Understanding market signals
A market signal is any piece of information that has genuine bearing on the investment question you are working through. The challenge is that the information environment is full of data points that feel significant but are not — and a smaller number that appear routine but carry real weight. Learning to distinguish between them is a research skill, not a matter of experience alone.
This section covers how to approach signal identification systematically: what makes a piece of information relevant to a specific question, how to avoid the trap of treating correlation as causation, and how to handle the signals that point in contradictory directions. The goal is not to find more signals but to be more precise about which ones actually matter.