Charlie Munger – Cognitive Biases – Liking loving Bias

This is one of my favorites. When you hear a trader say, “I love this stock.” You know they are preparing themselves for distorted facts, ignoring reality and misinterpretation of the facts merely because of their affection towards the stock.

Yes, I said affection.  My belief is that similar to relationships we become married, infatuated, angered and involved emotionally with stocks.  The relationship can last for a couple hours (a fling) or for months, even years (marriage).  As you develop this relationship, regardless of time, you develop feelings.  You’ll hear this in traders talk. “I love this stock.” “I understand how it moves.” “I just get it with this one.”  Sound familiar?

It’s great you found your love and if it’s healthy, you’ll be profitable.  However, there are biases you will experience because you have developed feelings.

  • Not believing the pattern:  Your significant other always buys you ice cream after the market closes.  Last Friday they didn’t show up with ice cream.  You may dismiss this as an anomaly but the truth is your significant other meet someone else and will no longer be bringing you ice cream, you just have no idea.  Monday you wait, Tuesday… you get the idea. Mean while you’re pissing away money waiting for the same pattern to develop that is now gone.  Guess what. Time to move on.
  • Distorting Reality:  2 weeks go by and you are still trying to catch that same pattern.  It finally happens and you say, “omg yes finally, she’s back.” but it turns out they just had a fight and you’re still shit outta luck.  This also reinforces the operant conditioning that has been happening.  Your perception of reality is no longer accurate, you make allowances that you would not normally make because you have feelings.

Feelings aren’t all bad in the market but the right ones are key.  When “the stars align,” you just know.  It’s a gut feeling.  When you like/love someone or something your reality with it will change. It was an adaptation that was passed down.  It works evolutionarily that if someone in your party fucked you over but you like/loved them and needed their cooperation in the future… It makes sense that you should distort reality for the greater good that is your survival and continue to work with them.  However,   The superfluous feelings you develop for a stock that once made you money though deserves there rightful place in the bowels of memory.

How I use integral theory to trade the markets

Integral theory is a beast.  You can read Ken Wilber‘s works over a lifetime only to come back to read them again and realize how much you missed.  My friends who introduced me to the theory always found great ways to answer my practical application questions from this theoretical model.  This and other posts will be my attempt to do the same for stock market trading.

As I discussed in a previous post.  Quadrants a great way to know your current perspective on things.  But how do we use the other 4 tenants?

Quadrants: Great for perspective.  Figuring out where your thoughts are and most importantly where other people’s thoughts may be as well.  This is simply a matter of perspective taking methodically.

States:  Are you angry? Stressed? Joyful? Irrationally exuberant?  In Flow?  This is the current state of your being. What’s coloring your trading ideas.  Maybe even confirmation bias.

Lines:  These are the skills people obtain throughout life. Relevant to trading I see pattern recognition, math, probability and high social IQ as skills worth developing for this business.

Levels:  Each of these skills will have levels that will build on the next.  There is no stagnation unless you choose.

Types: Gemini or Capricorn? OCD or free spirited?  How do you type yourself as a trader? Do you believe the hype that you can put in 2 hours of work a day and walk away a millionaire? Do you believe it takes hard work and practice?  This is typing yourself.  It is also called priming in the field of psychology.

I will write about each of these in more detail in future posts.

Integral Theory from a Traders View

Ken Wilber is the famous, possibly infamous, creator of integral theory.  The theory in brief (I can’t stress that enough) posits 5 major tenants:  Lines, Levels, Types, States, and Quadrants.  We’ll be looking at quadrants in this post.

Each quadrant represents an internal (psychological) or external (behavioral) on an individual or collective (societal) level.  As I trader I use these quadrants as a tool to check my perspective.

Upper Left: What am I thinking feeling, expecting from this stock?

Bottom Left: What are other people thinking, feeling, expecting from this stock?

Upper Right: How is the stock moving? What are the patterns and trend?

Bottom Right: What is the sector doing, the collective?

As complicated as integral theory can get. One can typically break it down for practical everyday use.  Metatheories are often good for that. 🙂