The Trader’s Language: Framework, Learning, Attention.

Node 003 | The Index

Jul 22, 2025

The Idea INDEX
Node 003. (This Entry May Evolve)
First Published: 22.07.2025

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Language and Trading

Language is a reflection of a trader as it is a facilitator of communication, parcelled into words, then sent to one another. These packages influence as much as they reveal. They also serve as shorthand for what we mean. Two traders in conversation say “auction,” both assuming that each other understands this word through its contextual significances, and wider associations. They do not need to repeat explanations of what an auction is or the connection to market auction theory, the market profile, order flow, and so on. The single word "auction" contains a whole world within it, charged with information, meaning, and a trader's framework—partly revealing their navigational ability. Words, as one of the smallest units of information, can have a whole world superimposed upon them. In an infinite world, the best writing and trading is the least reductive; such is the condition of the market navigator. (See: The Trader’s Original Sin Is Attempting To Make An Infinite Process Finite.)

Language frames you.

Consider the word “breakout.” It is pre-packaged with ideas that flash in a trader’s mind, yet what is ingested is digested very differently by various traders. It is shorthand to communicate efficiently, both to others and our future selves when reading our notes.

Yet, reduce further—two words—“breakout strategy” and one is likely framed with such words, and therefore reactions. This negative framing is a mind-rail that seldom allows for diversions, nor does it facilitate higher-level questioning or enable impactful conversations, as they are doomed from the start. This often leads to various downstream issues, such as confusing a pattern and strategy, as discussed in Traders of Our Time within ‘Chapter 2: The Razor.’ A breakout is a market phenomenon; a behaviour in variable form often misidentified as a strategy when it is but a mere “pattern.” Trading a breakout is a different matter. Monetising this phenomenon over time into a complex whole, partly identified as “market navigation,” to allow for a career, is an entirely different matter.

Further, attaching the word “strategy” prevents other associations and implies that it is all a trader must do. What, it seems, can be a higher level, or an unturned stone, than strategy? Consider how novice traders seldom fail to identify themselves or their “edge”—“I’m a breakout trader.” All of this has sprung from a mere two words! Such is the potency of language; ignored at a trader’s peril and used lucratively by the attentive practitioner.

How lucrative? Among highly ‘successful’ traders, the more precise the language becomes as one advances along the experience and achievement curve. Consider from Building The Future: On Recruiting As A Trading Firm:

The move from six to seven figures depends on the market environment and the will to perform. The move from seven to eight is to dominate a niche. Eight to nine is to pioneer, blaze trails, and ask different questions instead of answering the old ones. They will be a creator living in a world of their own. How can we find people who think and act this way?

You can find those who think and act in that way through their uniqueness of language. World creation demands word creation; greatness is predicated on uniqueness, so it is reflected in the specificity of their language.

Framework is language. Language is framework.

Regardless of how implicit or tacit a trader says it is, it is a reflection of their abilities. As we noted with The Engineer in Traders of Our Time: “If form follows function, as a principle in design, then psychology follows precision.” Further: precision follows language. Both shape a trader’s abilities as they reflect it. These are the advantages of framing through language.

Further consider this trader’s specific use of “Routine. Framework. Process.” Thus, he is represented as a trader and simultaneously frames himself, purposefully and usefully, at all levels of detail. Has process changed? Can I improve it? What does improvement mean or look like? Questions reveal, as they make the implicit, explicit. Questions, considered carefully through the use of language and intent, are far more important than the answers. The latter are at best transient in our market world of perpetual change. Consider: ‘The Markets Can Only Be Navigated, Not Solved.’ An answer likely reveals a ‘solving’ of the current market environment fated to change. Answers break; therefore, does language.

Hence, language cannot remain static, as that would be a failure of adaptation; it is closely tied to the need for precise language. Therefore, precision requires adaptation to stay exact. In this way, language is a reflection of a trader’s navigation skill. It is a reflection of where they have come from and where they are about to go.

Framework then is also a product of the questions being asked. “What gives me edge?” is very different, and revealing, to “What conditions allow edge to emerge?” It is revealing: new traders, and new learners generally, often look for ‘edge’ as if a repeatable technique or insight, as if a light switch to permanent profitability. The former question is an attempt at solving markets; the latter question acknowledges that it can only be navigated.

Observe The Engineer on the trading floor, and we notice this precision, tied to his overt use of the market profile, which is rooted in his notion of “framework.” From Traders of Our Time, Chapter Nine:

Frame the behaviour of the price ladder, this order flow, to the context of the skew, structure and shape of the market profile, and it becomes a universal language. A syntax, as The Hero said, that he and The Engineer choose to speak, and a framework into which all market information is thrown—central bank action, an order flow anomaly, fundamental market news, observations of sticky, unhealthy order flow, chart patterns—and it is a language because it speaks back. To answer what is happening and why it is. Tie the profile and its syntax to the “personality” and behaviour of order flow on the price ladder, and it infers critical information for the quality or the health of the auction, as our trader calls it.

An observer would hear talk of “a selling tail,” or “poor lows,” or various other piecemeal information tied to the “healthy auction” The Engineer just watched on the price ladder. The market doesn’t “slice,” “puke,” “go down,” “sell off,” but it “auctions lower.” To put it another way, one group of language is vague, while the other is strict. “This is bearish,” or “we're going to go down; the market is heavy,” or “the market will come down here.” This vagueness often leads to conflating cause and effect—“the market went down, so this is bearish”— but it also biases towards prediction, which is an offshoot of the ever-present intellectual and emotional demand to 'solve' markets, compared to navigating whatever behaviour happens to emerge over time.

Vagueness, especially if emotionally or graphically charged, suggests more, while strictness sticks to the facts. Vagueness also reflects a lack of clarity in a trader's framework, or an absence thereof. Vagueness, as opposed to precise language, also precludes the use of unique language. As noted earlier, the further one climbs the achievement and experience curve, the more unique and precise the language becomes. Novices all talk the same: simultaneously vague yet carry great certainty about market action. Veterans might use similar language, but with precision, yet with great flexibility and possibility about future market action.

Strictness in language is beneficial to the trader. Strictness reflects sticking to the market’s observations and facts. Consider further from The Engineer, from Traders of Our Time:

“[The market profile] has purity,” The Engineer says, “I fit my observations within the profile and auction theory, to think through it. You need a framework or principles that provide you with a lens and parameters to put things into. Otherwise, it becomes messy when you have no mental model. I lean on technicals a lot, but basic chart patterns are inconsistent. You need to skew probabilities in your favour by adding more layers of disparate information together. And then you must always understand why it should work this time,” he continues.

If one were to describe or note a selling tail, there are only a few ways it could visually appear. This lack of variance in information from a specific data point often enables it to be high-quality data. That is what you need. From Traders of Our Time:

Because this type of trading seeks higher-quality data but not complete data, and only so much high quality can be amassed in a short period ... [Marko Papic] reflects on diagnosticity, of clues that are useful because they point to a low potential number of causes that solicit an effect. A fever, he says, is of low diagnostic value as it points to a large range of causes. And so, the strategic trader, pieces—layers—the puzzle together not only to reduce variance but to tie together clues of high diagnostic value. A few pieces of high-quality—diagnostic—information are superior to complete information.1

The market profile, and the strictness of language it imposes upon a trader and their formwork, are both valuable and potent, because it is far easier to identify and adhere to high-quality diagnostic information. In other words, trading off pure price ladder, or looking at infinite candlesticks and other chart graphics, is looking for a needle in a haystack. The profile narrows the haystack altogether, which is again aided by the strictness and precision of language.

Language to circumvent labels, not ideas.

Language in its reductive form of labels causes considerable blockage. Consider the phrase “technical trading.” It’s dead! Why? It is as abused—difficult to falsify, easy to obfuscate—as it is vague, as it now means nothing. To the outside world, The Engineer is a “technical trader,” and often judged as such. As The Collector said about The Engineer in Traders of Our Time: “No one at my second prop firm would have believed the idea of someone trading hundreds of lots in the Bund on a technical set-up!” But consider further from our so-called technical trading Engineer, extracted from Chapter 9:

But The Engineer just as much considers recent economic data prints, recent central bank comments, the current macro-environment, the yield curve or other minutiae-like subtle changes in the order flow. So where does the sordid chartist stop and the legitimate market approach begin? A technical trading approach does not deliver inferiority or superiority by picking up the tool, but, as a truism, it depends on how it is used.

As mentioned earlier, precision must evolve to stay exact, which is why, at a certain point, it was useful shorthand for efficiency—sacrificing accuracy—to box in certain trading ‘approaches’ as “technical” or “fundamental,” especially when this had to be articulated and put down on paper in whatever form or use. The labels stick, but the meta-game moves on, so should the language. As in Defeating the Discombobulating Dialectic, Part II: “… don’t argue—just trade—and use every means at your disposal to dissolve framework, technicals, market profile, fundamentals, charts, news, levels, flow, stats, indicators, patterns, macroeconomics into just one thing: trading. An act of never-ending synthesis.”

Labels paint targets and draw battle-lines. If labels become a lifestyle, it is fatal for a trader because cross-learning ceases. If career trajectories are assessed through the rate of learning—equivalent to the rate of change—further assessment of how a trader expands their skills horizon reveals that entire careers are made or destroyed, often resting on the use or abuse of language. Drop or change the language, then you can circumvent the blockage and reach the treasure.

Part of learning is being empathetic—putting yourself in someone's shoes—or “wearing their hat.” Using their language takes you one step further, aiding in both diagnosis: “What would the Warrior do?” And learning: “How would the Hero approach this profile?” Consider from Traders of Our Time:

But that does not imply the aspect of perception does not apply to each and every one of them—or to you. Can you believe like The Warrior, abstain like The Razor, emerge like The Engineer? This is why their aliases are a bonus. You can melt their identities and their stories, which are now charged with meaning. Denial means a whole new thing after we learn about The Razor’s story. So, you ingest this capsule; it is lodged within you and at the next inflexion point in your life, it could change your behaviour and alter your course of action. So, change has been elicited. This book, as technology, has worked!

Language shapes thinking and therefore trading. It also works in reverse.

Language is Attention

We assign words and descriptors to what we notice, especially market phenomena. What is implicit, or the negative, comes later if at all.

As per The Hero in Traders of Our Time, answering the question: “Can you further explain the concept of how the market ‘should not’ look?”

“I am now in a place where if I am trading at best, I am always thinking of how the market should not look. Starting with a negative is important as we are always seeking out ways to confirm our own biases. As much as I wish to be formless and without bias, you will always form them, even unconsciously, and it is impossible to avoid it with this kind of job. Therefore, starting with a negative helps to build confidence and frame your thoughts. For example, during a central bank meeting day, you might have reasons to believe that this is not how the market should look to promote a hawkish move. Or you might realise a certain market is not set up the way you like it to be. In the days leading up to a central bank meeting, The Engineer and I ask, what is the market primed for, and what is it not primed for?”

Language filters market experience, often to our detriment. How can we use it to our advantage?

When market experience is given a language, it becomes part of memory. That too can be of use or become baggage.

»To Be Developed—Node 003 | The Idea Index

22nd July 2025, WIP:

Language is Memory. It then becomes a story, both an inner self and a market story. What then? Metaphors structure market reasoning, or trade sense. Language creates ritual and confidence.
Possessing trading by memory, rather than referencing notes. Powers of possessing material by memory. (Harold Bloom reflections and career on possessing Paradise Lost, and a vast amount of Shakespeare, etc.)
The density of meaning of a word is powerful because you can activate tacit knowledge through resonance. A powerful line or word evokes what you may not consciously know most of the time.
Meaning is anti-method. (Poetry)