The other night, I had a dream (or is it a nightmare) that I was long USD/JPY. Suddenly, the market jumped up over +400 points within a few seconds. I immedeately started to open a close trade ticket, but before i could execute it, price went down just as quick and then massively down, blasting through my stop and closing the trade with huge slippage, wiping out all the hard earned profits in my account and leaving me with $40.

I've not had a dream about trading before, it made me wonder if other people do, and if you do what do you dream?

StayOnTarget 

The other night, I had a dream (or is it a nightmare) that I was long USD/JPY. Suddenly, the market jumped up over +400 points within a few seconds. I immedeately started to open a close trade ticket, but before i could execute it, price went down just as quick and then massively down, blasting through my stop and closing the trade with huge slippage, wiping out all the hard earned profits in my account and leaving me with $40. I've not had a dream about trading before, it made me wonder if other people do, and if you do what do you dream?

I've had dreams about price shocks too. Usually, it means I am overextended or overleveraged. The dream is a warning sign to reduce exposure. I usually don't listen.

If you aren't in the market you dream about, maybe it is another market you are really worried about instead...

Your mind uses dreams to process a lot of un-closed thoughts you've been having. It's a way of sorting out all the threads of thought bouncing around in your mind. Unfortunately, there's no way of telling what exactly your mind is working through even if you remember the dream, as they can't exactly be interpreted with any clarity.

However, you may notice that even if you can't suss out the context of the dream, you will take note that the setting or activity within the dream tends to be something you've been thinking about heavily or surrounded by in the recent past.

For instance, back in my IT days, I'd dream about work most often when I'm working 60-80 hour weeks and getting zero exposure to stimulus (social, environment, etc..) outside of the office. That was usually a sign I needed to take a weekend to drive out to some nature reserve and go hiking.

Sometimes I dream about trading, and yeah, like your dream it usually involves some crazy market moves, and that reminds me that I need to take more breaks from long screen staring sessions or I need to mix up my evening entertainment a bit.

That's not saying it's a bad thing to dream about trading... I just think if I'm going to dream about anything I want it to be about the crazy night out on the town I just had, not how much stress my account can take intra-day. :P

Think of the market as a natural phenomenon. You look at 1000's of trees. The same patterns are exhibited every day in the markets. Then one day you stumble on a tree that was struck by lightning.

I would be happy to see that actually.