The 5 Emotional Stages of Change in Trading

Whenever we decide to make a change in our lives, we experience an emotional roller coaster.

Two psychologists - Don Kelley and Daryl Connor - developed their Emotional Cycle of Change model in the mid-1970s. It represents how your emotional response is likely to alter as you go through a change.

The cycle has five stages:

Stage 1: Uninformed optimism

Stage 2: Informed pessimism

Stage 3: Hopeful Realism - Valley of Despair

Stage 4: Informed optimism

Stage 5: Success & Fulfillment

Today, I’ll go over each one of these 5 stages applied to the trading journey.