--- title: "It's easy to get carried away when trading stocks, and the root cause is a cognitive issue" type: "News" locale: "en" url: "https://longbridge.com/en/news/282811920.md" description: "Today, the A-share market performed poorly, with all three major indices closing lower. The SSE Index rose slightly by 0.01%, the Shenzhen Index fell by 0.97%, and the ChiNext dropped by 1.22%. The pharmaceutical and biotechnology sector performed outstandingly, with an increase of 1.45%. Market strategies should be based on a deep understanding rather than reactions to temporary events. Investors need to comprehensively assess companies and industries to avoid frequent trading due to a lack of awareness. True understanding can help investors actively interpret the market rather than passively follow it" datetime: "2026-04-15T08:48:37.000Z" locales: - [zh-CN](https://longbridge.com/zh-CN/news/282811920.md) - [en](https://longbridge.com/en/news/282811920.md) - [zh-HK](https://longbridge.com/zh-HK/news/282811920.md) --- # It's easy to get carried away when trading stocks, and the root cause is a cognitive issue **Overview of Today's Market** On April 15, the A-shares opened high and closed low, with all three major indices ending in the red. The SSE Index slightly rose by 0.01% to 4027.21 points, the Shenzhen Index fell by 0.97%, the ChiNext dropped by 1.22%, while the Sci-Tech 50 rose slightly by 0.09%. The total trading volume for the day was 2.43 trillion yuan, a slight increase compared to yesterday. There was significant sector differentiation, with the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sector leading the market with a 1.45% increase. The innovative drug concept sparked a wave of limit-up stocks, with Harbin Pharmaceutical Group hitting the limit-up for two consecutive days, and several stocks such as Borui Pharmaceutical and Jinling Pharmaceutical also reaching their limits; the healthcare sector in Hong Kong also surged by 3.82%. The banking sector rose by 1.11% providing support, while the basic chemicals, real estate, and previously strong computing hardware sectors showed clear pullbacks. **The Foundation of Strategy Lies in Understanding, Not Reaction** There is a saying worth pondering: If a strategy is not determined by thorough understanding, it will be influenced by temporary events. This statement may seem simple, but it accurately depicts the fundamental reason many investors repeatedly find themselves in trouble in the market. What is thorough understanding? It is not a superficial knowledge of a stock's fundamentals, nor a half-hearted grasp of a news catalyst. Thorough understanding means having a complete grasp of an industry from the technical route, competitive landscape to the profit model; it means a comprehensive assessment of a company from the management's capabilities, the depth of its economic moat to its growth stage; it also means a clear definition of one's buying logic, holding period, and risk boundaries. When an investor truly establishes this understanding, their attitude towards the market shifts from "What happened?" to "What does this mean?"—the former is passive acceptance, while the latter is active interpretation. In contrast, strategies that are led by temporary events may appear to react quickly and keep up with the market, but in reality, they reflect a cognitive laziness. Seeing a positive news today leads to a rush to buy, hearing negative news tomorrow results in a hurried sell-off, and the day after, another concept attracts attention. This high-frequency switching reveals a lack of deep understanding of the assets held. When a person cannot name more than three core competitive factors of a company or cannot clearly articulate the evolutionary stage of the industry they are in, every buying and selling decision they make is essentially a gamble—except the chips are not dice, but various temporary events. The reason temporary events can easily disrupt decision-making lies in the lack of a sufficiently solid cognitive anchor. This anchor should be forged from an understanding of the essence of business and calibrated by a judgment of the long-term value of the enterprise. With this anchor, positive news will not lead you to blindly chase highs, because you know whether it truly changes the company's ability to create value; negative news will not cause you to panic and flee, because you can judge whether it is a significant blow or just a short-term emotional disturbance. **Thorough understanding brings not only a sense of direction but also a valuable certainty.** This certainty is not about accurately predicting short-term stock price movements, but about having an overall grasp of the company's value range and industry direction. When you know roughly how much a company is worth and understand what development stage an industry is in, the daily fluctuations of the market are no longer anxiety-inducing noise, but merely a daily phenomenon of prices oscillating around value It is precisely because of this certainty as a foundation that investors can maintain inner peace during market fluctuations. While others see stock prices plummeting and account balances shrinking, you see that high-quality assets have become available at more favorable buying prices; while others see continuous surges and feel anxious about heights, you see that prices are approaching or even exceeding the reasonable value range. **Certainty itself is a natural noise filter. The market generates a massive amount of information every day—news, data, rumors, research reports, influencer opinions—those without a framework of certainty will be swept along by this information, darting left and right. In contrast, those who have established a thorough understanding naturally possess the ability to discern: which information truly touches on the core variables of enterprise value, and which is merely a short-term projection of market sentiment. This filtering ability is the most easily underestimated advantage in long-term investing, yet it has the greatest compounding effect.** Looking deeper, relying on temporary events for decision-making brings an implicit cost—continuously draining the mental resources of investors. Each passive response consumes attention and judgment, and over time, one can fall into a state of "the harder you try, the more anxious you become." Meanwhile, what should be invested in—industry trends, company quality, valuation logic—gets pushed aside. This is essentially a case of putting the cart before the horse, using tactical diligence to cover up strategic laziness. Of course, this does not mean that temporary events are without value. On the contrary, significant events in the market often serve as a touchstone for testing understanding. When a trend-setting event occurs in an industry, those with thorough understanding can quickly discern who the true beneficiaries are and who are merely riding the coattails of the concept, while those lacking understanding can only follow the emotional ups and downs of the market. The distinction lies not in whether one pays attention to events, but in whether the framework for interpreting those events is built on deep knowledge. Establishing this thorough understanding requires long-term accumulation and deep thinking, not a one-day effort. It demands that investors are willing to spend time reading prospectuses and annual reports, willing to understand the transmission logic of an industry chain from upstream to downstream, and willing to judge how far a technology is from commercialization from the laboratory. These tasks are not glamorous, and can even be somewhat tedious, **but it is precisely these tedious lessons that ultimately form the dividing line between long-term winners and short-term speculators.** **Investment Message** Price is what you pay, value is what you get. The market quotes prices every day, but the value of a company does not change daily. Maintaining your cognitive anchor amidst the noise is more important than chasing every fluctuation. Note: The market has risks, and investment requires caution. 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