John, a day trader since 2007 who focuses on morning gaps, took Randy Howell's psychological training program in 2013 after meeting him at a Vegas expo. He credits breathing exercises and meditations with improving his discipline and keeping him profitable through that year.
I met Randy Howell in November of 2011 at the Traders Expo in Las Vegas. I was aware of his work prior to going down there and I sat in one of his, one of his sessions learning exactly what he does and how he does it. I also had read his previous book. I've always thought that I was fine on the psychological part in day trading. I'm a day trader, I day trade equities exclusively. In fact I day trade gaps in the morning and basically I thought I had all this psychological stuff under control. Not a problem, I can do this. I've been trading since 2007 and I have had my ups and downs and all arounds and had a great stretch of profitability and then basically proceeded to give it all back. And at the end of the day I've concluded that the psychological framework and makeup of the individual is really the critical element of being successful as a trader. I enrolled in Randy's program in March of 2013 and I did the one on one sessions with him throughout the whole process. And I proceeded to go through his binder and DVD collection which is a series of breathing exercises, meditations and just general direction in terms of how to organize your mind to basically put yourself in the proper state to train when you're trying to trade. You have to have a calm, impartial state of mind in order to be effective. Otherwise I guess the currents of the market will just take your emotions away and you'll get swept away in the emotion, in the moment. And I know this because I've done it many, many times. And what Randy's work does, what his program does specifically is it allows you, it gives you a structure and a framework for managing this. So it's not just about, you're not just thinking about, okay, I'm not going to get carried away here. He gives you the tools to actually carry this out. So when you approach the trading day you've got some sort of pre market routines. You do, you have the structure, your breathing exercises along with the meditation. Now the meditation is done away from the market obviously but the meditation I found was just fantastic. I really wasn't the person who meditated in the past, but I do it on a regular basis now. It's helped not only my trading life but also my personal life as well because it's just this stuff applies to everything in life, not just trading, but us as traders when we actually enter the arena of trading. What I found was that it's really a self discovery or sorry, a journey of self discovery of yourself. We all look at learning a methodology, learning to look into the indicators, watching the news, trying to figure out how to make the market work well. At the end of the day, after you've done all this for a number of years, as I have, you discover that you are usually the biggest problem in the training process. It's right between the ears, which is the problem. And until you can manage this, I wouldn't say virtually you can't do it, but it's very, very difficult to do it. Certain people have, the majority of us have not until we learn to manage our emotions. Randy's program is fantastic at giving you this framework. Again, it's done wonders in my trading. I've been a profitable trader throughout 2013 and I can hopefully will continue to be so in the future. I'd highly recommend Randy's program to anybody because without it, you're really missing the key element of trading.
