Abdirisag Badal Ahmed

The Psychology of Speculative

Financial Retail Trading
Optimizing performance by developing a

performance-based thinking

Metropolia University of Applied Sciences

International Business and Logistics
Bachelor’s Thesis
Spring 2023
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Acknowledgment

I would like to extend first and foremost my appreciation to Senior Lecturer Daryl
Chapman for his supervision, extraordinary professional expertise, and his
unfailing personal support which he has given me throughout the thesis. Also, a
special word of thanks goes to Senior Lecturer Michael Keaney for his highly
inspirational lectures and guidance throughout the different stages of the study. I
owe the same debt of gratitude to my academic tutor Senior Lecturer Louise
Stansfield for her never-ending academic guidance, patience, time, and her
unfailing personal support. I highly appreciate her devoted availability.

I thank my family, my mother Sareeya Dhubad Abdullahi for her moral support
and a very special and sincere thanks to my father Dr. Badal Ahmed Hassan
(DSc. In Agric & Fore.) for his guidance, time, material, and moral support during
my study and thesis work.
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Abstract

Author(s): Abdirisag Badal Ahmed

Title: The psychology of speculative financial retail trading
Number of Pages: 45 pages
Date: 20 April 2023

Degree: Bachelor’s degree

Degree Program: International Business and Logistics
Specialisation option: Finance, Economics
Instructor(s): Daryl Chapman

This thesis investigates the psychological challenges which retail traders face
when trading on the financial markets. Many brokers have reported that a
significant amount of retail traders lose their capital within a matter of months.
The potential causes for this phenomenon to take place are examined in this
thesis by using relevant literatures and exploiting recent data from the financial
markets. The raw data were obtained from Trading View platform, and
Comparative Analysis (CA) was used in this study to compare different analytical
results. The study emphasised on the technical side of the trading due to its
mechanical nature which can be systematically defined and organized. The study
found that it is hard for the traders to stick to their trading plan, however, they
become irrational when they are exposed to uncertainty in the live markets. The
result also found that technical analysis is a skill which can be learned and crafted
compared to psychology analysis which is more complicated.

Keywords: Retail trader, decision-making process, financial markets,

technical- and psychological analysis, price action
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Contents

1 Introduction 1

1.1 The relevance of the study 3

1.2 Objectives 4
1.3 Hypothesis 5

2 Literature review 6

2.1 Market opportunities 6

2.2 Decision-making process 7
2.3 The thinking brains 8
2.4 Investment decision-making 10
2.4.1 Heuristic 11
2.4.2 Prospect theory 12
2.5 Market dissection 12
2.6 Investor’s risk perception 13
2.7 Technical analysis 13
2.8 Fundamental analysis 14
2.9 Psychological analysis 15

3 Material and methods 17

3.1 Data collection 17

3.2 Chart analysis 18
3.3 Market behaviour 21
3.4 Insufficient price delivery 22
3.5 Time and price 24
3.5.1 The relationship of trading sessions 26
3.6 Data analysis 27

4 Result and discussion 28

4.1 Market participants 28

4.2 Risk management 30
4.2.1 Risk and reward premise 31
4.2.2 Managing an open trade 32
4.3 The psychology of trading 34
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5 Conclusion and recommendation 36

References 38

List of figures

Figure 1. Bitcoin’s market price hike graph from December 2020 until April 2021
(TradingView)......................................................................................................... 7
Figure 2. Seven steps in decision-making processes. Modified from Panpatte &
Takale (2019). ........................................................................................................ 8
Figure 3. Illustration of Cognitive Illusions (Jahanzeb, 2012: online)................. 11
Figure 4. Forex Factory news release data from 2nd of December 2022 (Forex
Factory, 2022). ..................................................................................................... 15
Figure 5. EUR/USD bullish market structure. Price data from 3rd of November
until 12 of December 2022 (TradingView). ......................................................... 19
Figure 6. EUR/USD bearish market structure. Price data from the 1st of
September until 7th of September (TradingView, 2022). ................................... 20
Figure 7. EUR/USD consolidating. Price data from the 7th of October until 18th
of October (TradingView). ................................................................................... 21
Figure 8. XAU/USD price action from 22nd of September until 30th of
September 2022 (TradingView). ......................................................................... 22
Figure 9. GBP/JPY price action from 11th of November until 17th of November
(TradingView)....................................................................................................... 24
Figure 10. GBP/USD price action on the 6th of January 2023 (TradingView). . 25
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Glossary

CPI The Consumer Price Index (CPI) is a measure of the average change over
time in the prices paid by urban consumers for a market basket of
consumer goods and services.

EMA An exponential moving average (EMA) is a widely used technical chart

indicator that tracks changes in the price of a financial instrument over a
certain period.

FOMC The Federal Open Market Committee meetings are important to forex
traders because this is when the Federal Reserve, the central bank of the
U.S., announces their decision on interest rates. This announcement has
a significant impact on the U.S. dollar.

MACD The Moving Average Convergence/Divergence indicator is a momentum

oscillator primarily used to trade trends.

NFP The nonfarm payroll (NFP) report is a key economic indicator for the United
States and represents the total number of paid workers in the U.S.
excluding those employed by farms, the federal government, private
households, and non-profit organizations.

RSI The relative strength index (RSI) is a momentum indicator used in technical
analysis. RSI measures the speed and magnitude of a security's recent
price changes to evaluate overvalued or undervalued conditions in the
price of that security.
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1 Introduction

Does a retail trader stand a chance of succeeding in the modern highly volatile
financial markets? Several scholars; Evans (2009); Garvey, Huang, and Wu
(2016); Carrodus (2022), discussed different paths to succeed in financial trading.
There are success stories such as Warren Buffet’s, Peter Lynch’s, and the king
of the currency markets George Soros who have made stupendous wealth from
the financial markets, not merely by guesswork but rather with their unique
strategies and characters (Obienugh, 2010).

A former Goldman Sachs floor trader Anton Kreil stated in a seminar where he
was a guest speaker in University of Westminster in (2017) that 90% of retail
traders lose 90% of their capital within 90 days. He further explains the reasons
why this is the reality for many traders in the two-hour long seminar exposing the
brokerage industry (InstituteofTrading, 2017). However, this thesis will investigate
how the rest 10% of traders are able to consistently pull money out from the
markets by analyzing traders’ decision-making processes (Bruch and Feinberg,
2017), from a human psychology and behavior economics perspective (Thaler,
2016).

Before answering the aforementioned questions, one must ponder of the actual
purpose in life, which can make this thought process a deep philosophical one.
Despite the differences of opinions about these thoughts amongst different belief
systems and ideologies, it is crucial for the sake of this research project to
understand the origin of a thought for a decision maker (Ametrano, 2014). Before
modern civilization, human beings had to be constantly conscious about certain
inherent needs (McGinn, 1989), such as for example having safety, shelter, or
enough food supply. Is it human beings themselves that maintain these primary
needs (Doyal and Gough, 1984), or is there perhaps a higher divine power that
provides all of these and so much more? A fact is that humans have not produced
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the natural capital of this earth, and therefore the level of control a human has in
attaining some aspects of these essential sustenance is almost diminutive
(Diamond, and Robinson, 2010). Take example, a rural farmer in developing
countries that needs water, sun exposure, and an arable environment to cultivate
grain in order to meet his and his peoples’ nutritional needs. However, the farmer
has no control over the supply of these natural resources, nor whether the rain
will fall or not, yet he must decide on whether he has to saw the seeds in the field
or not (Hodder, 2014).

The prime reason to make any investment decision at all is to generate a value
greater than what is currently possessed (Meeks, 2003). Market participants
often have the same objective (Li, Wang, and Xia, 2014), which is to make profit
as companies do and what to do with the output is subjective to each participant
(Perkmann, 2011). However, not always is the objective reached. Whenever
there are winners there must be the counter party, which are the losers, and it is
just a universal law which applies in any walk of realm in life (West, 2018).

The number of winners and losers in an event does not need to be constant and
it is often not. Capitalism does not often benefit everyone, nor a constant
monetary injection to the economy (Kotz, 2009), whenever it is deemed to be
necessary by government elites (Aydın-Düzgit and Balta, 2018). What is required
is to have enough players so that the game can be played. A platform or proper
environment will be provided and rules that need to be respected by the
participants will be set in place (Thaler, 2016). To avoid any misconduct, an
independent state must be designated to monitor the game and the players
(Scopino, 2015).

A clear system has been defined so far, which assumingly postulates fairness
and creates justifiable reasons to take part in the game, if the participants are of
course conscious of themselves to make the decision on their own. A logical
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assumption is not the only necessary causation of making the decision. Humans’
have emotions as well which plays their own role in the decision-making process
(Summers and Duxbury, 2012). However, when it comes to making a serious
decision, whether it is finance related, health related, or family issue that needs
to be solved, a person taps into their rational side of their thinking brain
(Tasso, 2018). Daniel Kahneman (2012) who’s a Nobel prize winning
psychologist described this side of the brain as the system two, where an
individual is making a deliberate and rational decision. If a player knows the rules
of the game and he is aware of the repercussions, regardless of whether they will
end up in the losing or the winning side of the game, one will participate only if
the input output ratio is sensible to them. In other words, the risk and reward ratio
must be convenient so that the candidate is further inspired to pursue the game.

The game has started and its player verses player. By default, the participants
have now accepted the rules and the faith of the potential scenarios that can play
out. Depending on the nature of the game, the dynamic can have an effect on the
participants performance. For example, if a group of friends are playing blackjack
just for fun and there are no resources put in as bets by participants thus, there
might not be as much internal nr external forces making the players to be more
conscious of their performance as they would in the opposite scenario. Perhaps
the players’ egos or competitive nature might be influencing their performance,
but given the nature of the game, which is based on randomness, will also have
its effect on players performance (Howell 2015).

1.1 The relevance of the study

The relevance of the previously described case for this research project is to
decode an event from a hindsight perspective and integrate it to the retail traders’
reality in trading on the live markets. The financial markets are so large and there
are countless different trading options to choose from, just as a gambler that has
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to choose from a casino full of slot machines and game tables. A bias will more
likely than not influence the decision makers thought process, based on the
relations that he has with different sources of intelligence (Tasso, 2018), e.g., a
gentleman that once won a huge chunk of money from a poker table might
choose to go to play at that table again the next time.

When there is an abundance of subjects to choose from, it can get quite

overwhelming to make an optimal decision which produces the maximum reward
(O'Callaghan, 2023). Why the reward needs to be a maximum one or is it just in
human nature to be greedy and want things abundantly? The defining feature of
dispositional greed is the desire to get more (Mussel & Hewig 2016). Contrary to
greed, a proper reward management supports the achievement of high
performance and encourages the pursuit of projects and goals (Armstrong 2010).
Perhaps, if there is an important need for maximizing the reward rather than
taking just enough to get by, the rational mind could be compromised then due to
the psychological pressure that comes from greediness.

1.2 Objectives

The aim of this thesis is to bring forth the dichotomy in traders’ thinking brain
whenever they are exposed to uncertainty and risky environment. Major
psychologists’’ course of conducts will be analyzed and challenged throughout
this research project. Likewise, this thesis aims to develop a value-based
decision-making policies which explains a trader’s decision-making process by
comparing technical, fundamental, and psychological analytical methods. This
thesis will also include chart analyzes using a trading platform and the analysis
will be carried out from a hindsight perspective to demonstrate points and
arguments while simultaneously showcasing the trading psychologists’ advice.
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The purpose of this study is to understanding traders’ behaviour whenever they

are exposed to uncertainty and to discover a more conventional approach for
retail traders, so that they could have a better chance in succeeding in trading on
the financial markets. The introduction framed a context about some of the
psychological factors which traders face, and these elements are often not
consciously thought about but can be observed and examined through testing.
Hence why, there will be relevant sources and literatures been explored in this
thesis to showcase some of these psychological challenges.

For the past three years, the writer has been studying different financial markets,
mainly the foreign exchange markets and indices. A profound observation on the
markets has been carried out during this period to examine different trading
strategies used by various market participants in respect of their status in the
market. The historic price data was the focus point and therefore this thesis will
aim to tackle its objectives for the most part through technical analysis. However,
the core focus point is to investigate traders’ decision-making process using
technical, fundamental, and psychological analysis. Furthermore, the narrative
which the previously referenced psychologists (Howell, 2015 and Kahneman,
2012) and many others had adduced in their works will be challenged.

1.3 Hypothesis

Reinventing the wheel for retail traders when it comes to trading live markets and
developing a mindset which focuses on performance rather than results will give
traders better chance of succeeding in trading on the financial markets. Along
with understanding the driving forces in the markets and developing a vision
through chart analysis by exploiting previous price action, might enable traders
to accumulate enough wins to stay and flourish in the financial markets on the
long run.
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2 Literature review

The narrative which trading psychologists have adduced when it comes to trading
the financial markets, is one that pushes a trader to think in a probabilistic way
due to the hectic nature of the markets. The common stand which mirrors the
psychologists’ perspective is that no market participant possesses the perfect
knowledge of the future, but they all contribute to the future outcomes (Sonesson
& Lenninger, 2015). In other words, price movements, opportunities, and
outcomes are created by traders acting on their beliefs and expectations of the
future (Douglas 1990:212). The trading psychologist Rande Howell believes that
the control over the outcome of a trade is an illusion and traders should let that
thought go (Howell, 2015). Thus, the approach and the state of mind which a
trader takes to the live markets is crucial for their success.

2.1 Market opportunities

Traders have no control over the markets and the markets have no control over
the traders (Douglas 2001:31). From each participants’ perspective the market
just generates information about itself and gives each trader the opportunity to
make a successful trade (Koppel 2011: pps.22-23). How a trader chooses to
enter a trade, manage a trade, and exit a trade is up to them to decide, based on
their interpretation of the provided information from the markets (Douglas
2001:3). Likewise, the traded financial instrument is commonly chosen based on
what opportunities different markets provide and what’s trending. In recent years,
an outstanding attention was drawn towards Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies,
where Bitcoin’s market value rose to $170 billion in year 2020 (Breidbach and
Tana, 2021).

Figure 1 shows, how Bitcoin’s market price started to skyrocket within a period of
five months by almost 270% (Meynkhard, 2019). The fundamental reasons
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supporting such a high momentum in price action is relevant for the investor in
terms of making the investment decision (Abrar, Ahmed, Hassan & Iqbal, 2014).
However, the timing can often be very challenging, for minimizing risk and
optimizing return. An ideal investment scenario is always to buy low and sell high.

Figure 1. Bitcoin’s market price hike graph from December 2020 until April 2021
(TradingView).

2.2 Decision-making process

Decision-making is the art to solving complex situations (Jahanzeb, 2012).

Different scholars defined decision making in different ways. Of course, it
depends what kind of decision is to be made, is it a decision that affects other
people or is it a decision that concerns individual choice. It is a unique art to
choose a particular option from various available options and decide which option
to choose. Eisenfuhr, (2011), defined decision making as a process of making a
choice from a number of alternatives to achieve a desired result. Beach (1993),
 8

divided decisions in to two types; screening and choice. Screening refers to

decisions where multiple options are being considered and choice refers to when
decision is based on one option which termed as choice by default. This thesis
applies the definition adopted by Panpatte and Takale (2019) who define decision
making as “a process of judging various available options and narrowing down
choices to a situation one”. There are seven steps process to be followed in
decision making as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Seven steps in decision-making processes. Modified from Panpatte & Takale
(2019).

2.3 The thinking brains

The Nobel prize winner Daniel Kahneman (2012) describes in his book ‘’Thinking
Fast and Slow’’ how the human brain functions during a decision-making process.
Kahneman (2012) argued that in decision making human brain functions in what
he termed the two systems: system 1 and system 2;
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System 1: operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort and no sense
of voluntary control.

System 2: allocates attention to the effortful mental activities that demand it,
including complex computations. The operations of System 2 are often
associated with the subjective experience of agency, choice, and concertation
(Kahneman 2012: pps.20-21).

The psychologist (Kahneman, 2012) further emphases in his book, how the two
thinking brains battle against each other over the control of the mind. System one
explains how irrational and impulsive humans thinking brain tends to be, relevant
to their environment and how slow, rational and detail oriented the system two is.
The trading psychologist Rande Howell (2015) takes the same alignment in his
series of articles regarding the trader’s state of mind and both psychologists
stimulate the importance of the system two when it comes to making a serious
financial decision which in this case is the rational mind. This narrative is
approvable, that a trader needs to be aware of the factors which guides his
judgement and behaviour. How this expression will serve the retail trader against
these fierce financial markets, will be analyzed more in the discussion part.

A trading psychologist Mark Douglas (1990) explains in his book ‘’the Disciplined
Trader’’, how a trader’s attitude and perspective impacts the decision-making
process. The narrative which Douglas brings forth in the book is one which shifts
the attention completely from the market’s behaviour to the trader’s behaviour.
The psychologist believes that success in trading is 80 percent psychological and
20 percent one’s methodology, be it fundamental analysis or technical analysis
(Douglas 1990:9). The only thing a retail trader can control is their behavior, not
what the market does which is a fair statement that Douglas stated in an interview
held by Koppel (Koppel 2011: 22).
 10

The market is simply a byproduct of two market participants willing to trade at a

price, regardless of the traders’ belief in the traded commodity’s actual value. If
there is enough force to push the market into one direction, the participants
comprehension of why a certain market movement occurred becomes irrelevant
(Douglas 1990: pps.184-185). Perhaps a position trader or a long-term investor
might need justifications on the major value exchanges within their portfolio, but
a short-term trader needs to be reactive and adapt fast to the market movements.

2.4 Investment decision-making

The process and procedures in decision making has been discussed in the sub-
chapter 2.2. Investments can be divided into two parts; financial investments or
economic investments (Anwar & Sun, 2011). In simple definition, financial
investment means putting money into something, expecting more gain., whereby
economic investments are undertaken with an expectation of increasing the
current economy’s capital stock that consists of goods and services, or
expenditure made now to make gains in future (Verlics, 2013). The primary
motive for both parties is to make money.

In the past, investments were generally based on forecasting, performance, and

market timing, that resulted in a huge gap between the returns available and the
return received forced the investors to investigate the matter and find the reasons.
Jahanzeb, (2012) stated that investors make irrational decisions during their
investments and psychological impact was found during these mistakes.
Jahanzeb, further argued that investors’ decisions are often inconsistent, or
cognitive illusions play an important role to divert the human decisions which have
been categorized into heuristic or prospect theory as illustrated in Figure 3
(Jahanzeb, 2012).
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Figure 3. Illustration of Cognitive Illusions (Jahanzeb, 2012: online).

2.4.1 Heuristic

Heuristic is a Greek word meaning “serving to find out or discover”. A heuristic is

a quick and easy way of decision-making strategy by ignoring part of the
information gathered (Gigerenzer & Gaissmaier, 2011). Heuristic is the study of
methods and rules of discovery and invention. It is a reasoning not considered as
final and strict, however, as provisional, and plausible only, aiming to discover the
solution of the present challenge (Romanycia & Pelletier, 1985). Other Scholars
such as Kahneman and Frederick (2002) suggested that a heuristic assesses a
target attribute by another property that comes more readily to mind. Due to the
irrationality of investors’ decision-making (Mittal & Vyas, 2009), it is not easy to
separate the emotional and factors related to personal experiences that
influenced in the process of decision-making in which the investors go through
by gathering relevant information for assessment. Factors such as
representativeness, overconfidence, anchoring, gamblers fallacy and availability
 12

bias are among the factors that include in Heuristic decision-making process
(Jahanzeb, 2012).

2.4.2 Prospect theory

Over forty-three years ago, Kahneman and Tversky (1979) initiated the prospect
theory as a behavioural substitute to expected utility theory. Their argument is
that prospect theory is more “perceptual and psychophysical perspective” to think
about money, goods, and risk (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979). The Expected Utility
Theory (Schoemaker,1982), suggests that the decision maker compares
between risky or uncertain prospect by their expected values, of which the
weighted sums obtained by adding the utility values of outcomes multiplied by
their respective probabilities (Mongin, 1997). The main characteristic of the
prospect theory is that it postulates the individual’s risk tendency across contexts,
with individuals being risk averse in the domain of gains and risk accepting in the
domain of losses (Vis, 2011).

2.5 Market dissection

Many of the world’s most successful traders use fundamental analysis to

determine the market direction in which to trade and technical analysis to time
the entry and the exit of such trades (Schwager 1999:3). The psychology part of
trading is what holds traders back from succeeding in the markets due to the high
frequency emotions which traders deal with while operating in live markets
(Howell, 2015). It would be ludicrous to think that one could understand the
market’s behavior to any degree greater than one understanding his behavior first
(Douglas 1990:70). Emotions cause us to over bet, to under bet, to over trade
and to do wrong things, even when we know they’re wrong (Williams 2011:293).
Fear is always the result of one’s beliefs about the threatening nature of the
environment (Douglas 1990:71). There are different forms of fear, such as fear of
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losing capital or fear of missing out on a market move, causing to make an

irrational decision which might further escalate to bigger losses.

2.6 Investor’s risk perception

Regardless of what activity a person is carrying out, whether it is driving a car or

investing in retail market, we are often exposed to different kinds of risk. There is
a commonly agreed definition of risk as a concept, and it has different meanings
to different people. The common definition of risk commonly carries a negative
connotation i.e., the possibility of harm, loss, destruction, or an undesirable event
(Ricciardi, 2004). Lopes (1987) defined risk as “situations in which a decision is
made whose consequences depend on the outcomes of future events having
known probabilities”. Risk taking is associated with personal and corporate
success, which is an assumption that has received some empirical support
(Weber & Milliman, 1997). Sitkin Wiengart (1995), Hamid, Rangel, Taib &
Thurasamy, (2013) defined risk perception as an individual’s assessment of the
inherent risk in a given situational problem.

2.7 Technical analysis

Technical analysis has been around for as long as there have been organized
markets in the form of exchanges (Douglas 2001:3). It is the science of recording,
usually in graphic form, the actual history of trading price changes or volume of
transactions in a certain stock and then deducing from that pictured history the
probable future trend (Bassetti, Edwards, & Magee 2018). Technical analysis can
also be understood as a set of rules or charting that tends to anticipate future
price shifts based on the study of certain information, such as buying price, selling
price, and volume traded (Kimura, Nazário, Silva, & Sobreiro 2017). The art of
speculation is about figuring out the most probable direction the future will take
(Williams 2011:200).
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Charts reflect market behaviour that is subject to certain repetitive patterns and
with sufficient experience some traders will uncover an innate ability to use charts
successfully as method of anticipating price moves (Schwager, 1995). Individuals
develop behaviour patterns and a group of individuals, interacting with one
another on a consistent basis, form collective behaviour patterns which is
observable, quantifiable, and they repeat themselves with statistical reliability
(Douglas 2001:3).

A trader develops a trading system where he gains an edge over the market and
the edge simply means that, there is a higher probability of one outcome
occurring over the other (Douglas 2001: pps.12-13). In the long run, this principal
is regarded to serve the trader the same way as in casino business, where the
house eventually wins at the endgame by having an edge over the players.

2.8 Fundamental analysis

Fundamental analysis tries to predict an asset class’s intrinsic, or 'fundamental'

value, and looks for opportunities where the live price deviates from the
calculated intrinsic price (Bonga, 2015). It attempts to predict price action and
trends by analyzing economic indicators, government policy, societal and other
factors within a business cycle framework (Abednego, Nugraheni & Rinaldy,
2018). For instance, certain economic news releases are consistently associated
with larger volatility response in expansions in the markets (Ben Omrane &
Savaser, 2015) such as, the non-farm payrolls, the consumer price index report,
or the federal open market committee’s meetings, and the relevant asset classes
might fluctuate a lot. There are different platforms that can be used as a source
of intelligence when it comes to tracking news events, but the economic calendar
which is used in this dissertation is parsed from www.forexfactory.com. The
following figure shows what news are coming, which currency it impacts and the
 15

importance of it. Red means it is the most influential and yellow the least impactful
(Abednego et al. 2018).

Figure 4. Forex Factory news release data from 2nd of December 2022 (Forex Factory,
2022).

2.9 Psychological analysis

Anyone who puts on a trade can claim to be a trader, but when you compare the
characteristics of the handful of consistent winners with the characteristics of
most other traders, you will find they are as different as night and day (Douglas
2001: pps.4-6). Where is the trader’s mind when he is at the heat of a trade
(Howell, 2015)? According to Howell’s series of articles, traders seem to have a
split personality when they enter live markets, where the rational mind suddenly
vanishes and something else takes control over the thinking brain. The Nobel
prize winner Daniel Kahneman (2012) and other trading psychologists have
similar explanations for this phenomenon, where there are two opposing sides of
the thinking brain, and they battle over the control of the subject’s mind when it
comes to uncertainty. One of the main functions of the referred “System 2” of the
thinking brain is to monitor and control thoughts and actions “suggested” by
 16

System 1, allowing some to be expressed directly in behavior and suppressing

or modifying others (Kahneman 2012: pps.44).

In effect, when you expose an untrained brain to the risk of uncertainty found in
trading, you automatically generate the hyper-vigilance that produces self-doubt
(Howell, 2015). Theoretically speaking, a person can relive an experience again
despite it being a positive or negative one and depending on circumstances, the
subject might operate from a lens of bias, thinking of what would serve him the
most (Kahneman 2012: pps.8-9).

The trading psychologists (Douglas and Howell) are making the case that a
trader should have their thinking brain in the current moment, not in the past.
The connection between the past and the future is what robs the trader of being
in the present moment while his trading in live markets (Howell, 2015). It would
not be unreasonable for traders to learn from past mistakes in their losing
trades and become vigilant based on those experiences. However, putting too
much emphasis on the past mistakes might keep traders from seeing the right
things in the market. Therefore, heuristics are useful or even essential for
traders, but it is important that they are built from a valid information and are
carefully trained (Grimes 2012:350).
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3 Material and methods

Comparative Analysis (CA) was applied in this study. Comparative analysis is an

old age research, commonly used in many fields of scientific studies. As a
research approach, in this study it is used to compare “technical analysis,
fundamental analysis, and psychological analysis” to explore their parallels and
differences in retail traders’ decision making in the financial market participation.
There are different methods that can be used in comparative analysis namely,
Individualizing comparison, Universalizing comparison, Variation-finding
comparison and Encompassing comparison (Adyia, 2017). In this study,
individual analyzing comparison will be particularly used which basically involves
describing fully the characteristics or features each of the forgoing analysis and
compare.

3.1 Data collection

The primary data were obtained from Trading View platform. The targeted market
for data collection were the Foreign Exchange market, but the information will be
relevant for other markets’ traders as well, such as stocks or commodity traders
and the reason for that is, because this dissertation aims to investigate the
psychological factors which lead traders to lose capital. The secondary data was
gathered from published articles, books, financial market news, and lecture
notes. A form of subjective data will also be included into this research project,
which is intended to highlight and support the obtained primary data.
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3.2 Chart analysis

It is safe to say that a trader needs to accumulate relevant information to develop

a trading system with clearly defined rules that will serve him/her in the decision-
making process. When it comes to speculation, not only are rules there to tell
traders the ideal time to get in and out of the market, but to also protect traders
from themselves and these rules are not made to be broken (Williams 2011:205).
Depending on the type of trader a subject is, the used timeframes for technical
analysis might differ and therefore the psychological aspect in trading differs as
well, due to the differences in the duration of the engagement in the markets.

Day traders pay close attention to intraday price movements, timing trades to
benefit from the short-term price fluctuations (Segal, 2022). Swing trading
involves taking trades that last few days to several months to profit from an
anticipated price move (Mitchell, 2023). However, there is a common demeanor
which traders pay attention to which is simply following market structure and the
trend of the market from point A to point B (Williams 2011: pps.11-21).

Market structure is a static element which refers to the patterns of relative highs
and lows and the momentum behind the moves that created that pattern, whereas
price action refers to the actual movements of price within market structure
(Grimes 2012:145). There are traders who use indicators such as Moving
average convergence/divergence, the relative strength index, the exponential
moving average or other indicators to track price movements but, this thesis
purely focuses on price action and market structure.

There are three stages which markets trade – trending up, trending down, or
consolidating (Poon, Alibozek, & Guarino 2014). The following figure shows how
a bullish market structure trends upwards in Euro/Dollar market, by price forming
series of higher highs and securing the swing lows (Linden, 2009).
 19

Figure 5. EUR/USD bullish market structure. Price data from 3rd of November until 12 of
December 2022 (TradingView).

In a bearish trending market structure, the previous lows will be taken out, but the
highs will be secured (Linden, 2009). Same principal as in the bullish condition,
but in reversed trend. Figure 6 shows an example from the same currency pair
as in the previous figure, but the time period is from the 1 st of September until
22nd of September 2022.
 20

Figure 6. EUR/USD bearish market structure. Price data from the 1st of September until
7th of September (TradingView, 2022).

After long directional pushes to either side of the market, it is likely that the market
consolidates before continuing the trend (Grimes 2012, p. 134). Retail traders
might look at this as the buyers and sellers are battling over the control of the
market and which direction the market will trend towards next. Fundamental
analysis can in these market conditions help traders to anticipate or to form a
narrative to which direction the market is most likely to trend towards next before
the defining move occurs (Poon et al. 2014). It can either continue to the previous
trend or completely reverse. This is also seen as market’s indecisiveness, where
a market price during a period of consolidation will still fluctuate, but it will not
break out of a certain price range (Forex, 2022). The following figure is an
example of consolidation phase.
 21

Figure 7. EUR/USD consolidating. Price data from the 7th of October until 18th of
October (TradingView).

3.3 Market behaviour

The order flow of the market can be anticipated, but it is often not clear. The game
which retail traders are engaging here, has more to do with which side of the
market the big players are betting on versus what is the actual value of the traded
commodity. For instance, retail forex trading (Rosenstreich, 2005), is based on
obligations rather than asset transfers agreements to do a future exchange of
currency, albeit ones which never actually happen – it means there must be
opposing long and short sides to all open positions (Forman, 2016). In other
words, the market makers will take the opposite side of the clients trades so that
there will be a sufficient price development. However, this is not always the case,
especially when a market exchange receives too many of one kind of order—
buy, sell, limit—and not enough of the order's counterpoint (Twin, 2022). Thus,
the price move will leave imbalances in the price action. The following figure
showcases how an impulsive move towards up in the market breaks the previous
down trend by violating the bearish market structure.
 22

Figure 8. XAU/USD price action from 22nd of September until 30th of September 2022
(TradingView).

3.4 Insufficient price delivery

Imbalances of orders can often occur when a major news hits in fundamentals
and large sums of orders are rushed on one side of the markets. However, these
imbalances are filled out eventually, depending on the market liquidity (Twin,
2022). The idea of markets leaving these marks could possibly indicate that, at
this point of price action a huge demand occurred which pushed price higher or
in the opposite case, a large bearish sentiment could indicate that supply is
stepping into the market (Brogaard, Hendershott, & Riordan 2014).

Many traders, especially those on the floors of the futures exchanges who could
move prices very dramatically in one direction or the other, usually do not have
the slightest concept of the fundamental supply and demand factors that are
supposed to affect prices (Douglas 2001: pps.1-2). In a basic economic theory,
the market price is often determined based on the supply and demand model,
where buyers and sellers agree on a price and trade has been made (Kurniawati,
2022), but in the financial derivatives markets this might not be the case. These
mathematically engineered financial products are governed by the market
makers in an algorithmic form (Chakraborty & Kearns, 2011) and therefore retail
 23

traders should study the patterns which are linked to the price delivery in different
market conditions.

For instance, a retail trader who’s in a short position due to a bearish market
structure and he anticipates further down movements in price delivery, suddenly
sees the market reversing on him/her and the broker liquidates the trader’s
position at a net loss. The market did not show any sign of depletion nr any
potential reversal patterns which could indicate that a reversal is about to occur.
This is a clear demonstration for the limited knowledge which a retail trader
possesses in the market (Smith, Farmer, Gillemot, & Krishnamurthy, 2003). They
only see the order flow once the big players i.e., the institutions have entered the
market, placing large sums of orders and a huge moment penetrates the market.
What benefits retail traders the most is to trade along with the momentum (Ma,
2018), but knowing when the smart money jumps in, is what retail traders need
to figure out, unless there is of course inside trading taking place. So far, a
structure has been identified where the market is creating higher highs in an
uptrend and lower lows in a downtrend. The ideal entry in an uptrend is to buy
low and sell high, vice versa in the opposite trend (Dourra & Siy 2002).
 24

Figure 9. GBP/JPY price action from 11th of November until 17th of November
(TradingView).

The figure above showcases a market structure shift “MMS” towards the upside,
leaving an imbalance and then price pulls back to collect the left orders, i.e.,
rebalance the market (Twin, 2022). How deep the pullback will be and where to
enter exactly is often difficult to define, nevertheless what makes sense to any
rational investor in particularly a trader is to buy as low as possible and sell high,
i.e., waiting for the pullback to come at least below the equilibrium level of the
recent impulse move into a discounted area and then enter a long position with
further detailed entry model to aim premium pricing level above equilibrium.
Psychologically, this would encourage the trader to go for the trade when the risk
and reward ratio grows.

3.5 Time and price

The most challenging part in chart analysis for traders is anticipating the timing
of the impulsive move and when the pullback period ends relevant to the market
trend. A logical statement was introduced in the previous paragraph which goes
in line with the buying low - selling high framework (Dai, Jin, Zhong, & Zhou, 2010)
for traders to wait the retracement in price until the discounted - premium zone
 25

has been reached relevant to the market trend. A theory of time and price
(Binsbergen, Brandt, & Koijen, 2012) can be implemented in technical analysis
as a further confluence in the chart analysis, which a well respected and
experienced futures trader Larry Williams (2011) emphasizes a lot on in his
teachings.

If the market is trending upwards and higher prices are expected in the future
price development, what can be observed almost on a day-to-day basis is that
markets will have an opening price and it will make a false manipulating move
down to seek a cheaper price than what the market offers at that time and creates
the low of the day (Williams 2011: pps.33-44). The same observation can be
made on a higher time frame such as weekly timeframe, where that low of the
week will most likely be made at the beginning of the week. Buyers would want
to put in their long positions below the opening price and look for targets at the
premium area. Here is an example shown in figure 10.

Figure 10. GBP/USD price action on the 6th of January 2023 (TradingView).
 26

3.5.1 The relationship of trading sessions

As figure 10 demonstrates the price delivery of a set trading day, the London
session which is highlighted as blue area created the low of the day, i.e., the false
move occurred during London session and as we have the benefit of hindsight in
this dissertation the overall bias for the day was assumed to be bullish. When the
two major sessions overlap - the London and the New York, the volatility of the
market often increases during that period of the trading day (Poon et al. 2014)
and either a continuation for the London session’s trend will occur or a complete
reversal will take place, relevant to the overall bias. As figure 10 showcases our
example in bullish bias, buyers would want to accumulate their buy orders below
the daily opening price and thus London session was trading lower - as labeled
in figure 10. Then they patiently wait for the shift in market structure to the upside
after New York session’s volume kicks in and a retracement back to the formed
range below the equilibrium as marked in the figure “optimal buying zone”.

The least preferred trading session is the Asia session – the Tokyo session, which
takes place around mid-night Eastern European Time and the reason for that is
the lack of volatility and volume in the market. When the two major sessions finish
their trading day, most liquidity providers in the market often move to the
sidelines, i.e., the European and the US financial institutions (Poon et al. 2014).
Thus, the Asia session tends to consolidate a lot and creates a small range of
movements, unless there is a fundamental factor from an economic standpoint
taking place which can cause the session to make spikes in the market.
Furthermore, in the foreign exchange market, the Asian major pairs such as
AUD/JPY or AUD/NZD tend to move more than the other major currencies
(WikiFX, 2021).
 27

3.6 Data analysis

The financial markets’ data obtained from the Tradingview was analyzed by using
three different analysis (Fundamental, Technical and Psychological Analysis) and
compared the promotility prediction of each analysis to make a decision. The
showcased chart analysis in the technical aspect taken from the Tradingview
platform was a six-month price data relevant to the period of this dissertation. The
secondary data was systematically and critically reviewed to substantiate the
primary data.
 28

4 Result and discussion

A common standard which many trading psychologists and gurus subscribe to is

that, creating a trading system is a very crucial part for the trader’s decision-
making process and their success. Analyzing previous price action from the
charts enables traders to exploit the data to make the most optimal and
convenient decision, as in anticipating the correct future price development.
However, there is no guarantee for the outcome of a trade to always benefit the
retail trader due to the limited intelligence which a retail trader has, as in not
knowing all the ins and outs in the live markets. Taking the forex market as an
example, the retail spot market for forex features bid-ask pricing and all
transactions done whereby the aggregator who is acting as a dealer puts the
customer in a price-taker position (buy at the offer, sell at the bid), as do all those
where the aggregator is merely passing through prices from a liquidity provider
(Forman, 2016). Thus, the transactions occurring during live markets will be
observed by retail traders afterwards from the charts as price develops.

4.1 Market participants

Given the numerous amounts of different financial derivatives which a trader can
choose from to speculate its future direction and potentially make a revenue from
the movements can be psychologically overwhelming (Williams 2011: pps.200-
205). So much data goes into the decision of taking a trade or investing into a
particular asset class, but every time a trade or an investment has been executed,
the market participant has covertly exposed themselves into a risk. Taking a risk
is part of the engagement, but how much of risk has been taken determines the
degree of vulnerability a trader or an investor is exposed to. Douglas (2001)
 29

believes that the best traders are those that take risks and they have learned to
accept and embrace that risk (Douglas 2001: pps.8-9).

Reflecting on the 2008 financial crisis, banks were exposed to an extreme level
of risk, leveraging capital to trade financially engineered highly risky mortgage-
backed securities and other financial derivatives which eventually ended with the
bundle collapsing, leaving investment banks to hold worthless toxic assets
(Taylor, 2018). This event has demonstrated from a behavioural economics
perspective how big of a chaos institutions going bankrupt can cause to a nation’s
economy due to a poor risk management practice. Thus, large investment banks
were too big to fail, and the government had to bail them out to keep the economy
running. Financial institutions and retail traders are in the game for profit the same
as casinos and gamblers, but the rules of the game for both parties are not the
same.

If a financial institution fails, the damage it can cause to the economy could be
quite severe and the government’s need to interfere would be inevitable
(Andrianova, Demetriades, & Shortla, 2008). As the 2008 financial crises proved,
how institutions and the American people were both exposed to a huge financial
risk by leveraging capital which neither side could afford to cope with and when
things started to go sideways, the banks’ cash cows began to dry out, people
started foreclosing their homes and some people were even evicted. The Wall
Street investment banks that played a major role in the cause of the crises were
aided by the US government and the Treasury, whereas the hard-working citizens
made significant financial losses and lost their homes (Lapavitsas, 2008). Again,
the rules were not the same for the two sectors and this applies to trading as well.
 30

4.2 Risk management

Risk can be looked at as a cost of doing business in the trading environment.

Risk management is a mean to protect yourself from the risk of loss (DraKoln,
2008). Due to the market’s nature of uncertainty and not knowing with full
guarantee of the outcome of each trade, one managing their risk could ease up
the tension and stress which traders go through. A very basic concept in trading
is using stop loss order, to avoid larger losses by setting a limit price for the broker
to close the trade when the market is going against the bias (Păuna, 2018). Part
of having a trading system is to manage risk in a way which provides a longevity
for traders in the markets. Each trading session could provide the trader an
opportunity to execute their trading strategy, but depending on their risk exposer,
how many losses their account could handle is controlled by the trader. Thus, the
state of mind which a trader comes with into the market is essential so that they
will not break their trading rules, and this is the phenomena which the trading
psychologist Howell (2015) emphasizes a lot.

Sometimes emotions might overtake a person’s clarity and judgement, resulting

in making a bad decision. The past decade has delineated significant research
linking neurotransmitters, hormones, and brain activity to greed-based
behaviours and pathologies (D’Souza, 2015). Greed could be the reason why
one overleverages his account, especially when he experiences some wins and
the dopamine spikes in the brain might create these thoughts of wanting to
multiply the small profits to larger figures, causing the trader to compromise on
his trading rules. This phenomenon results in an instant shift from the long-term
vision to a short term one, seeking quick payouts instead of being patient with
their equity growth.

Another common reason for risking too much on trades is revenge trading. Trying
to win back the losses which occurred from simply an unfavourable market
 31

condition which were out of the trader’s radar to begin with is a gateway to one
losing their account. The only two ways to blow an account is overleveraging and
overtrading. Losses and drawdowns are part of trading but to cultivate the
comprehension of it is a major psychological challenge. The trading psychologists
and gurus claim that every trader takes losses, but the consistently profitable
trader differs from the inconsistent one through mindset and performance.
Trading could be looked at as a mental sport where traders are judged based on
their performance and those traders who perform well are paid the most. If the
markets provide a set-up which fits the trader’s strategy and the trader executes
the trade, the amount of confidence that a trader accumulates on that set up is
psychologically linked to the risk exposer. The trading psychologist Mark
Douglas’ (2001) advice is to lower the risk to a point where the outcome of that
trade becomes insignificant to the trader.

4.2.1 Risk and reward premise

The ratio between the risk and the reward should be reasonable (McGloin &
Thomas, 2016), not only to be further inspired by taking the trade in the first place,
but to also have lucrativeness and a sustainability for the long run. If a trader is
willing to risk 1% of his account to potentially make 2% in return, out of ten trades
he will need to be wright 40% of the time to end up with 2% net profit. With that
same 1% risk and setting the reward target at 3%, the trader now needs to be
wright only three times out of the ten trades to make the same profit.

The premise here is to increase the profit size in the winning trades, so that fewer
wins will outweigh a series of losses. However, letting those winning trades play
out is the most important factor in this premise, otherwise taking profits too early
might cause the losses to catch up with the winning trades in weight. What is also
challenging is not knowing when exactly those winning and losing trades will
occur. It might take more than ten trades to get the first winning trade and
 32

therefore the trading psychologist Douglas (2001) believes that a trader stands
better chance of succeeding by stretching the sample size to longer series of
trades. In other words, the likelihood of probabilities favoring the trader increases
the more time the edge has been displayed.

Fear can often overtake the control in traders’ rational mind, resulting in not taking
a trade even though their set up has formed, but with a sound risk management,
the negative emotional spikes could be avoided. Risking too much on a position
will cause a significant draw down on the equity balance if the trade was a loss
and that sparks a negative emotion within the trader, leading to a vicious cycle of
overtrading and eventually blowing the account. Whereas smaller risk will give
the trader a lesser draw down and the opportunity to stay in the market for longer
periods. Lower risk also means smaller profits in a winning trade, but the number
of times a trader can be wrong in their analysis increases before blowing their
entire account, compared to a highly leveraged account where the margin call
could be reached a lot sooner due to excessive risk taking.

4.2.2 Managing an open trade

Depending on the traded account size, one should allocate a risk premise which
considers, that the losing trades will be taking place at one point or the other and
it is simply a cost of doing business or a fee for participating in the market. The
profit is what the trader is aiming for, but because it is not guaranteed and the
market can turn at any moment a winning position into a losing one (Douglas
2001: pps.30-31), the expected profit target should always be at a reasonable
price level. Likewise, securing some partial profits before the overall objective is
reached or moving the stoploss level at breakeven will reduce the risk and loosen
up the psychological tensions which the trader experiences. Furthermore,
potential losing trades can be foreseen before the broker liquidates the trader’s
position at a net loss if price action does something that goes against the trader’s
 33

narrative and therefore the losses can be cut short (Tatarnikov, 2012). Thus,
actively managing open trades becomes an incorporated strategy amongst the
overall trading system.

The narrative which trading psychologists such as Douglas (2001) and Howell
(2015) are putting forward is that traders should subconsciously accept and
submit to the unknown and unseen events which will take place in the market
after one has entered a position. In other words, once a trade has been executed
the trader should now allow the probabilities to play out and accept the outcome
regardless of it benefiting the trader or not. If the trader’s edge has shown a
consistent outcome before, meaning that the accuracy rate of being right in the
market is greater than 50% and he conducts his analysis without making any
errors on his technical analysis, the outcome should not matter. There is
absolutely nothing a trader can do to make price to trade into his favour unless
the trader has a great deal of capital to push market price to his bias. The trader
only has control over himself, not the market and the mind to be exact.

One of the psychological elements raised earlier in this thesis was whether a
trader should stay vigilant and learn from past mistakes as in challenging the
trading psychologist Rande Howell’s point which was “the connection between
the past and the future is what robs the trader of being in the present moment
while his trading in live markets”. Although Howell’s point directs the trader to be
focusing on the present moment instead of living in the past, meaningful
information could be exploited from the past events to further redefine their edge.

What would validate the psychologist’s view is in the context of fear, e.g., a trader
hesitating to take a trade when the opportunity has been presented to them in the
market. If that is the case, then the psychological challenge which the trader is
phasing here by reliving in the past events would kill the provided opportunities
from the markets and perhaps the consideration to change profession would be
 34

indispensable. However, the writer believes markets evolve as do traders and

past events can be viewed as a form of intelligence which could enable traders
to redefine their edge as they’re observing characteristics of the market in certain
conditions.

4.3 The psychology of trading

The environment and the nature of uncertainty displays a significant role in the
decision-makers’ thought process. Given the fact that there is no investment
object that provides a full guarantee of a return for the made investment, often
requires a heavy risk management along with a convenient investment strategy.
That combination might take the retail trader somewhere, but for a player to enter
the game, one should know who they are up against, what forces the opponents
have and whether they stand a chance of surviving, let alone winning.

The three fundamental forces that drives an economic participant to make any
investment decision are technical analysis, fundamental analysis, and
psychological analysis (Oberlechner, 2001). As described earlier in chapter two
that, in technical analysis an investor simply makes a justified investment decision
based on price action and in fundamental analysis the market participants are
refining their edge in the market by using economic calendars to predict the next
major move in the market. The psychology part on the other hand can either make
or break a trader due to the high frequency of emotions (Baker & Wurgler, 2007),
that a trader deals with before taking a trade and managing a trade. These
emotions vary during different stages of decision-making processes that a trader
experiences in an environment of uncertainty.

A neurotransmitter and pleasure-seeking molecule called dopamine is a

consequential source of intelligence that makes an individual to pursue, build and
create things (Blum et al. 2012). It is a form of fuel in human brains to make a
 35

person to operate in a certain way and thus the molecule displays its role in the
thinking brain (Kim, 2013). A trading psychologist Rande Howell (2015) also
stated in his series of articles that the rush a player gets from a win is a chemical
cocktail composed of dopamine and testosterone, which makes the player feel
invincible, powerful, and capable of controlling the outcome of the game.
However, the win differs in a hunting game and trading financial markets, where
a trader must manage their risk (Howell, 2015). As mentioned earlier, the players’
performance is impacted by the nature of the game. Trading financial instruments
is no different than a blackjack or a roulette due to the unique sporadic events
which are independent from the previous ones and the outcomes are based on
total randomness (Douglas, Koppel 2011).

The type of relationship which a trader has with winning and losing tells a lot
about the trader’s personality and the experience which he has accumulated
during his trading journey. A trader can rationalize to themselves why a certain
outcome occurred from a trade, but the accuracy of that reasoning is not always
self-explanatory. Even if a trader knew exactly why a particular price movement
occurred beforehand due to some fundamental news release, the chance of
losing is still there. The risk has not vanished just because a trader knows what
will take place in the markets. Often a trader can be right with their directional
bias in the market but knowing the exact timing of that move is the challenging
part. Price can take out early sellers or buyers from the market and then rally to
the intended direction and this happens a lot to retail traders. So, having that
special relationship with losing will take the fear out of trading and desensitize the
trader from certain levels of stimulus and the interesting part of this is that the
brain can be trained. Likewise, establishing that special relationship with winning
is important as well, so that traders will not delude themselves thinking that they
are more special than the other market participants.
 36

5 Conclusion and recommendation

Trying to understand the psychology of a human behaviour or the nature of the

decision-making process in the thinking brain is far from being a black and white
matter. In fact, it is a very grey and complexed subject. Out of the three analytical
perspectives in trading environment, this thesis aimed to highlight the enormous
impact the psychology aspect has in trading financial markets. A lot of emphasis
could be put on technical analysis as well, but many brokers report that most
retail traders are losing capital in a short time span and the reason behind this
phenomenon does not lie on the technical side of trading. It is not because traders
are deficient in MACD, RSI or moving average indicators, but rather it lies on a
deeper psychological groundwork regarding an untrained brain put in an
uncertain environment.

The fundamental difference between technical analysis and the psychology of

trading is that technical analysis is a skill which can be learned and crafted, but it
is not so simple in the psychology part. A professional trader can explain and
teach concepts of psychology in trading to a new trader such as the importance
of risk management or how to manage an open position, but whether the student
consciously implements the teachings during live trading is what makes the
matter a very challenging one. A close analogy can be drawn from the medical
field, where a patient with a broken leg can be examined by a doctor via x-ray
and the doctor will follow a clear protocol to treat the patient and even the
recovery period can be roughly estimated. However, if another patient has mental
health issues, it will take much longer to figure out the exact health problem that
is dealt with, let along curing the patient in a set period.

This was a very fascinating topic to investigate, and further research into the area
is very much needed to be carried out. Many trading gurus are nowadays bringing
forth more the psychological aspect of trading and helping struggling traders to
 37

overcome the challenges. If you are a struggling trader, the writer wants you to
know that it is natural to feel upset and discouraged to continue pursuing trading
as a career after taking a significant loss. But if you see the potential and the
opportunity which the financial markets can offer you, try your utmost best to
maintain a positive attitude and keep your perspectives in order.
 38

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