When too much information is amassed, a person is unable to internalize pertinent data necessary for rapid fire decision making. When one is unable to process the mass amounts of information, inaction occurs.
Common Problems:
- Not prioritizing
- Confusion
- Postponement of decision making
- Bad judgement
- Time mismanagement
- Lack of critical thinking
- Feeling psychologically stressed and overwhelmed
- Working hard, but feeling behind
Common Causes:
- The delusion of a infinite range of possibilities to make money.
- Insistence on completing all analysis before initializing action.
- Too many variables all at once causing incessant revisiting of original signal.
- Lack of daily objectives.
- Choosing quantity over quality
- Increasingly conflicting trading methods.
- Creative speculation, that is, you can outguess the guessers.
- Big Project Syndrome: this system will do it all, will use the latest tools, will use a new paradigm, will start with a clean slate.
- Risk avoidance, fear of making a mistake.
Viable Solutions:
- Keep trading system simple. Never integrate varying styles. Building a bigger model doesn’t add clarity – it creates confusion.
- Do enough analysis to convince yourself the odds are in your favor – and then stop!
- Refuse to review technical complexities, instead, review working functionality. If you’re not seeing simplicity in trading system design, move on.
- Start your system design with one requirement based on sound principles, i.e, an architectural prototype. A trading system without a prototype is like a candle without a wick, which is how analysis paralysis really happens.