The Psychology of the Foreign Exchange Market

I am a veteran forex dealer and in-house trainer of our dealers; this book is required reading. From the opening quote in the introduction of the book you are introduced to the concept that "psychology" is everything in dealing. Believe it! Though the book provides no canned solutions to dealing, it does give you the essential foundations to begin to build your own dealing models.

This book is valuable to any person trading any market. It enforces the thought that you bring yourself to the market, be it currencies, futures, stocks, or bonds. A person is the product of their environment, culture, parents, education and experiences which influences their perception of the markets. It is very difficult to observe what the market is doing without observing what it is doing to you. All markets are a mind game.

Although the foreign exchange market is the world's largest financial market, this book will prove valuable to traders or behavioral finance scholars involved with any financial market. Oberlechner brings the perspective of a clinical psychologist/anthropologist to observe this arena of human chaos and madness. Paradoxes that confound at first, seem clearer when viewed from his lens. For the practical-minded reader interested in financial trading, this book will hold up a mirror to help examine yourself. Much of trading, after all, is psychology! As one expert points out in this book, "traders don't just bring their money to the market, they also bring themselves!" It is chilling to read, for instance, about how market trends may just be held up by rumor. How traders use metaphors to make sense of the vast markets (eg, using likening it to warzone or to a lover or to a bazaar or to a casino, etc), is also discussed and may help sort out your own mental algorithms for simplifying financial decision-making: But if financial markets are full of chaos and madness, human nature, when seen and understood through the social scientist's perspective is a constant. Oberlechner compares the behavior of today's traders to human behavior from prior periods: not just the tulip mania bubble but also primitive tribes. E.g., on one island, fishermen exposed to the perils of the open sea exhibited far more superstitious beliefs than those in calmer waters. Does that seem reminiscent of the belief systems of gamblers and traders compared to staid bankers? Perhaps the practical trader may get hints from reading this about how to tame the human beast within to make profits. Academicians will benefit from the treasure of citations to relevant psychological and behavioral finance literature. Not to imply in the least that this is a dry tome! In fact, the book reads very well, combining logic with poetic flow: I found it hard to put down the book and found myself taking it with me on the subway. You can tell this is someone who has observed the market participants and isn't just an ivy tower academician.