grateful for the success, we are more likely to reflect upon it subsequently and use it as part of our learning and development.Things really go wrong for traders when the winning trade isn't good enough. That's the opposite of gratitude. We could have held a little longer; we could have sized it larger; we could have gotten in at a better point; we could have traded something else that moved even more; etc. etc. Perfectionism destroys mindset. It turns success into failure and sabotages energy. Gratitude is far different from complacency. We can be grateful for our progress and still find learning lessons for the future. We live in a free society with a (relatively!) free economy and we have the freedom to invest in the future. That is surely worthy of our gratitude!!======================= 6/1/2026 - We've heard it all a million times: fear, greed, frustration, etc. But there are many emotions that traders experience and don't talk about that are equally important to performance. One of those is boredom. There are times in markets when not much is happening. Volume is low, volatility is low, and there are no news and world event catalysts driving price trends. So we're sitting in front of the screens, and sitting, and sitting...with not much to do. I submit that what drives a great deal of overtrading is not FOMO and greed, but boredom. Many traders crave action and action without an edge can feel better than no action at all. The really good traders know how to utilize their time productively when not much is going on in markets. They might scan stocks and markets that *are* moving for possible trading opportunities. They might step back and look at what's happening on longer time frames for possible ideas. They might develop strategies for trading quiet markets, such as options strategies that profit from decay and mean reversion. The really good traders utilize the boring times in markets productively. They are stimulated by ideas and opportunity and enjoy searching and re-searching for ways to exploit a variety of market conditions. Because they're stimulated by ideas and the search/research process, they don't need to be trading to relieve boredom. And when markets aren't open? The bored trader doesn't bother with closed markets because there's nothing to trade. The successful trader, who is stimulated by the hunt for opportunity, is vitally engaged in the market when nothing is trading. Loving to trade is very different from loving the process of understanding markets. If you need to trade to stay engaged in markets, you'll inevitably overtrade.