Studying sentiment will always give you an edge

John C Burford explains how gauging investor sentiment can help you time your trade entries and exits.

Recently, I came across a wonderful quote in an investment book that encapsulates the attitude of a trader, rather than that of an investor. A trader must use some degree of intuition to pre-empt the number-crunching of the investment analysts:"Some of us are here today because one of our ancestors started running when the birds stopped singing, instead of waiting until he could count the precise number of Viking invaders."

What a wonderful indictment of the overthinking that so often masquerades as insightful analysis.

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John is is a British-born lapsed PhD physicist, who previously worked for Nasa on the Mars exploration team. He is a former commodity trading advisor with the US Commodities Futures Trading Commission, and worked in a boutique futures house in California in the 1980s.

 

He was a partner in one of the first futures newsletter advisory services, based in Washington DC, specialising in pork bellies and currencies. John is primarily a chart-reading trader, having cut his trading teeth in the days before PCs.

 

As well as his work in the financial world, he has launched, run and sold several 'real' businesses producing 'real' products.