HOW TO USE COLOUR TO BOOST YOUR TRADES
How To Use Colour To Boost Your Trades
Whether you’re just starting out on your forex trading journey or are old hat when it comes to trading currency pairs, one constant remains true… you will always be learning and finding new avenues of interest that could help you up your trading performance and continue raking in the big wins.
With trading, a lot of your success will depend on your mental and emotional health and wellbeing – and your overall outlook can have a huge impact on how well you do on the trading floor.
This is why we blog so much about psychology and the importance of mindset… because it really can make all the difference between swim and sink if you’re looking to become a professional trader.
Interestingly, colour has the potential to have a significant impact on your mood and it can even potentially sway your decision-making, actions and behaviour (without you even knowing about it!), so researching colour psychology and how it can affect you could make a big difference where your trading prowess is concerned.
What is colour psychology?
At its core, colour psychology is simply the study of how different colours can influence human behaviour, with the various shades associated with their own connotations and potential psychological effects.
There are cultural differences, of course, and you also need to consider personal preference, but there are typical associations that different colours generally have… such as red for danger, for example.
Psychologist Carl Jung even went so far as to suggest that people themselves could be sorted into four different colours based on their temperaments: Cool Blue, Earth Green, Sunshine Yellow and Fiery Red.
According to Jung, everyone has all these different colour energies within themselves but to varying degrees and the different energies will manifest themselves depending on what’s’ going on around us, although we do have one dominant colour energy that will affect us and our behaviour the most.
Fiery Red, for example, is associated with being positive, decisive, assertive and bold, while Sunshine Yellow denotes a cheerful, uplifting, enthusiastic and spirited side. Earth Green, meanwhile, suggests a soothing, calming and tranquil personality, while Cool Blue types remain analytical, detached and objective, demonstrating little to no bias.
For traders, adopting a more Cool Blue attitude to life could be particularly useful, since people with this type of dominant energy typically lead lives based on facts, logic and principles grounded in reality.
They’re highly analytical and consider all the possibilities to ensure they don’t make any uninformed decisions and enjoy approaching tasks systematically… all of which are excellent attributes for a trader to have.
Fiery Red energy could also prove particularly useful for forex performance and these personality types are very action-focused, capable of making swift decisions without being swayed by past events.
They prioritise focus and efficiency… although this can be detrimental to a certain extent if it leads to impatience and a need to exert control over any given situation.
How to use colour to boost productivity
If you accept the theory that colour can, indeed, affect your behaviour and emotions, it stands to reason that by surrounding yourself with certain shades you can actually exert some level of influence over your mental and emotional outlook, as well as your actions and reactions.
Taking the time to create an appropriate office or workspace at home or elsewhere is always advisable for traders and if you don’t have a robust setup in place, you may find that your trading success never quite hits the stratospheric heights you’d like it to.
You need to get your head in the game for trading and your work environment is essential for achieving this, so perhaps cast a critical eye over your office and see what changes you could introduce that could give you a big productivity boost.
To this end, armed with your new knowledge of colour psychology, you might want to consider doing a bit of painting, or surrounding yourself with home decor items in certain shades to help keep you in the right mindset for trading.
But what colours to go for? Which tones would be the most beneficial to use?
Green
A great colour to consider if you’re looking to work efficiently and with intent focus is green. This is a restful and calming colour, known for helping to improve concentration, while boosting creativity and inspiring innovative thinking… so an ideal one for aspiring traders everywhere to go for.
Not only that, however, but green also has links to nature and the environment, which can help improve your mental, emotional and even physical health and wellbeing… something that will really help you be a resilient and successful trader.
There’s a reason why biophilia really came to the fore as one of the top interior design trends during the pandemic (and why it hasn’t waned in popularity in the years since) and that’s because being connected to nature helps us to feel happier, less stressed, more creative and more productive.
Blue
If green doesn’t float your boat, or perhaps you want to bring in a range of different colours, you might find what you’re looking for with a blue design scheme.
Research from the University of Texas shows that this colour may have an important role to play in increasing productivity and, in fact, it was found that people seemed to work more effectively when their working environments were a combination of both blue and green… so it could prove to be a very winning combination indeed!
In terms of connotations, blue has long been associated with calmness, tranquility, peace and security, which could really help centre you as you trade, no matter whether you win or lose.
And like green, it too has links to the natural world, with blue the primary colour of the sea and sky, so you could feel even more connected to nature if you include it in your interior design ideas.
Red
The colour red is an interesting one because it is somewhat contradictory, representing love, passion, energy and excitement, but also anger and power… so it can yield positive and negative results, depending on how it’s used.
If you do want to decorate your home office in this most energetic of colours, it would perhaps be wise to use it as an accent colour rather than painting all the walls in this shade, which could become overpowering quite quickly and start having a negative impact on your trades.
This interesting study, published back in 2017 by the Swedish House of Finance, looked into the effects that colour can have on investment behaviour, finding that when investors are faced with potential losses in the colour red, their risk taking is reduced.
And when they’re shown past negative stock price paths in red, their expectations regarding future stock returns are reduced as well, consistent with the colour red being associated with avoidance behaviour. It was also found that red can reduce the propensity to buy stocks… all of which suggests you may want to be careful in your approach with this shade!
That all being said, warm colours like red are also very stimulating and can certainly give you a productivity boost if used in the right way.
Yellow
Another really energising colour to consider decorating with if you want to give your trades a boost is yellow. This shade radiates positivity and can really help keep your confidence levels high and your mood equally optimistic.
A happy trader is usually a successful trader and yellow can really help invoke feelings of warmth and brightness, lifting your mood and keeping you focused on the road ahead, no matter what forks appear along the way.
However, as with red, you also need to be a bit careful when decorating with yellow as too much of it can be a bit wearing on the eyes and cause visual fatigue, so approach with caution.
Again, you may want to avoid painting your walls in a bright yellow as, despite its cheerful nature, studies have shown that people are more likely to lose their tempers when in yellow rooms… and babies are even more likely to cry when their surroundings are yellow!
Grey
If you’re looking for a calming colour to decorate with, however, grey could very well be the way to go.
Halfway between black and white, grey is associated with objectivity and neutrality – which could be absolutely perfect for traders, since it’s important to maintain an objective outlook when trading, not being swayed by your emotions no matter what happens on the trading floor.
The formal aspect of the colour also represents clear-headed thinking and logic… exactly what you want to engender within yourself as a trader.
And from a purely design and style perspective, grey is an excellent choice because it goes well with a range of other colours because of its achromatic nature, so you’ll be able to pick out shades and tones easily, even if you’re not an experienced interior designer.
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