Flow is characterised by narrowed attention, a distorted sense of time, and action that feels like it is happening rather than being decided. It arrives under specific conditions: clear goals, immediate feedback, and a challenge slightly beyond comfortable competence.
Trading provides the feedback and the challenge, but the goals are often vague, which is why flow is rare at the screen and impostors are common. Absorbed, fast, time-distorted trading is just as likely to be screen-hypnosis or the early stage of tilt as it is to be flow.
The reliable test is afterwards, in the record. Real flow shows up as high rule adherence with low effort. If the session felt effortless and the log is full of unplanned trades, it was not flow.
Related: screen-hypnosis, deliberate-practice, arousal-regulation, tilt