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Book review: The Mental Game of Trading by Jared Tendler
BOOK & SOFTWARE REVIEW
The Mental Game of Trading : Jared Tendler
Book review by Alistair Philip, MSTA
The Mental Game of Trading: Jared Tendler
This book offers unique perspectives on the psychology of trading and a step-by-step system for readers to follow. As a guide for a deep dive into personal psychology, it helps identify and explore what might drive individual behaviour in the trading arena. The explicit goal is to help you discover the causes of any issues in your trading and to eliminate them once and for all.
If you are unfamiliar with the author, Jared Tendler, (right) here is a brief introduction. He was a competitive collegiate golfer that continually choked in major national events. In a desire to understand the phenomenon of choking, he was driven to pursue academic studies and then professional qualifications in psychology.
He has since coached clients in the world of sports, including esports, poker and trading. Tendler has written two previous books: The Mental Game of Poker and The Mental Game of Poker 2 and it was these books that first brought him to my attention some years ago. This new book represents his first mass-market foray into the trading world. Intuitively there is a lot of overlap between the professional poker world and the trading world, so the progression does make sense.
The author assumes that you already have an approach, a system or an underlying set of technical skills that should permit you an edge in the market. That is an important note. It is widely accepted that psychology (or the mental game) plays a significant role in the potential success of any trader, but sometimes its importance can be overstated. That said, it might often be the thing at the margin that enables you to reach the next level of performance.
Early on Jared discusses why the word “game” is so appropriate when it comes to what the trader is dealing with when approaching the mental side of trading. The reason: it infers rules and a strategy for how you improve vs a one-and-done solution. The implication is that improving your mental game is an ongoing dynamic endeavour, especially in an environment that is constantly changing itself.
One of the main ideas embraced from the get-go is that emotions are not in and of themselves a problem, but rather a signal (a technical indicator if you like) that will point you towards the underlying problems that exist. It is superficial to just deal with any emotions driving behaviours that ultimately adversely impact your trading results. You might have success in the short-term, but if you want longterm success, you need to go deeper to understand and work through what is driving those very emotions in the first place.
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technical problems that are the underlying issue, rather than psychological ones. A refreshing acknowledgement that comes up repeatedly in the book and re-emphasises how emotions can be used as a guide to focus in on what really needs improvement in your overall approach.
The core of the system is to first map your pattern ie, journal your emotional reactions, then to identify the roots of the problem and then to correct the problem. The book then moves onto a deep dive into greed, fear, tilt (anger for nonpoker players), confidence and discipline. It dedicates an entire chapter to each.
At times, these chapters were somewhat repetitive, especially when the prescribed mapping method is rehashed in full in each chapter, albeit slightly adapted for each emotion. However, if you stick with it, you will almost certainly find yourself having moments of clarity about the nature of these emotions and the specific aspects that resonate most on a personal level.
• Here is one line that stood out (taken from the chapter on fear): Aim for perfection; don’t expect it. Mistakes are inevitable. The goal is to learn from them faster.
• Here is another (taken from the chapter on confidence):
Recognition (of emotions) does not equal control. www.jaredtendler.com
• And one more (taken from a later chapter on troubleshooting): If you didn’t do the work, you need to.
There’s no way around it. your mental game in check in real time. There is even an additional section to help you troubleshoot any areas where you feel like you have made a lack of progress.
It flows best when the author introduces real world examples of the issues that his clients have faced and how they deployed the methods outlined in the book to make progress in their endeavours to improve their trading performance. These stories bring the system to life and offer anecdotal evidence that it has made a difference.
The Mental Game of Trading explores a system that all traders will find useful to some extent. However, it is likely to be most useful for a trader who is involved actively and in close contact with the markets, having to make decisions on a regular basis. Importantly, as Tendler points out, reading it and expecting changes to come through osmosis is not going to cut it though; you have to do the work.
