Enhancing Trader Performance: Proven Strategies From the Cutting Edge of Trading Psychology (Wiley Trading) [Hardcover]

Brett N. Steenbarger (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 3, 2006 | Series: Wiley Trading (Book 276)

Through his own trading experiences and those of individuals he has mentored, Dr. Brett Steenbarger is familiar with the challenges that traders face and the performance and psychological strategies that can meet those challenges. In Enhancing Trader Performance, Steenbarger shows you how to transform talent into trading skill through a structured process of expertise development and reveals how this approach can help you achieve market mastery.

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

Trading is a performance discipline, and like Olympic athletes, elite military troops, and performing artists, traders can structure their development to achieve competence and expertise. Through his own trading experiences and those of individuals he has mentored, Dr. Brett Steenbarger is familiar with the challenges thattraders face and the performance and psychological strategies that can meet those challenges.

In his first book, The Psychology of Trading, Dr. Steenbarger provided a framework for understanding and overcoming the mental obstacles to successful trading. Now, in Enhancing Trader Performance, he goes a step further and shows you how to transform talent into trading skill through a structured process of expertise development.

Straightforward and accessible, this comprehensive guide:

• Discusses the importance of finding an optimal fit between your trading talents and interests; the markets you trade; and the ways you trade those markets
• Explores how you can enter into a learning process that will cultivate your tradingcompetence and expertise
• Introduces the concept of learning loops, which enable you to make progressive improvements in your trading methods
• Breaks down performance into three components—mechanics, tactics, and strategy—and examines the role of each in generating trading success
• Illustrates how you can coach yourself with practical cognitive and behavioral techniques that rapidly change problem patterns and build new, positive ways of thinking and behaving

When you enhance your performance as a trader, you replace a small piece of randomness with intention. This enables you to make more informed trading decisions as you make your way through today's dynamic markets. Filled with in-depth insights, practical advice, solid research, and detailed examples, Enhancing Trader Performance offers an innovative approach to market mastery.

From the Back Cover

Praise for Enhancing Trader Performance

"Brett Steenbarger gives traders the best tool to improve their own trading: a look into themselves. By setting up a quantifiable, positive learning system, Brett allows anyone, from experienced fund managers to beginner traders, to maximize individual potential."
—Larry Connors, CEO, Tradingmarkets.com

"Brett proves that mental toughness CAN be learned and hits the nail on the head when applying performance theory to trading! He shows how classic topics, such as the consistency and habits built from day-to-day routines to the importance of positive self-talk, can be applied to the abstract arena of the markets. Traders of all levels will be inspired by these strategies for performance enhancement in their journey towards mastery."
—Linda Raschke, LBRGroup, Inc.

"Successful traders know that winning has less to do with technical knowledge and more to do with understanding yourself, pinpointing your strategy and process, and implementing it in a consistent, disciplined manner. Enhancing Trader Performance shows that your personal success lies at the intersection of your talents, skills, and opportunities. Brett guides you toward identifying your talents, developing your skills, and applying both as opportunities arise. For anyone interested in improving their trading, reading this book may be one of the best trades you ever make."
—Jim Dalton, trader, coauthor of Mind Over Markets and Markets in Profile, and Senior Vice President and Director (Retired), ICS Integrated Products and Research, UBS Financial Services Inc.

"The one statement in the book that stands out, 'You cannot have trading consistency if you do not have emotional consistency,' says it all. This book must be read, and reread, if you want to succeed in the trading arena."
—Ken Wood, "Woodie" of www.woodiescciclub.com

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (November 3, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470038667
• ISBN-13: 978-0470038666
• Product Dimensions: 6.3 x 1.1 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #103,442 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Brett N. Steenbarger, PhD, is Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, New York. An active trader and author of the popular TraderFeed blog, Steenbarger coaches traders in hedge funds, proprietary trading groups, and investment bank settings. He is also the author of the Wiley titles Enhancing Trader Performance and The Psychology of Trading. Steenbarger received a BS from Duke University and a PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Kansas.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

52 of 57 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining but long winded September 27, 2007

By Honest reviewer

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

If you read the bullet points above, you have a good idea of what this book covers. Note that you must take these bullets LITERALLY! Where it says discusses, explores, and introduces ... don't expect anything more.

My grouse with this tome is that I have almost finished it and still have not learned how to coach myself "with practical cognitive and behavioral techniques that rapidly change problem patterns and build new, positive ways of thinking and behaving".

If time is money, then the value of this book goes down because it is unnecessarily long winded. As such I can only give this 3 stars.

35 of 39 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars For professional trading trainers and trainees July 29, 2007

By ServantofGod

Format:Hardcover

I gave a high rating to the author's first book "Psychology of Trading" with a review title "Well researched and written, but not for the mass" in that it suits perfectly those with medium or above knowledge of psychology. It's hardly a coincidence, that the second book of the author is also targeted at the professionals, or, to be specific, professional traders who can enjoy systemized training/mentoring offered by their institutions. For traders like me who dont have such priviledges, nearly half of it became quite irrelevant and remote. Definitely worth a read, especially the part elaborating the linkage between practice and expertise, but not as useful nor insightful as fans of his first book might expect.

p.s. Below please find some of my favorite passages for your reference.

Competence precedes confidence: Winning mindsets result from mastery, not the reverse pg 4

When you have found your niche, you dont need discipline to do the right things; you wont want to do anything else. pg 29

Markets, like people, have their personalities; our relationships with markets will profit to the extent that there is compatibility. pg 35

Evolution occurs when we are so taxed that we must make fresh adaptive efforts. The expert is one who continually adapts to extraordinary performance demands. pg 119

How to trade and what to trade are subordinate to when to trade. pg151

Amateur traders turn into professional traders once they stop looking for the next great technical indicator and start controlling their risk on each trade. - John Carter pg 156

51 of 60 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Don't just read it. Absorb it. December 10, 2006

By John Forman

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

First, to keep things totally above board, let me state for the record that Brett Steenbarger wrote the forward to my book, The Essentials of Trading. He and I became aquainted through my editorial work with Trade2Win. When my book was near completion, I asked Brett to give it a look knowing that he was involved in trader training and development. The forword followed from that.

Brett's new book, Enhancing Trader Performance, is his second, following on the heels of his extremely successful and worthwhile initial release, The Psychology of Trading. I would not, though, call it a sequel. While the latter part of the new work does bring in major elements of what the first book covered, the majority of it has a quite different focus

Enhancing Trader Performance is primarily about developing trading expertise. As someone who has spent his fair share of time teaching and coaching on a variety of levels and in different theaters of pursuit, some of which were extremely competitive and performance oriented, I was immediately grabbed by Brett's presentation. And it never let me go - literally pages of notes later.

This book may not be for everyone. It clearly has a bias which leans more toward the full-time and/or short-term trader than someone who traders longer-term and/or on a more part-time basis. This is a natural function of Brett's work helping professional traders with their development and to overcome performance hurdles, along with his own personal efforts in the market, which are short-term in nature as well.

That said, there is still a ton of extremely useful material for any trader, new or experienced. Enhancing Trader Performance provides a sort of roadmap toward developing trading expertise. This isn't about the mental part of actually making trades and managing positions. Rather it is more a discussion of how one becomes more than just a competent trader.

Coaching is a major theme, with Brett clearly being a proponent of traders having coaches who can assist them in their development similar to the way they would an athlete. I personally tend to disagree with the way he uses "coach" and "mentor" interchangably as I consider the two to be different, but that does not detract from the overall message. Importantly, since it can be difficult for the individual trader to get in to a good coaching relationship, Brett shares plenty of tips and advice for how a trader can be their own coach.

The one major carryover from The Psychology of Trading is the use of the stories of actual people - either real or composite. They really help to drive home the points Brett is making, and in a fashion easily relatable by the reader.

In short, read this book if it is at all your objective to excel at trading. More than that, take your time and really absorb it. Read it once, then read it again. I know I will.