Noise

75% of the price movement in most stocks takes place in 20% of the time. The rest is nothing but noise within a range. Relevant information  that causes repricing doesn’t change quickly and frequently. This is why trends exist. Higher prices often attract more buyers and lower prices attract more sellers until the rules of the game change. Focus on the main drivers and forget the rest.

Ideas that spread

Not all great investing/trading ideas are profitable. Ideas that spread are. If no one else sees what you see and acts, you can’t make money. Hoping that eventually the rest of the market will understand and embrace your thesis is a loser’s strategy or a privilege for someone with very deep pockets. Markets often know more than you as they constantly try to discount all the available public and private information. You might be convinced that your analysis is right and the market is wrong, but it could remain wrong longer than you could remain solvent. The question again is do you have deep enough pockets to ride the storm out and aren’t there more plausible alternatives for your capital at the time. Smart people like to scale in and out of positions, knowing that no one can consistently pick tops and bottoms.

Take for example Jim Rogers. He is a typical contrarian investor, who likes to buy low and sell high. But he is not buying anything that is low priced and neglected. He buys cheap things only when he sees a fundamental change on the horizon – a catalyst that will help other market participants to re-evaluate their thesis and act on their new observations.

Yra Harris on Picking your sweet spot

Anytime something is too good to be true, I now recognize that it probably is and that it is there for a reason because somebody knows more than me. Where I used to rush in, I now step back a wait for a move to develop. I don’t feel I have to be at the start of every move anymore. Money is always flowing somewhere no matter what, so I just have to stay attuned to it.