Free Trading Psychology Test: What Is Sabotaging Your Trading?

What is this test, and what is it not?

The test is eight multiple-choice questions about how you behave when trading gets hard: after a loss, when a move leaves without you, when a winner pulls back, and after a winning streak. It then names the habit that most often breaks your plan, which we call your saboteur.

It is adapted from the saboteur quiz in TradeMind: Trading Psychology, the iPhone trading psychology app (App Store ID 6761249038) by Nikolaos Aristotelis Adamidis. It uses the app's four saboteurs and four triggers, and its last two questions are the app's own.

What are the four trading saboteurs?

Revenge trading

After a loss, the urge to win the money back makes the next decision before your plan does. Prospect theory found that losses weigh more than gains of the same size and that people tend to seek risk when facing a sure loss (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979). In real-money experiments, a chance to break even became especially attractive after a prior loss (Thaler & Johnson, 1990).

Professionals show it too. Chicago Board of Trade proprietary traders regularly took above-average afternoon risk to recover morning losses (Coval & Shumway, 2005). They were floor traders, not retail traders on a phone, but the pattern will look familiar. The full routine for that moment is in the guide to revenge trading.

FOMO

Moves you did not plan for pull you in late, often far from the level you wanted. In brokerage data, individual investors were net buyers of attention-grabbing stocks: stocks in the news, with unusually high volume or with extreme one-day returns (Barber & Odean, 2008). What grabs your attention is not the same as what is in your plan. More in FOMO in trading.

Over-leveraging

After wins, or when a setup feels exciting, your position size grows past your own rule. Thaler and Johnson called one version of this the house money effect: after a gain, their subjects were more willing to take the next risk, as if recent winnings were not really their money (Thaler & Johnson, 1990). The guide to over-leveraging after wins covers overconfidence as well.

Cutting winners early

Fear closes profitable trades before your plan says so. Shefrin and Statman named this the disposition effect: selling winners too early and riding losers too long (Shefrin & Statman, 1985). In the trading records of 10,000 accounts at a discount brokerage, investors strongly preferred to sell winners rather than losers (Odean, 1998). See exiting winners early for what to do about it.

How is the result worked out?

The method is simple, and you can check it by hand:

1. Questions 1 to 6 describe situations. Each answer adds 1 point to one saboteur.
2. Question 7 is the app's trigger question, "When do your worst decisions happen?". It adds 1 point to the saboteur linked to that trigger (boredom adds none) and sets the "if" half of your rule.
3. Question 8 is the app's saboteur question, "When your discipline breaks, what takes the wheel?". Your answer counts double, because you named it yourself.
4. The saboteur with the most points, out of a possible 9, is your result. Ties go to the one you named in question 8, then to your trigger's saboteur.
5. If a second saboteur is within 1 point, the result shows it as close behind.

Your if-then rule joins your trigger, worded like the TradeMind Daily Pledge's own triggers, to a response that fits your saboteur. For example: "If I take a losing trade, then I step away for 10 minutes before I place another order."

What should I do with my result?

A result is a guess about your pattern. The next two weeks of trading will tell you whether it is right.

1. Write the if-then rule where you will see it before the open, and read it once each morning.
2. Each day, tally two numbers: how often the trigger showed up, and how often you followed the rule.
3. After ten trading days, compare the tally with your trade log. If the log shows a different saboteur, trust the log.

If-then plans have a medium-to-large effect on reaching goals across 94 tests, none of them with traders (Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006). The guide to if-then rules shows how to write more of them, and the trading psychology guide puts the four saboteurs in context.

What type of trader am I?

This test does not sort you into a personality type, on purpose. In a study of 80 day traders over five weeks, a standard personality inventory showed no specific "trader personality profile" (Lo, Repin & Steenbarger, 2005). That is a small sample, but it fits the idea that what matters is what you do under pressure, not a fixed type.

Trading style (scalper, day trader, swing trader) is a separate question about timeframe and strategy. The test's questions apply to any style, because they ask what you do after losses, wins and missed moves.

Is there a trading psychology test in the TradeMind app?

Yes. The quiz in the app has eight questions too, but they cover more ground: your trading style, how long psychology has been a problem, what emotional decisions cost you in the last 30 days, your saboteur, your trigger, your 90-day goal, why you trade and who you are committing to become. The result names your saboteur and your first lesson and repeats your own cost estimate back to you. This web version leaves out the money question and the personal ones.

Each saboteur maps to one of the seven tracks in the app's 70 audio lessons: Revenge Trading starts with "Loss Aversion", Killing FOMO with "The Herd Instinct", Taming Greed with "The Euphoria Trap" and Mastering Fear with "The Amygdala Hijack". The Daily Pledge has a slot for an if-then rule like the one in your result. The download and the quiz are free; the rest needs TradeMind Pro. See how TradeMind works or the quiz on the homepage.

Can I share or link to this test?

Yes. The Share my result button creates a link that shows your main saboteur, not your answers. Trading educators are welcome to link to this page from course material or newsletters; there is no sign-up for their students either.