The Market Manifesto essays …

I post my per­son­al writ­ings here. I am Ted Hearne, a trad­er and writer cur­rent­ly liv­ing in the Unit­ed States. Every­thing here is per­son­al, not col­lec­tive, thus these writ­ings, opin­ions, rumi­na­tions and thoughts are my own.

I write most­ly for my own amuse­ment, but hap­py to share with you if you would like to explore these thoughts.

My inter­ests include social psy­chol­o­gy, crowd psy­chol­o­gy, macro and labor eco­nom­ics, mar­ket behav­ior, mar­ket the­o­ry, deci­sion-mak­ing, humans under duress, the pow­er of tech­nol­o­gy, the dig­i­tal rev­o­lu­tion, and how we func­tion amidst all this.

My work­ing premise: it’s a great life and a huge bless­ing to be alive. But we can screw things up if we don’t stay alert, aware, and pro­tect our abil­i­ty to func­tion inde­pen­dent­ly.

Take it all in, but ver­i­fy every­thing for your­self. Wel­come to the ride.

February 13, 2022 – 10:50 am | By Ted Hearne | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

The Direction of the Crowd

We speak here of how the crowd seeks direc­tion. And we speak of seek­ing direc­tion when direc­tion is not appar­ent. When the mar­ket is in con­ges­tion, we know that direc­tion is uncer­tain. That is what con­ges­tion is, a weav­ing back and forth between upper and low­er lim­its, with the ulti­mate exit direc­tion from those lim­its […]

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February 13, 2022 – 10:14 am | By Ted Hearne | Posted in Market States, Uncategorized | Tagged | Comments (0)

Theory of Endings

In many dis­ci­plines it makes more sense to mon­i­tor the end­ing of the old with the idea in mind that this end­ing gives us ear­ly warn­ing of the new.
Cer­tain­ly that is true in fields like trad­ing, where we are inter­est­ed in activ­i­ty on the edge, on the mar­gin, in the evolv­ing present, in the real time of now.

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February 4, 2022 – 12:19 pm | By Ted Hearne | Posted in Market States, Market Structure, Moral States, Psychology of Awareness, The Rest of Life | Comments (0)

On Fear

We speak here about fear, and how one learns to over­come it, and about how one learns in gen­er­al. As my friend Char­lie says, “fear is the prod­uct of an undis­ci­plined mind.” There­fore it can be elim­i­nat­ed through the appli­ca­tion of dis­ci­pline. If you always have per­fect dis­ci­pline, you can stop read­ing now. End of […]

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February 1, 2022 – 12:55 pm | By Ted Hearne | Posted in Psychology of Fear, Trader Psychology | Comments (0)

The Psychology of Congestion Entrance

A con­ges­tion is a known area.
We under­stand the lim­its of con­ges­tion, and it is as if we are liv­ing in the known uni­verse. We under­stand where we are, we live between the bor­ders of the extreme, and while we know that even­tu­al­ly we must tread beyond these bound­aries and ven­ture into the new, at the moment we walk on famil­iar ground, and accept these lim­its with grace.

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January 31, 2022 – 12:26 pm | By Ted Hearne | Posted in Psychology of Trade Types, Trader Psychology | Comments (0)

The Psychology of Trend Reversal

We see rejec­tion and a sense of loss as the pri­ma­ry emo­tions of sud­den trend change. What we thought would occur, is not occur­ring. Our idea of an order­ly mar­ket pro­gres­sion is sud­den­ly dis­rupt­ed; we are jolt­ed out of our secure expec­ta­tions by this intru­sion of the real world. In a sub­tle sense we are dis­ap­point­ed, we are bereft, we expe­ri­ence loss as our expec­ta­tions of the future are rude­ly rebuffed.

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January 4, 2022 – 12:46 pm | By Ted Hearne | Posted in Psychology of Trade Types, Trader Psychology | Comments (0)

On Overshooting

Let’s talk about over­shoot­ing, of the ten­den­cy of things to move too far in one direc­tion, and then retrace. We are of course espe­cial­ly inter­est­ed in the dynam­ics of the crowd that over­shoots. But the fact of over­shoot­ing is a com­mon occur­rence in many dif­fer­ent kinds of sit­u­a­tions. In the mar­ket we see many vari­a­tions […]

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December 21, 2021 – 8:39 am | By Ted Hearne | Posted in Trader Psychology | Comments (0)

On Isolation

Let’s talk about the trader’s neme­sis, iso­la­tion — the prob­lems it caus­es, and the ben­e­fits that come from it. Iso­la­tion is a nec­es­sary cor­rel­a­tive of trad­ing. I’m not refer­ring to phys­i­cal iso­la­tion, though that is some­times nec­es­sary and use­ful. I’m talk­ing of men­tal iso­la­tion, inde­pen­dence, and sep­a­rate­ness. The essence of trad­ing is inde­pen­dence. A trad­er […]

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December 15, 2021 – 4:29 pm | By Ted Hearne | Posted in Psychology of Awareness, The Rest of Life | Comments (0)

On Freedom

Let’s talk about free­dom, and of depen­den­cy. We speak of liv­ing free in an unfree world. We live in a world sur­pris­ing­ly lack­ing in free­dom. In the Unit­ed States and in many oth­er west­ern indus­tri­al­ized coun­tries we live inside a myth of free­dom, that is, we believe we are freer than we actu­al­ly are. Our […]

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December 15, 2021 – 2:36 pm | By Ted Hearne | Posted in Moral States, Psychology of Awareness, Psychology of Fear, The Rest of Life, Trader Psychology | Comments (0)

On Responsibility and Anger

The top­ic here is tak­ing full respon­si­bil­i­ty for all of our actions. And we speak of anger towards oth­ers and towards our­selves. First, about respon­si­bil­i­ty. Why do we need to dis­cuss this here? Are we not all ful­ly respon­si­ble adults, as we go about earn­ing our liv­ing and pay­ing our bills and meet­ing our oblig­a­tions? […]

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December 12, 2021 – 2:35 pm | By Ted Hearne | Posted in Moral States, Psychology of Awareness, The Rest of Life, Trader Psychology | Comments (0)