Creativity in Trading

Today we tackle the topic of artistic vs creative and the misconception we are finding a lot of people have. We can see a big contrast between being artistic and creative. Sure, there is a crossover when you are artistic but creativity certainly doesn’t have to include being artistic. This following excerpt from Robert Green’s book Mastery really sheds a light on how creativity affects our human experience. It reads, “The human mind is naturally creative, constantly looking to make associations and connections between things and ideas. It wants to explore, to discover new aspects of the world, and to invent. To express this creative force is our greatest desire, and the stifling of it the source of our misery. What kills the creative force is not age or a lack of talent, but our own spirit, our own attitude. We become too comfortable with the knowledge we have gained in our apprenticeships. We grow afraid of entertaining new ideas and the effort that this requires. to think more flexibly entails a risk-we could fail and be ridiculed. We prefer to live with familiar ideas and habits of thinking, but we pay a steep price for this: our minds go dead from the lack of challenge and novelty; we reach a limit in our field and lose control over our fate because we become replaceable.” 

Let’s break down these two characteristics. Being artistic can include a lot of talents that are often celebrated and admired. Works of the arts like drawing, painting, sculpting, calligraphy. There’s performing arts, poetry, musicians, song writing, novelists. Also, things like culinary arts, interior design, hair and makeup, dressing and fashion. These are indeed specific niches that within their own arena certainly pull from a creative and artistic place.
When we decided to embark upon learning trading and dedicate a huge chunk of the time and mental capital it takes, we really took a step back from some of the former activities that we would do and started to tap more into a different part of our creative expression. The following quote by Albert Einstein is so good! “Creativity is intelligence having fun.” So true. Personally we know some extremely intelligent individuals who have claimed themselves to be not creative and it’s just not true. Unlike being an artist, being a creative really has no bounds. You can channel creativity in any arena or pursuit. If you have ever beat the odds or challenged yourself beyond what examples were given to you, that is indeed creativity working at its best.

So many people are carrying around with this misconception and counting themselves out. We really believe creativity was basically beaten out of us as part of the conditioning most of us underwent during childhood and adolescence. It really doesn’t stop there either as our modern world is constantly reminding and directing us on how to live, what to follow, and how to define our personal successes. Creativity is usually only celebrated after the fact—once something is recognized as being a benefit born from being different and authentic. However, that period of vulnerability of oneself to express trust and express their own creativity is a pinnacle that takes real courage and self actualization. In thinking about this topic, we stumbled upon this quote that really stuck with us! Written by artist and professor Howard Ikemoto, it reads “When my daughter was about 7 years old, she asked me one day what I did at work. I told her I worked at the college - that my job was to teach people how to draw. She stared back at me, incredulous, and said “You mean they forgot?’” Oh how we loved that so much. And it’s reminiscent of exactly this evolution into adulthood from the more carefree years of childhood when we all would dabble in all sorts of artistic outlets with curiosity. As we grow, the feeling of ‘adulting’ often does not involve much creativity or variance. It is far more common to lock into a more mundane routine and just go through the motions.

“Creativity is one of the last remaining legal ways of gaining an unfair advantage over the competition.”

~ Ed McCabe

One of our favorite one liners is “making something out of nothing!” This speaks to us on so many levels because you are essentially creating despite not having been provided a predefined path, guidance, or resources to pull from. In The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday, he says “People turn shit into sugar all the time!!!”. WOAH! And that really aligns with the perspective on being a strategic thinker and way-maker. You’ve heard us say it before but again, “it’s always strategy season!” Embracing that and always seeking improvement in one’s practice be it personal or professional is indeed being creative. This is what makes life interesting and exciting. We can think of many examples that are enriching as well—planning a trip, incorporating more healthy habits, structuring and compartmentalizing time, self-love and soul-care, and another big one for Market Mamas of course is TRADING! We all have a learning style that serves and sticks with us most! For Kendra, being that she love pretty things and is a visual learner, creating presentation slides became and still is her preferred method to learn in and from trading the market. She will often personalize them in a way that speaks to her, adding in lots of color, drawings, notes, and sometimes a symbolic image. It’s a way she’s merged her artistic and creative parts to give herself the input she needs, but moreover, they reaffirm the work I she’s doing and continued growth and development of her trading IQ.

We have had to be very creative throughout learning to trade and in how we have approached and reapproached our trading methods. There’s a huge amount of flexibility and adaptability necessary when it comes to any extremely challenging quest. There’s no way either of us would still be in the game had we not desired to create better calculated and strategic ways to win more and lose less. Making those pivots and adjustments has given us the opportunity to start to optimize our potential and abilities. In fact, we are inspired by other trading friends who are just as hungry as we are and are constantly creating and innovating better practices to improve their processes too. Every day that we trade, we have an opportunity to learn - either about ourselves, our system, or Ms. Market and her moves. It takes creativity and curiosity to wonder about the lessons and extract from them ideas and observations that we can use to strengthen our trading.

We’ve referred to trading being an art and it totally is when you look at it from the outside almost. Looking back and studying the setups, the pivots, the patterns, structure ,whatever style and context you trade, there’s so many and for us and the other traders, it can look like a prized piece of fine artwork. The creative side of trading is undeniable when you really break down the inner workings of how we perform and function as traders. The back end of it all. Even when you learn a specific trading style and have a system to use as a model, it will never be implemented the exact same as anyone else and that’s one of reasons we love trading so much! We get to carve out our own space in this world and design our processes to best support and serve ourselves the most effectively. From all the Market Mamas trader interviews we have done so far, that seems to be the common evolution of challenging oneself to seek more success within their own unique vantage point of the markets. There’s really limitless possibilities and potential when it comes to trading.

Creativity is also seriously required for any entrepreneurial pursuit! Trading, this podcast, any business you could start and manage yourself… We must constantly work to think outside the box, identify areas in need of improvement and target them for unique and sustainable fixes, and follow your data/statistics/analytics to see what is working and what you need to creatively upgrade or adjust to strengthen that aspect of your business. We would say equally with Market Mamas and our trading, we are purposefully trying to engage our more open and creative sides of our brains to keep growing. With creativity, growth can have much more momentum and opportunity! Tapping into our creativity can most definitely be the catalyst for leveling up in so many ways!