Interesting discussion, and strangely the very subject that I was discussing with trader coach friend this weekend.
I know, from analysing my trades, that I tend to see the buy side. This reflects my general attitude to life, always the positive.
This is not necessarily a bad thing, it’s just that I am aware that my trading fits around this part of my phycology, it’s therefore likely that I could improve even more by adjusting.
The old masters countenanced against this normal human behaviour, it may sound easy but the reality that it seems that we are hard wired to look for the positive, apparently negative guys would shun the trading world in the first place.
My friend noted that he too sees this in many of his students, often they are on the buy side, more difficult to see the sell.
I remember a few years ago a discussion on similar lines, the author pointed out that on stocks the pull backs are often fast and furious because they are fuelled by fear, he figured that investors are usually optimists and that fear is optimism’s opposite.