LATEST BLOGS

ETFs, Earnings Drift, and the Myth of Market Fairness

Every reporting season, we see the same pattern. A major company posts weaker-than-expected results, and its value plunges; the media quickly blames exchange-traded funds (ETFs) for the turmoil. The argument runs that passive investing has “broken” market discovery. It sounds neat, but it oversimplifies a complex reality. Unfortunately, this is the case with this piece…

Read more

The Value of Process Over Outcome

In trading, as in many high-performance fields, it’s easy to get caught up in the scoreboard. On the surface, it appears that the metrics that measure our profitability are the things we should focus exclusively on. Yet, the truth is far more subtle: focusing solely on outcomes is not just misleading—it’s dangerous. Profitability comes from…

Read more

The Scale of China

If you look up small, rooted backwaters whose politicians think we are more important than we are in the dictionary, you will find Australia. If you look up a global behemoth with 4000 years of history, you will discover China. I really don’t think people, particularly right-wing politicians, understand the significance of the changes that…

Read more

Precision vs. Accuracy in Trading

In trading, survival is rarely about predicting the market with flawless foresight. Instead, it often depends on how you frame risk, execute consistently, and allow probability to work in your favour. Two ideas that are frequently confused—but vitally important to distinguish—are precision and accuracy. They sound similar, yet for traders, they represent entirely different skills.…

Read more

3 Keys To Million Dollar Profits

Episode Description Join Louise Bedford on Talking Trading as she interviews JC – a chartered accountant who didn’t just balance books but built a 7-figure trading portfolio. After discovering the markets as a teenager, JC faced early hurdles before finding his breakthrough with the Trading Game Mentor Program. Now, he thrives in both trading and…

Read more

Bring the Noise

There are three types of investors: momentum, valuation and noise. Momentum investors care about trend, valuation investors care about fundamentals and noise investors care about a random assortment of stuff. Many of us are noise investors, even though we wont realise it. Of course, investment approaches do not all neatly fit into such discrete categories.…

Read more

The Law of Unintended Consequences Strikes Again

Economists love to tell each other stories about perverse incentives. The “cobra effect” is a favourite. It describes an attempt by the British Raj to rid Delhi of its cobras by paying a bounty for each cobra skin, thus encouraging a thriving cobra-farming industry. The cobra story is probably an urban myth — or a…

Read more

Think You’ve Made It – Think Again.

In trading, a prevalent cognitive bias known as the arrival fallacy often distorts motivation and impairs ability. Coined by psychologist Tal Ben-Shahar, the arrival fallacy describes the flawed assumption that achieving a specific goal—such as reaching a monetary milestone, becoming a full-time trader, or hitting a percentage return target—will deliver long-term contentment. In reality, the…

Read more

How Rich Was Jessie Livermore?

Very is the simple answer. Jessie Livermore’s trading career remains one of the most legendary — and cautionary — tales in trading history. To get a sense of his achievement, I have taken a table (which you can click on) that has been floating around the internet and tidied it up by removing multiple entries…

Read more

The Silent Saboteur: Self-Sabotage in High-Performance Trading

If I am asked why traders fail, the answer often shocks people. They fail because they want to. Consciously, traders often demonstrate all the outward signs of wanting to be profitable; they go through the motions of designing a robust system, learning about risk management, and even pay lip service to the importance of psychology.…

Read more