Or why we tend to rely heavily upon the first piece of information we receive.
Our minds can have an enormous impact on our trading and the returns that we generate from it. The way we think, act and behave when we trade or invest is at least as necessary if not more so than our trade selection, particularly in the kind of one-way markets that we have seen post the covid crash.
A rising tide lifts all ships they say, and, in this case, the rising tide of the markets was provided by the printing presses of the major central banks along with the stimulus packages from national governments.
However, Central banks won't always be there to rescue us and we need to be aware of the kind of tricks that our brains can play on us if we are to avoid making the wrong trading decisions.
One of these tricks has a nautical moniker, anchoring, in which our brain subconsciously latches on to an idea, an assumption or a set of figures and uses that information in decision making, regardless of whether it's accurate or even relevant to the matter at hand.
What's more, as humans, we tend to carry these impaired decision-making processes forward so that we end up using an inherently flawed system and often without realising it.
Behavioural psychologists have highlighted these tendencies in their experiments.
In the case of anchoring American academic Professor Jay Edward Russo performed tests on 500 graduate students in which he asked them pairs of questions on history and general knowledge, but, unknown to the students, he had "salted "the questions with erroneous dates and figures.
The student's answers invariably reflected the incorrect numbers, which were varied across different groups of students within the experiment, highlighting a clear bias.
Professor Russo was effectively projecting those values into the student's subconscious, creating an anchor point.
When we become anchored to figures or a plan of action, we filter new information through that framework, which distorts our perception and decision making.
This can even make us reluctant to change our plan or framework even if the situation calls for it.
There are few consequences if any when this happens in an experiment inside a university psychology department. Still, if it happens in the real world like in trading or investing, then there most certainly can be consequences.
Anchoring Bias has been described as one of the most robust effects in psychology, the fact that our decisions can be swayed by values not even relevant to the task (or trade) at hand.
Let's say we are negotiating the purchase of a house and I tell you it's worth $1,000,000, and I wouldn't sell it for less. You, as the willing buyer might have only had a price of $800,000 in your head. But all of a sudden, you now are anchored on my price. Not yours. The worst part is that the person who goes first in the negotiation tends to anchor the other party (remember this for the next salary negotiation you need to do with your boss!)
The studies even show that if you rolled a pair of two dice, gave the numbers (e.g. 10 and 19) to the study participant, that subconsciously, you would anchor them on these two numbers. Ask them what they would pay for a house, bottle of wine, or in one notorious study, the judges sentencing a criminal, these numbers are in and heavily influencing the participant's decisions whether they like it or not.
Anchoring always occurs in making our trading decisions, especially as it might help to explain our fixation with round numbers. E.g. EURUSD at 1.20. Gold at $2000/ounce. DJ30 - 30,000. Once we get hooked on the number, we always use it as a reference point in future, probably because it "feels right".
Let's say in the past you might have successfully gone long EURUSD at 1.20 earlier in the year, and now whenever it comes back to that number, you will buy it again (the same thing happened to EURUSD at 1.10). You can't explain it, but you had past success with that number and you will gravitate towards it without understanding why.
Take a moment to consider some key support and resistance levels on your favourite instruments. Are they round numbers too? Why might that be? Could it be because people are anchored at Gold at $1900? And that every man and his dog has placed their buy orders at that level because it's "good value" or has spent time around that level in the past? Remember that the market is driven by sentiment and agreed upon narratives. Think what else could the crowd be anchored on that might be to your advantage knowing what you know now.
How do we avoid being anchored?
Given that we don't completely understand the processes that cause anchoring to happen in the first place, we are unlikely to avoid it entirely.
However, by being aware of its existence, we can revisit and retest our assumptions when making important decisions, to ensure that we are acting rationally and basing our decision on the situation at hand, not irrelevant inputs.
Perhaps the best way to avoid anchoring in trading is to treat every trade as an individual event and to judge a trading opportunity on its current merits. By doing this, you have a better chance to ignore any reference or prior interactions you have had with the instrument you are trading. It won't be easy to do at first, but it could prove to be a valuable discipline over time. As mentioned, this is crucial to comprehend for putting your stops and limits around key support and resistance levels.
Think about a time you have been fixated on a number. Was it buying a house? A pair of shoes? Trading? Now think whether that number could have been influenced by someone else, e.g. the seller, the shoe store etc.
Anchoring can certainly also play a part in other hidden biases and behaviours such as loss aversion (e.g. not wanting to close your open losing trade).
The next time that you are about to trade, take time to think about why you are fixated with that number for entering and exiting the trade, and how you reached the decision to pull the trigger. A few moments of reflection might make all the difference.