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Attentional bias

What you look at shapes what you trade, so scanners, watchlists, and feeds quietly decide your opportunity set before analysis begins.

Attention is the first filter, and it is rarely designed. A ticker appears in your feed, so it becomes a candidate. A scanner sorted by percentage gain shows you the most extended names in the market, and those become your day.

The bias compounds with emotion. After a loss in one instrument, that instrument occupies disproportionate attention for days, which is how one bad trade becomes a bad week.

Treat your inputs as part of the strategy. A fixed, deliberately chosen universe and a scanner tuned to your setup rather than to excitement removes most of the distortion before you make a single decision.

Related: availability-heuristic, fomo, screen-hypnosis, echo-chamber

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