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If you’re already hip to the secrets of highly successful traders, it will come as no surprise to hear that a trader’s personality is closely connected to trading performance.

That’s the conclusion of a recent study by a pair Dutch researchers, who focused on personality traits and their impact upon trading. The researchers set up a simulated trading exercise involving 32 traders and real money, and they identified three personality types:

1) Relaxed, risk-averse traders who avoid regret, dislike sensation-seeking, and display “type-B” (non-Alpha male) behaviour

2) Controlled risk takers who combine a high degree of “self-monitoring” (keeping up appearances) with thrill seeking

3) Achievement-driven traders or typical type-A personalities

This latter group of competitive, driven traders performed the worst, while the first two groups showed no significant difference in their returns.

“What this suggests is that a relaxed attitude toward performance may be more helpful than a driven one: the highly achievement-driven trader may create his or her own internal noise, interfering with sound decision-making,” concludes Brett Steenbarger, who runs the Traderfeed blog and is the author “The Psychology of Trading” and “Enhancing Trader Performance”.

The conclusions of the Dutch study are consistent with Steenbarger’s own research, which found that “highly emotional reactions to trading outcomes–positive and negative–are associated with worse trading performance.”

Steenbarger expects that “highly achievement-oriented traders who also have a strong tendency toward negative emotional experience (guilt, anger, depression, anxiety) might experience the worst trading outcomes of all.”

But Steenbarger argues that since relaxed, risk-averse traders performed as well as the controlled risk takers, “it may well be the case that clarity of mind - not personality per se - is the most important pyschological determinant of good decision making and trading profitability.”

No more trading with a hangover, then.