The Adventurer

Overview

The Adventurer personality is a true free spirit. They are often the life of the party, but unlike types in the Explorer Role group, Adventurers are less interested in the sheer excitement and pleasure of the moment than they are in enjoying the social and emotional connections they make with others. Charming, independent, energetic and compassionate, the 7% of the population that they comprise can certainly be felt in any crowd.

Trading Strengths

• Curious – When it comes to new ideas, Adventurers aren’t interested in brooding – they want to go out and experience things, and don’t hesitate to step out of their comfort zones to do so. Adventurers are imaginative and open-minded, seeing all things as part of a big, mysterious puzzle called life.  In trading, this curiosity leads Adventurers to seek out patterns and look for relationships.  Adventurers have a desire to understand the “why” of a situation, and then tend to like charts and technical indicators.

• Observant – Adventurers believe that there are no irrelevant actions, that every shift in sentiment, every move and every idea is part of something bigger. To satisfy their curiosity, Adventurers try to notice all of these things, and to never miss a moment.  Their observation skills go hand in hand with their curiosity and after a period of training, Adventurers have the ability to see and understand the psychology of the market as a whole and often find themselves in tune with the up and down swings.

• Energetic and Enthusiastic – As they observe, forming new connections and ideas, Adventurers won’t hold their tongues – they’re excited about their findings, and share them with anyone who’ll listen. This infectious enthusiasm has the dual benefit of giving Adventurers a chance to make more social connections, and of giving them a new source of information and experience, as they fit their new friends’ opinions into their existing ideas.  This energy and enthusiasm, combined into a desire for social interaction, makes it ideal for Adventurers to trade in groups.

• Excellent Communicators – It’s a good thing that Adventurers have such strong people skills, or they’d never express these ideas. Adventurers enjoy both small talk and deep, meaningful conversations, which are just two sides of the same coin for them, and are adept at steering conversations towards their desired subjects in ways that feel completely natural and unforced.  Surprisingly, their energy and ability to communicate allows Adventurers to think on their feet and then translate those thoughts into action in their portfolios.

• Know How to Relax – It’s not all “nature of the cosmos” discussions with Adventurers – people with this personality type know that sometimes, nothing is as important as simply having fun and experiencing life’s joys. That Intuitive trait lets Adventurers know that it’s time to shake things up, and these wild bursts of enthusiastic energy can surprise even their closest friends.  This desire to have fun means that Adventurers are able to disconnect from the markets and divert their energy to other activities.  Because of this, Adventurers have a low probability of over-trading.

• Poor Practical Skills – When it comes to conceiving ideas and starting projects, especially involving other people, Adventurers have exceptional talent. Unfortunately their skill with upkeep, administration, and follow-through on those projects struggles. Without more hands-on people to help push day-to-day things along, Adventurers’ ideas are likely to remain just that – ideas.  The danger in this is that Adventurers are either slow to create a comprehensive trading plan or begin trading live with half a plan in place, consisting of a broad framework with little detail.

• Find it Difficult to Focus – Adventurers are natural explorers of interpersonal connections and philosophy, but this backfires when what needs to be done is that TPS report sitting right in front of them. It’s hard for Adventurers to maintain interest as tasks drift towards routine, administrative matters, and away from broader concepts.  Because of this difficulty in focus, rather than follow a detailed, step by step process to enter a trade, Adventurers will often allow emotion to enter their trading and trade on gut feelings.

• Overthink Things – Adventurers don’t take things at face value – they look for underlying motives in even the simplest things. It’s not uncommon for Adventurers to lose a bit of sleep asking themselves why someone did what they did, what it might mean, and what to do about it.  In trading, Adventurers are excitable in stressful situations.  Additionally, their social and open nature can lead to them taking too much advice regarding trading, occasionally causing paralysis as the Adventurer attempts to reconcile competing or opposite views.

• Get Stressed Easily – All this overthinking isn’t just for their own benefit – Adventurers are very sensitive, and care deeply about others’ feelings. A consequence of their popularity is that others often look to them for guidance and help, which takes time, and it’s easy to see why Adventurers sometimes get overwhelmed, especially when they can’t say yes to every request.  In trading, this trait can sometimes force the Adventurer to make last minute decisions rather than rationally evaluating a trade, again, encouraging emotions and feelings to enter the trade decision.

• Highly Emotional – While emotional expression is healthy and natural, with Adventurers even viewing it as a core part of their identity, it can come out strongly enough to cause problems for this personality type. Particularly when under stress, criticism or conflict, Adventurers can experience emotional bursts that are counter-productive at best.  Adventurers take a blown trade to heart and coaching them through a rough period, particularly if losing trades were a result of emotional trading, is a trying task for both the coach and the trader.

• Independent to a Fault – Adventurers loathe being micromanaged and restrained by heavy-handed rules – they want to be seen as highly independent masters of their own fates, even possessors of an altruistic wisdom that goes beyond draconian law. The challenge for Adventurers is that they live in a world of checks and balances, a pill they are not happy to swallow.  During periods of good trading, Adventurers can be left to their own devices, but when under scrutiny after a series of losses, their emotional component has a tendency to not only lash out, but to actively and vocally chafe at any additional supervision or risk management structures.

Conclusion

Adventurers are good at the large-scale, broad-brush aspects of trading, such as finding correlations and understanding the underpinnings that move the markets.  Their curiosity and ability to make connections puts them in tune with the psychology of the markets and they tend to be very good at reading charts and gleaning information from only a few other technical indicators.  Their social nature makes it ideal for them to trade in groups in order to exchange ideas and viewpoints.

They do need to take care that they populate their plans with detail to the greatest extent that they can tolerate.  Without a modicum of detail to their broad structure, Adventurers are prone to default to emotional trading, even to the point of trades running counter to their natural understanding and feel for the markets.

It is folly to expect an Adventurer to keep emotions in check during stressful times or an extended string of losses.  The key the trader needs to keep in mind is that relying on emotional trading during a stressful time can easily escalate into a destructive cycle and that a break from trading when emotions are running high is the best way to break the cycle.