Coming to Your Trading Emotional Rescue

Alden Cass, a psychologist, joins us today as a contributor on our free, flagship site. Cass will write two columns, one that delves into how behavior and emotions affects investing -- which debuts today -- and the other a health column specifically for men. Please welcome Alden, and as always, let us know what you think.

I have always reaped the rewards of having a doctorate in psychology when it came to success in managing my personal investments. Through my work with hedge fund traders, daytraders and prop traders, I have honed my own investment strategies.

In essence, I have learned from the best, and I now practice what I preach when it comes to preventing emotion from creating "noise" in my head prior to making an important investment decision. I have witnessed the impact of emotion on investment strategy, risk appetite and decision-making ability.

Mirroring my work with traders, I plan to offer practical solutions for remaining emotionally disciplined and objective in short- and long-term investment strategies. This is especially important during market downturns or periods of poor performance.

In each column, you'll find examples of real investment dilemmas and how emotion can hamper or alter decisions to buy, sell or hold a particular stock. Feel free to email me at [e-mail] with your investment scenarios that may be fueled by real emotions such as fear, anger, revenge or over-confidence. These and other concerns will be addressed in future columns.

Apple: Using Social Psychology

It was a bitter cold morning in late December 2003, and I was walking to the downtown No. 6 train to my office in New York City. I found myself armed with a heavy overcoat, first-generation iPod, cup of coffee and a briefcase of coaching cases for my afternoon meeting with a local hedge fund. I needed to do my part to keep a group of traders emotionally prepared, hungry and entirely objective.