Dutch device measures your stress level and emotions when day trading

Posted Oct 13th 2009 3:30PM by Connie Madon
Filed under: Products and Services, Launches, Entrepreneurs, Personal Finance, Technology

If you are among the millions of day traders out there, here is a device that could help you. Researcher Geert Christiaansen, working for the Dutch electronics firm and ABN AMRO, Philips, has a new gadget that will measure you stress level while you are day trading.

How does it work? Users wear a bracelet called the Emobracelet that senses stress and makes an accompanying light signal. The signal changes from yellow to red depending on the person's stress levels. The emotions being measured are fear and greed. These two emotions often color a person's judgment to make rational decisions. At this stage of development, a prototype of the device is being made.

If you have ever been a day trader or even a longer term trader you know how your emotions can affect your judgment. Sometimes out of nowhere comes a report that, within a matter of minutes, changes your trade numbers. Where minutes ago you making money, suddenly the numbers change rapidly and you are on the losing side. Sometimes this is just a temporary glitch and at other times it is real and you are losing big bucks. During these times, you must be able to keep you emotions under control and keep a level head. You must be able to make instant decisions based on your trading program and not let emotions get in the way.

Whether or not this device will help you is for you to determine.

Before you start trading, you must know yourself and the level of risk you can endure both emotionally and financially. Keep in mind that trading with real money is quite different from "paper" trading. Paper trading is where you are given fictitious money to simulate your trading. This is not real because you are not using your own money. As soon as you start trading with real money your emotions change quickly.

Do you believe that the Emobracelet could help you with your trading?

Tags: device tracks trading emotions, DeviceTracksTradingEmotions, Emobracelet, inthenews