We can't help ourselves. Our focus is smarter, think harder and know more.

In fact it reminds me of last year when Bloomberg Mag interviewed me and I told them some stories of traders who had greatly improved their bottom lines through emotion analytics. We talked about what "the great short" traders like John Paulson knew before everyone else - and I said ... the social emotional context of the markets. The editor's response - well maybe they were just smarter?

My reply to that was and is ...if you learn to analyze the social emotional context both of who you are trading against and of yourself (not necessarily in that order), then by definition you are smarter.

Granted it isn't the kind of smarts that gets you 1600 on the SAT ...but that doesn't make it unintelligent!

One of our clients recently said "When I do what you say, I make money. When I do not do what you say, I do not make money." I don't say that to prove I am right ... I say it to validate the approach of taking emotion analytics - yours first, the market's second (because it has staying power that way) ... very seriously.

Where to start? ... just with a list of the emotions you know. Don't know many? Start with "fear of missing out". ... and track it, analyze it, know it as well as you know whatever market indicators you are using.

If you DO NOT make more money doing this, let me know.

Visit Trader Psyches to register for Denise’s blog updates.