There are many excellent finance journalists but there is also the obligation for the financial media to tell a story based on fundamentals and macro when often that is not the driver of a market move. There are many other valuable ideas here, so valuable in fact that I don’t feel it is appropriate to discuss them further here.

Anyway, he stuck a post-it with “Long or flat” on his monitor to ensure he avoided the temptation to sell in what he felt could only be a bull market. When you send your thesis out into the wild, the responses will inform you, not just by their content, but also by their tone.

Collecting anecdotal information can be extremely useful but you need to know the bias of the source. In Chapter 3 you learned that superior performance on the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) predicts trading success. Produced more than 100 profitable traders who earn their livelihood from the markets today and counting. Instead, be on the constant lookout for tiny improvements you can make that don’t require Herculean effort. The task is not to choose the most beautiful woman, but instead to choose the woman others will think is most beautiful.

Forex and CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. Anyone who took a science class as a kid should recognize this as a shortform version of the scientific method. This chapter will focus on everything else that holds traders back, other than irrational and biased thinking. A huge portion of this game is building processes that prevent our worst system-one instincts from running amok. Data is always better than anecdotes so look for objective sources of sentiment and positioning data and focus more on those than what you consume via traditional or new media.Make sure you allocate enough time to strategy (coming up with trade ideas) and tactics (entry point, stop loss, etc. Staring at the screen ups the amount of stimulus you receive each day and may lead to excess action.

If you are passionate about financial markets and have 2-5 years of relevant trading experience in APAC fixed income instruments, with excellent communication and problem solving skills as well as good intuition around data, you could be a good fit. Good marketers will stick to one view and beat it until they have paid off the summer house in East Hampton. Alpha Traders filter information with slow System 2 thinking, even if the conclusion drawn from that information seems simple or obvious at first. When there is a strong consensus view but no positioning to match the view, you often see highly impulsive moves.One of the great contradictions of trading is that conservative, disciplined people tend to be risk-averse while risk-loving people tend to be compulsive and undisciplined. Part of the filtering process is to make sure that wherever your idea comes from originally, it is supported by the narrative, sentiment, positioning, technicals, correlated markets and seasonals. tactics, microstructure, market narrative, technical analysis, sentiment, positioning and systematic risk management.

The first step in becoming a successful investor, besides having a strong work ethic, is to become as knowledgeable as possible about the financial markets. You need to think more deeply about conclusions and treat even the most obvious answers with rational skepticism. Even if they are not doing this consciously, there is a good chance their subconscious is busy doing it for them. This chapter will outline the types of bias that vex traders, and present specific methods you can use to avoid, or at least reduce, their potential damage.

The funny thing is, if these permabears ever change their view, they lose followers and subscribers.