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 reflects a trader’s identity and facilitates communication. It is packaged into words, then sent to one another. These packages influence and reveal. They serve as shorthand. Two traders saying “auction” assume mutual understanding of its contextual significance and associations. They don’t need to repeat explanations of what an auction is or its connection to market auction theory, market profile, order flow, etc. “Auction” contains a world of information, meaning, and a trader’s framework—partly revealing their navigational ability. Words, as small information units, can carry a world. 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 traders digest it differently. It’s shorthand for efficient communication, both to others and our future selves when reading our notes.

When a trader is framed with two words—“breakout strategy”—such words and therefore reactions follow. This negative framing is a mind-rail that seldom allows diversions or facilitates higher-level questioning or impactful conversations, as they are doomed from the start. This leads to 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 misidentified as a strategy when it is a mere “pattern.” Trading a breakout is different. Monetising this phenomenon into a complex whole, partly identified as “market navigation,” to allow for a career, is an entirely different matter.

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

How lucrative? Among ‘successful’ traders, the language becomes more precise as one advances along the experience and achievement curve. Consider 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 that way through their unique language. World creation demands word creation; greatness is based on uniqueness, reflected in their language specificity.

Framework is language. Language is framework.

A trader’s framework reflects their abilities, regardless of how implicit they claim it is, because it’s evident in their language. As 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. These are the advantages of framing through language.

Consider this trader’s use of “Routine. Framework. Process.” He is represented as a trader and frames himself at all levels. Has process changed? Can I improve it? What does improvement look like? Questions reveal the implicit. Questions, through language and intent, are more important than the answers. The latter are transient in our market world of perpetual change. Consider: ‘The Markets Can Only Be Navigated, Not Solved.’ An answer reveals a ‘solving’ of the current market environment fated to change. Answers break; therefore, does language.

Language can’t remain static, as that would be a failure of adaptation. It is tied to the need for precision. Therefore, precision requires adaptation—re-calibration. Language reflects a trader’s navigation skill, a reflection of where they have come from and where they are about to go.

The questions shape the framework. “What gives me edge?” is very different, and telling from “What conditions allow edge to emerge?” It’s revealing: new traders and learners seek ‘edge’ as a repeatable technique or insight, like a light switch to permanent profitability. The former question attempts to solve markets; the latter acknowledges it can only be navigated.

Observe The Engineer on the trading floor, noting his precision tied to the market profile, rooted in his “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 discussions of“a selling tail,” “poor lows,” or 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 “auctions lower.” One group’s language is vague, while the other is strict. “This is bearish,” or “we’re going down; the market is heavy,” or “the market will come down here.” This vagueness conflates cause and effect—“the market went down, so this is bearish”—but also biases towards prediction, stemming from the intellectual and emotional demand to ‘solve’ markets, compared to navigating the emerging behaviour over time.

Vagueness, especially if emotionally or graphically charged, suggests more, while strictness sticks to the facts. It reflects a lack of clarity in a trader's framework. As opposed to precise language, vagueness precludes the use of unique language. The further one climbs the achievement and experience curve, the more unique and precise the language becomes. Novices talk the same: vague yet certain about market action. Veterans might use similar language, but with precision and flexibility about future market action.

Strictness in language benefits the trader. It reflects adherence to market observations and facts. Consider 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 Papic1] 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.

The market profile and its strict language are valuable and potent, as it’s easier to identify and adhere to high-quality diagnostic information. Trading off pure price ladder, or looking at infinite candlesticks and other chart graphics, is searching for a needle in a haystack. The profile narrows the haystack, aided by the strict and precise language.

Language to circumvent labels, not ideas.

Language’s reductive labels cause blockage. Consider “technical trading.” It’s dead! Why? It’s abused—difficult to falsify, easy to obfuscate—and vague, meaning nothing. To the outside world, The Engineer is a “technical trader,” 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.

Language must re-calibrate to stay exact, but this can stall.For example, some language was useful shorthand for efficiency—sacrificing accuracy—to box in certain trading ‘approaches’ as “technical” or “fundamental,” for articulation and documentation. The labels stick, but the meta-game moves on, so should the language and labels. As in Defeating the Discombobulating Dialectic, Part II: “… don’t argue—just trade—and use every means to dissolve framework, technicals, market profile, fundamentals, charts, news, levels, flow, stats, indicators, patterns, macroeconomics into one thing: trading. An act of ongoing synthesis.”

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

Learning requires empathy—putting yourself in someone’s shoes. Using their language aids diagnosis: “What would the Warrior do?” And learning: “How would the Hero approach this profile?” Consider 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 trading, and vice versa.

Language is Attention

We assign words and descriptors to market phenomena. If they come at all, implicit or negative aspects come later. As per The Hero in Traders of Our Time, answer: “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 to our disadvantage. How can we use it to our advantage? When market experience is given a language, it becomes part of memory, useful or burdensome.

»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)

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