Radical Renewal: Foreword and Dedication

This book, my fifth in the area of trading psychology, is grounded in an important insight:

A majority of the performance challenges that we face in navigating financial markets reflect ways in which our egos interfere with sound decision-making.  

Consider some of the classic mistakes of trading psychology:

*  Overtrading to make more and more money.  
*  Overconfidence and poor risk control after strings of winning trades.
*  Impulsive decision making and fear of missing moves.
*  Focus on P/L at the expense of sound trading process.  
*  Staying glued to screens, hanging on every tick of profit and loss, and then overreacting to random moves.
*  Becoming fearful of taking losses and holding onto losing trades.
*  Becoming fearful of losing gains and taking profits prematurely.
*  Focusing on trading bigger and getting locked into (losing) market views.
*  Allowing our feelings about ourselves to rise and fall with our P/L.

For the most part, these are not the result of psychological disorders.  They are the result of our inability to separate our egos from our trading and investing.

After all, we operate within one of the world's most materialistic professions.  In many careers, we can accept not making much money if we perceive that we're helping others and performing worthwhile work.  Trading, however, is all about making money.  How can we possibly not be attached to our profits and losses?!

This is one of the greatest challenges in trading psychology:  At one level, making money is our priority.  At another level, if all we focus upon are profits and losses, we lay the groundwork for our egos to intrude on our decisions and sabotage our success.  

Please consider the following carefully:

If we tackle the emotions of trading without addressing their source in our ego-attachments, we cannot truly master ourselves--and that means we cannot master our trading.

There is a way out from this dilemma, and that's what this book is all about.  The wisdom and practices from the world's great spiritual traditions provide us with time-tested resources for taming the ego and renewing our lives.  These not only help us make wise and insightful decisions; they enable us live lives that are deeply meaningful and fulfilling.

In a very important sense, returns from markets depend on the soul, not the ego.

In the pages that follow, we will explore spirituality and how we can radically renew all areas of life, including our trading.  There is so much more to us than our momentary needs and desires!  Let's discover how we can become more soul-full in all our endeavors.

Brett

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Dedication:  This book is dedicated to the two women in my life who inspired me to pursue a meaningful life path:  my wife, Margie Steenbarger, and my mother, Constance Steenbarger.  We begin life as large, but uncut diamonds.  The relationships and activities of our lives help define our facets.  If there is any aspect of my life that even remotely approaches "flawless", it is entirely due to the soulful influence of these two very special people.

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