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BY IGNORANCE THE TRUTH IS KNOWN

Whether we choose to believe it or not we do not know the future, nor can we predict it with any consistency.  When the future does play out exactly as predicted luck must be credited.

We stock traders love to predict.  When we are right (which is not very often) we are quick to pat ourselves on the back, staking our claim on expert technical and/or fundamental analysis.  When we are wrong we are just as quick to deny responsibility, usually blaming the “market” for its ignorance.  All too often we justify our losses because we mistakenly believe the market is wrong.

But if the truth be known we are the ones who are ignorant and we choose to remain so.  Ignorance can only be used as an excuse until the truth is discovered.  The truth is we are wrong. The market is always right.

So, here is the truth.

We are ignorant of randomness and uncertainty.  We are ignorant of the many reasons others have for buying and selling, oftentimes diametrically opposed to our own.  We are ignorant of the hidden forces that move markets both intra-day and day to day.  We are ignorant of unforeseen news and how the “market” will interpret it.  We are ignorant of our many and varied biases, too numerous to mention here.  In a word, we are ignorant.

But in ignorance we find truth; in ignorance we find opportunity.  We traders can use our ignorance as a tool for profitability.  But can we handle it?

Can we accept that our expert analysis can be wrong?  Can we accept uncertainty?  Can we admit that our decision making processes are often flawed because of our psychological makeup? Can we accept that the market is always right? Can we handle the truth?

If we dare confront our ignorance we can then proceed to admit to and accept our flawed biases.   We can admit that luck plays a major role in our success.

We can actually exit losing trades.  We can take profits without getting greedy. We can cease to fear the future.  We can accept, and even learn to embrace, uncertainty.  We can then use technical and fundamental analysis as tools to manage our emotionally based biases, not confirm them.   We can become consistent in our decisions.  We can become profitable.

We can discover the truth by our ignorance.

Fascinating Insights From Nobel Prize-Winner Robert Shiller

On why so many experts missed the 2008 financial crisis: “Experts have always missed big events like this. If you look at the record of statistical forecasting models, they tend to get to the recession when it’s starting to come. A casual observer might start to worry about it. Forecasting it years out, they don’t get; in particular, if you look at the Great Depression of the 1930s, nobody forecasted that. Zero. Nobody. Now there were, of course, some guys who were saying the stock market is overpriced and it would come down, but if you look at what they said, did that mean a depression is coming? A decade-long depression? That was never said.”

On short-term thinking: “I think that there’s too much faith in analysis of short-term data. You see some pattern, and you can do a statistical test and prove that will prove that it is significant or passes the smell test to a statistician. But the problem is, the world is always changing. It’s not a stable thing. The underlying human parameters may be stable, but you can see that there is institutional and cultural evolution, and it’s not something that you can quantify.”

A dozen lessons from Jim Simons

1. “Models can lower your risk…. It reduces the daily aggravation.” With old-fashioned stock picking: “One day you feel like a hero. The next day you feel like a goat. Either way, most of the time it’s just luck.” “We don’t override the models.” 

2. “Certain price patterns are nonrandom and will lead to a predictive effect.” 

3.  “Efficient market theory is correct in that there are no gross inefficiencies, but we look at anomalies that may be small in size and brief in time.” 

4. “Great people. Great infrastructure. Open environment. Get everyone compensated roughly based on the overall performance… That made a lot of money.” 

5. “Luck, is largely responsible for my reputation for genius. I don’t walk into the office in the morning and say, ‘Am I smart today?’ I walk in and wonder, ‘Am I lucky today?’” 

6. “We have three criteria. If it’s publicly traded, liquid and amenable to modeling, we trade it.”  (more…)