think in a probability way
People tends to tunnel the world into what he hopes to be or what he believes, easily pick up those facts that corroborate his ideas while consciously or unconsciously ignore those evidences against what he believes. That's what is called confirmation bias. Investor Benjamin Graham used to say the market in the short run is like a voting machine but in the long run it's a weighting machine. The chartists or short-term traders's tendency to predict market's next move by analyzing trading data or some fundamental information like earning release in my view is just effortless. What happened on market just now either up or down is just that market happens to go up or down, it's just doesn't have to be this easy. In another words, if time machine can turn backward a few minutes and rerun market from that point, the market may not repeat itself since intepretations of same set of data would likely to be different the second time regardless of possible different information the market could have in.
Here is a question: How do we look at inside buy and inside sell? Some people used to get panic when they learned the company's inside selling report, while they feel very optimistic when there are insider buying filings from SEC. They think in a rush since insiders are selling the stocks, they must be permistic about the future of the company. If insiders are buying the stock they must think the company is undervalued. If insiders are permistic about the company, how can I be more confident to go against them?
There is logic loophole in this way of thinking. This is caused by confustion about thinking forward and backward. Insider selling is a fact or an effect. If we try to intepret the reason or the cause of this effect, we should think in backward, in a probability way. We can only infer that the money insides sellers are cashing in from market has more worthy thing to spend or invest to insider sellers themselves, which could buy a big house, own another intested business, go to charitable fund or be permisstic about the company's prospect. The list can go on and on. Peter Lynch, the former manager of the Magellan Fund, just ignored the inside selling and has noted that insiders might sell their shares for any number of reasons. You need to combine other facts of the company to interpret the meaning of the inside selling activities. That's the right way of thinking, in a probability and backward way.
This blog is a great combination of suitable and useful information and well-written sentences that will certainly entice your sense and update you about new happening.