In today’s society, we are bombarded with information. This is no different in the trading world. Sqawk boxes, CNBC, Bloomberg, yahoo Finance the list goes on. The world is so interconnected it’s difficult to spot why this setup works now and why it won’t work in the future. For example knowing that the relative strength between the 10-year US bond futures was not able to make a new high in 2008 while the market did make a new high, signaled a top, however, this no longer works.
Integral theory is a beast if you want it to be and to mentally check off the 5 aspects is cumbersome, but I believe quadrants are the most useful when dealing with a lot of information with 4 very simple questions based on the philosophy of the quadrants.
- Is this information going to change the behavior of the stock? (upper-right)
- Is this information change the way WE as a collective view this stock? What are other people thinking potentially if they were already long or already short? (lower-right)
- Is this information related to the entire sector? (Lower-right)
- Will this change the stocks internal unique character? For example, will it trade less or more. (upper-left)
Information overload is a real issue. Sometimes we get a piece of information such as, “Buy out rumor on TIF,” we rush to pull up the ticker and notice it’s spiking quickly, but if you take the time to answer the above 4 questions you’ll see how the answers may not invoke a buy.