Trading psychology

Good afternoon 

Respected chairpersons, distinguished delegates on and off the dias, Sri Sourav Roy of NSE.

As Psychologist, I am grateful to know that National Stock Exchange of India Limited along with Securities Exchange Board of India (SEBI), National Institute of Securities Market (NISM) along with 6 other Market Infrastructure Institutions (MIIs) are participating in the 45th Kolkata International Book Fair and is organising one academic platform to empower the Investors through Education and Awareness. 

People are afraid of investing the money in market as investment is treated as the process of action for profit. Here lies the misconception about investment as investment is related to both profit and loss just like our lifestyle. We are reading the book to get high marks in the examination. But sometimes we are not getting the expected high marks. Does it lead us to be depressed ?. No, it creates challenge in us. 

I am Psychologist, I perceive investment from two perspectives- investment as reinforcement and investment as life skills.

INVESTMENT AS REINFORCEMENT  Reinforcement theory is a psychological principle maintaining that behaviors are shaped by their consequences and that, accordingly, individual behaviors can be changed through rewards and punishments. After investing, investors are getting good returns so it is considered as reward. On the other side, investor when experienced loss, it is treated as punishment. Here investor is shareholder.  A shareholder, also referred to as a stockholder, is a person, company, or institution that owns at least one share of a company's stock, known as equity. Because shareholders essentially own the company, they reap the benefits of a business's success. These rewards come in the form of increased stock valuations or financial profits distributed as dividends. Conversely, when a company loses money, the share price invariably drops, which can cause shareholders to lose money or suffer declines in their portfolios. A shareholder is any person, company, or institution that owns shares in a company's stock. A company shareholder can hold as little as one share. Shareholders are subject to capital gains (or losses) and/or dividend payments as residual claimants on a firm's profits. Shareholders also enjoy certain rights such as voting at shareholder meetings to approve the members of the board of directors, dividend distributions, or mergers. In the case of bankruptcy, shareholders can lose up to their entire investment. There are two types of reinforcement as proposed by B.F. Skinner. These are positive and negative reinforcement.  Positive reinforcement involves the use of rewards to reinforce behaviors. Negative reinforcement involves the removal of aversive stimuli to reinforce the target behavior. Company's good amount of dividend is considered as positive reinforcement and failure of giving dividend is considered as negative reinforcement. Dividend refers to a reward, cash or otherwise, that a company gives to its shareholders. Dividends can be issued in various forms, such as cash payment, stocks or any other form. A company’s dividend is decided by its board of directors and it requires the shareholders’ approval. However, it is not obligatory for a company to pay dividend. Dividend is usually a part of the profit that the company shares with its shareholders. Company can give the dividend following fixed time interval. This is fixed interval schedule. Similarly company can vary the interval for giving dividend. This is called the variable interval schedule. Incase of former, investor is less anxious and can make out better investment planning as dividend will reinforce the investor to make more investment in the market. In variable interval schedule, investor’s uncertainty level is very high. Investor can invest in market other than fixed company market. Instead of interval schedule, company can give dividend following ratios. Here ratio means fixed ratio and variable ratios. There are few fundamental financial ratios namely working capital ratio, quick ratio, earning per share ratio, price earning and debt equity ratio. All the ratios are indicative of company performance. Fixed ratio: A fixed-ratio schedule is a schedule of reinforcement where a dividend  is reinforced only after a specified company performance. Therefore, investor should pay attention to  workflows, projects, and other pertinent day-to-day activities in order to identify strengths and weaknesses of the company. Financial statements used in evaluating overall financial performance include the balance sheet, the income statement, and the statement of cash flows.Financial performance indicators are quantifiable metrics used to measure how well a company is doing. No single measure should be used to define the financial performance of a firm. Variable ratio:  Variable-ratio schedules occur when a response is reinforced after an unpredictable number of responses. This schedule creates a high steady rate of responding. Gambling and lottery games are good examples of a reward based on a variable ratio schedule. In sharemarket, this might involve delivering incentive to investor after purchasing one share, again after four share purchase, and then again after two share purchase. bar presses. In the field of investment, there are two broad ratios - fixed exchange and floating exchange ratios. Investor must be aware of few fundamental ratios before investment as working capital ratio, Earnings per share, P/E : Share price / EPS, Debt to Equity ratio. Probable mindset of investors

Investment as life skills following Rabindrik Values.

SELF-AWAKENING - It means motivating self to know own needs, competencies, limitations. It develops self awareness. Self-awareness simply means that you are aware of what you are doing and how you are doing it. Investor should not be blind in purchase of share. Investor should analyze the trade market educating self on reading chart characteristics and price action. Here mind set should have positive weightage. Investor imagines positive power and energy in him. EMOTIONAL CONTROL: Trading in the stock market requires years of practice and thorough understanding of market dynamics to maximize gains. Unlike investing, where the holding period is long, trading involves frequent buying and selling of securities. Among the several things that you should not do while trading is to trade under emotions. Emotional trading has several pitfalls, and doing so can result in significant capital loss. Here are reasons why emotions shouldn’t cloud your trading activity. It’s prudent to trade (buy and sell) securities with robust fundamentals to enhance your riches. However, when you trade emotionally, more often than not, you tend to ignore these essential aspects. For instance, during these times, when markets are experiencing an exhilarating bull run, there’s a fear of missing out doing rounds. Many investors feel that they will miss the bus if they don’t invest now.  In the process, they tend to overlook the vital aspects of trading and may end up banking on stocks with weak fundamentals. This elevates the quantum of risk significantly, and there are high chances of capital loss. So, it’s prudent to keep your emotions under control and go about the entire activity. On the other hand, when you trade unemotionally, your judgments are based on logic, facts, and figures. You trade according to the goal you wish to achieve and get your calls right. This not only enhances your wealth but gives you a pleasing experience. Forbes suggests few unemotional investment skills as : forget the short cut success, navigating the market better, understanding the impact of various market forces, and developing a solid strategy to augment your gains further, making trading experience better. Irrespective of whether you trade under fear or greed, there are chances of your experience going sour. A bad experience, especially during formative trading days, can act as a dampener and turn you off markets once and forever. Many investors have turned their back on markets following a not-so-good experience, thus robbing themselves of the opportunity to maximize their wealth. Stock markets, particularly equities, have the potential to generate inflation-beating returns. Also, with various other financial instruments on the offering, they help you diversify your portfolio. However, if a sour experience leads to you giving up on markets altogether, the loss is yours in the long run.      SYSTEMATIC - Systematic trading is related to quantitative trading. Quantitative trading includes all trading that use quantitative techniques; most quantitative trading involves using techniques to value market assets like derivatives but the trading decision may be systematic or discretionary. Systematic trading associates with a number of risks, the returns can be very volatile and funds can quickly amass substantial trading losses without proper risk management.[5] Therefore, systematic trading should take into account the importance of risk management, using a systematic approach to quantify risk, consistent limits and techniques to define how to close excessively risky positions. Systematic trading, in fact, lends itself to control risk precisely because it allows money managers to define profit targets, loss points, trade size, and system shutdown points objectively and in advance of entering each trade. No self-sabotage: Self-sabotage refers to behaviors or thought patterns that hold you back and prevent you from doing what you want to do. Self-sabotage occurs when we destroy ourselves physically, mentally, or emotionally or deliberately hinder our own success and wellbeing by undermining personal goals and values (Brenner, 2019). It is “insidious, profound, and universal” and emanates from negative mindsets (Berg, 2015). Self-sabotage, also known as behavioral dysregulation, can be conscious or unconscious depending on level of awareness. An example of conscious self-sabotage is deciding to eat cake, despite a goal to eat healthy. Unconscious self-sabotage happens when a personal goal or value has been undermined but not initially recognized. Someone with a fear of failure might wait until the last minute to work on an important project, unconsciously avoiding the prospect of advancement (Wignall, 2020). Another dimension of self-sabotage is cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is the internal imbalance or discomfort experienced when words or actions do not align with beliefs and values. When this happens, we act to ease the discomfort by changing our words or behaviors or by reframing our goals and values. It seems unlikely that anyone would intentionally sabotage themselves, yet they do, and the consequences can be caustic. Chronic self-sabotage depletes drive and motivation and leaves us sad, anxious, and with damaged self-esteem. NISKAM PRINCIPLE - Working without expectation of reward _____ In Sanskrit, nishkam means “action without motive,” “work without desire" or "desire-less.” FEARLESS - Feeling of overcoming fear ______ CLEANLINESS - Neat and tidy ______ NO WORK-FAMILY CONFLICT - Maintaining balance between family and work demand ______ NISKAM PRINCIPLE - Working without expectation of reward ______ CHALLENGING - Competing against one ______ SELF-UNDERSTANDING- Feedback to self about own success and failure ______ DOUBTLESS - Free from uncertainty in belief ______ FREE FROM FEAR OF FAILURE - Free from anticipated failure ______  RESOLUTE- Determined in purpose ______ ACTIVE - Avoiding laziness ______

This may sound trivial, and you probably think that you know what you are doing at all times. However, that is likely false. After all, most traders can remember asking themselves “What was I thinking?!” at one point or another after closing out a losing trade.

A trader who lacks self-awareness goes through their trading day without fully having a sense of what they are doing. I was guilty of this myself. I would research for random trade setups to take, execute and manage orders to the best of my ability (or so I thought), and try to squeeze out some gains where I could. Later that same evening, I would wonder what went wrong, why I didn’t make any money, and simply hope things would turn out better the next trading day.

During that stage of my trading career, I did not fully understand that my lack of consistency (and thus lack of trading success) had something to do with my overall approach to trading, and not with my actual methodology. I considered myself a well educated trader, as I was strong with technical analysis, and decent with risk management - I had assumed it was only matter of time before things clicked and I discovered what worked!

A study completed on day traders found that “Very few rated themselves as below average. They attributed their losses to difficult market conditions and situational mistakes. Surprisingly, they rationalized losses as part of their learning curves--even when those losses extended for many months and even years!” This point thoroughly demonstrates that an absence of self-awareness hinders traders from reaching their full potential.

As most new traders do, I was losing money for an uncomfortably long time - Of course, this approach is not sustainable and can only go on for so long. I knew I needed a change. This moment of forced self-awareness was an important and very humbling step in my journey as a trader. When I reflect on this period, I recall a handful of principles that became essential to my continued success and profitability - I still use these concepts daily.

 Imagining positive power or energy ______                   

EMOTIONAL CONTROL-Controlling unwanted emotion   ______          

SYSTEMATIC - Following planned step ______

SELF-INSULTING LESS - Not offending to self ______

FEARLESS - Feeling of overcoming fear ______

CLEANLINESS - Neat and tidy ______

NO WORK-FAMILY CONFLICT - Maintaining balance between family and work demand ______

NISKAM PRINCIPLE - Working without expectation of reward ______

CHALLENGING - Competing against one ______

SELF-UNDERSTANDING- Feedback to self about own success and failure ______

DOUBTLESS - Free from uncertainty in belief ______

FREE FROM FEAR OF FAILURE - Free from anticipated failure ______ 

RESOLUTE- Determined in purpose ______

ACTIVE - Avoiding laziness ______

is life skill just like man learns how to run after repeated fall on the ground. Investment means sharing your feelings with others, investment means social responsibility. 

Investment is life skills

Self-awareness 

Monitoring the trading Market and the company

Trade marketing is a wider marketing discipline that aims to increase demand with supply chain partners such as wholesalers, retailers, or at the distributor level, rather than just at the customer level. Trade Marketing is also called B2B marketing or business-to-business marketing. All the promotional activities are aimed at increasing the demand of the product among the various supply chain partners. Before investment, investors will pay much attention to the company activities: Organizational structure, climate, leadership, employer-employee relationship, organizational culture, organizational coping, organizational resilience, technology adoption, marketing strategy, brand making, market volatility.

Stop expecting and start acceptance

In investment theory, there is one fuzzy concept- stop happiness and expect happiness.  It means that when market is vulnerable or volatile, reduce expectations otherwise errors of expectations will be coming. And accept the return. 

Accept market volatility : Volatility is a statistical measure of the dispersion of returns for a given security or market index. In most cases, the higher the volatility, the riskier the security. Volatility is often measured as either the standard deviation or variance between returns from that same security or market index. Volatility often refers to the amount of uncertainty or risk related to the size of changes in a security's value. A higher volatility means that a security's value can potentially be spread out over a larger range of values. This means that the price of the security can change dramatically over a short time period in either direction. A lower volatility means that a security's value does not fluctuate dramatically, and tends to be more steady.

When market is very much volatile, you can expect vulnerable behavior in the market. At this juncture, it is better not to encourage your obsessions to invest much. Rather, it is better to stop much expectation. So, as investor, you are supposed to know more about some basic statistical tools - standard deviation, variance, coefficient of variation, 

covariance, correlation, moving average, weighted moving average, regression and correspondence analysis. They have to know few data visualization tools as box whisker plot, time series plot. 

6 ratios 

EPS: Earnings per share.

Earnings per share (EPS) is calculated as a company's profit divided by the outstanding shares of its common stock. The resulting number serves as an indicator of a company's profitability. It is common for a company to report EPS that is adjusted for extraordinary items and potential share dilution.The higher a company's EPS, the more profitable it is considered to be.Do not invest if there is more ups and downs in EPS. Compare EPS with EPS of other similar companies. 

P/E : Share price / EPS.

Debt to Equity ratio

Invitation from NSE

National Stock Exchange of India Limited along with Securities Exchange Board of India (SEBI), National Institute of Securities Market (NISM) along with 6 other Market Infrastructure Institutions (MIIs) are participating in the 45th Kolkata International Book Fair. We as a consortium have set up a stall at the Kolkata Book Fair with the objective of empowering the Investors through Education and Awareness. 

We have got an opportunity to further our objective and reach a larger audience from the Centre stage of the Kolkata Book Fair (Central Park, Salt lake) from 01:00 PM to 1:45 PM on March 2nd, 2022 on the Topic (Financial Market – A Unique Perspective). In view of the same we take great pleasure in inviting you as our GUEST Speaker for the event. Your expertise and enriching experience will be an excellent addition to our program as many of our visitors including all of us look forward to hearing and learning from your experience.

We request you to make it convenient to attend the program as a Guest speaker from 01:00 PM to 1:45 PM on March 2nd, 2022 at Central Park, Salt lake.

Enthusiastically anticipating for a positive response. 

In case of any further query, please feel free to contact with Mr. Sourav Roy (09831439387)

 

Thanks & Regards, 

 

Sourav Roy 

National Stock Exchange of India Limited (NSE) 

1st Floor, Park View Apartments, 99, Rash Behari Avenue, Kolkata – 700029 

Web: www.nseindia.com | Email: souravr@nse.co.in