How to Improve Trading Efficiency with Music

You "wake up" to a song as if to an alarm clock, listen to music while doing calculations at work, feel a surge of energy while listening to music during workouts at the gym, and perhaps turn it on in the background while trading forex. But do you know that what you listen to can really affect your actions, feelings, and thoughts? And, consequently, the performance of your trading.

How can you use music to increase personal efficiency? Which genres are suitable for scalping, and which for long-term trading? That is what today’s article is about.

“The effect of music on the brain or body partly depends on its genre. But it also depends on whether you like that particular song. A "metalhead" can hear all kinds of emotions in "metal" music, while others, as a rule, hear only aggression.

Regardless of your musical taste, here are some things that happen in your body and brain every time you press the “play” button.

Your mood improves. A study published in the Journal of Positive Psychology shows that listening to upbeat music instantly lifts mood, but this works only if you actually want to be happy. Subjects who listened to optimistic music without any desire to be happy (gloomy losers) did not notice any changes in their mood. “Listening to positive music may be an effective way of achieving a better mood, especially when it is combined with the intention to become happier,” the study says. A separate study also showed that when we listen to music, our bodies release the “good mood neurotransmitter” called dopamine.

Your productivity increases. In 1993, a study devoted to the “Mozart effect” showed that listening to Mozart can improve performance on standardized tests. Nevertheless, this effect is not limited to classical music. A study published in the journal Intelligence shows that people who listen to music perform spatial tasks better than those who do not listen to music, regardless of genre. One of the researchers of the Mozart effect, Francis Rauscher, explained the results of this influence: “The key is that you must enjoy the music. If you hate Mozart, you will not develop the Mozart effect. But if you love listening to Pearl Jam, then you will develop the Pearl Jam effect.”

Certain memories surface. Do vivid memories come to you when you hear a song? Music helps call up certain memories and even form new ones. Pleasant music promotes the release of dopamine in the mesolimbic pathways, which in turn promotes associative thinking and ultimately forms memory. A study published in the journal Neuropsychology shows that playing music also helps improve working memory. “In behavioral terms, musicians outperform people not involved with music, as demonstrated on standardized subtests of visual, phonological, and executive memory,” the study says.

The feeling of goosebumps on your skin, in the good sense of the word. When a song takes an unexpected turn, for example radically changes its direction, tempo, and so on, your skin may experience certain physical sensations. Goosebumps, simply put. I think we have all experienced something like that.

You can do harder and longer exercises.

Do you listen to music while running? Then you know how effective it is when you are making every effort to run the last kilometer, or 100 meters. It has been proven that music stimulates us to do harder and longer work, increasing physical performance and activity and boosting our productivity. Studies have found that carefully selected music, for example a workout playlist, can have a beneficial effect in terms of increasing performance during high-intensity exercise. Experts believe that a musical tempo of 180 beats per minute is the best stimulus for running.

Your blood pressure changes.

Depending on the music you listen to, your blood pressure can rise or fall. Studies have shown that listening to Beethoven, Puccini, and Verdi was associated with lower blood pressure and a lower heart rate, regardless of whether the person actually preferred such music. Nevertheless, rock and pop did not affect blood pressure or even, apparently, increased it slightly. Similarly, a small study showed that listening to dynamic music was associated with increased blood pressure, while listening to slow music was associated, as you already guessed, with lower blood pressure.

First, the music should be without words. Or with a minimum of words. Or in a language you do not understand, or only barely understand. Because words, any words, are a load on the brain and a distracting factor.

Next, it all depends on personal preferences and trading frequency. Fast scalpers, news traders, and breakout traders on the tick chart will be suited by rhythmic, energetic music. Fans of higher timeframes will be better served by calm classical music, without thunderous cannonades, ambient, chillout, and new age.

Another factor is the time of day when you check the markets: there is morning music and there is evening music. In the morning, faster; in the evening, more measured.

Of course, finding music online is not a problem, but below I will give several interesting sources.

And what music do you listen to while trading? Have you noticed its effect on your productivity?

Best regards, Pavel Vlasov TradeLikeaPro.ru