After suffering through many blown up accounts and confronting my sense of grandiosity I have finally come to accept trading is mostly psychology. It took me a lot of time and money to to admit this but I finally have. Anxiety, focus, fear are all dominate emotions while trading and contribute to many common mistakes traders make. I recently got diagnosed with ADD and was prescribed Adderall and WOW what a difference it made in my trading. I am able to keep my emotions at bay, my focus has gone through the roof and I am able to stay completely objective. Wondering if anyone else has tried Adderall for trading and what benefits or downsides they have felt?
The following user says Thank You to futurestrader9979 for this post:
I don't but want to follow along and see peoples responses, find this very interesting.
Like yourself (and I suspect many people) I have the same problem of emotional trading having screwed me more times than I like to admit. The days I'm focused and keyed in it's like night and day. It'd be nice to be in that state every time trading. I haven't tried any type of drug to help with focus, I would say I've leaned far more towards try and figure things out and improve, but there comes a point where one starts to wonder if the answer lies elsewhere.
I agree, sometimes I feel that all humans are simply wired differently. If two people suffer an identical loss, that loss impacts the both of them differently from a biological standpoint. Some individuals, by nature, are more susceptible to emotional drama than others. Nevertheless one can definitely train his or herself to become less susceptible to these emotions but I believe you can only alter your biology to a certain extent
I have never tried Adderal in my life, I think here in Europe smart drugs are not as common as in the U.S.
I have watched a documentary about psychiatry years ago and it really shocked me, basically most of the mental illnesses are completely made up to sell drugs.
If I find the link about the documentary I will post it here.
Also, I worked for 10+ years as a middle man in the pharma industry and I was so surprised to see the big proportion of psychiatric drugs that are sold on a monthly basis.
So, before taking any drugs I would really investigate if you really suffer from ADD.
Don't worry about emotional trading, and being impulsive etc... we all suffer from it so you don't need to be ashamed about it. Read my journal and you will see that I am always taking impulsive trades and trying to cope with them.
I think in the long run acceptance is more powerful than any drugs, we all suffer from revenge trading, impulsive trades, over confidence etc... so we all need to work on them.
The following 4 users say Thank You to SBtrader82 for this post:
This could be recipe for disaster, what if things don't go your way even after taking the drugs? You assume its not enough? Start getting it outside of prescribed limit? In tern worsening your health problem (if you really have one?)
Doctors spend lot of time in school to learn what they do, I usually wont even advocate taking vitamins without talking with doctor first but this is taking things on dangerous lines.
However, this is your personal decision, good luck and I hope you keep succeeding.
The following user says Thank You to AllSeeker for this post:
I used to take adderall when I was younger and can say that I would probably be a better trader now in the short term because of its ability to help with concentration but one of my weaknesses is revenge trading and I have found it hard to stop trading sometimes after being down and if I was to take adderall now I think because of its obsessive effect I would just want to trade and trade and trade.
