Trader’s Narrative

In poker, a “tell” is any change in the pattern of behavior by a player that gives insight into their strategy. It could be anything: how fast they bet, how they throw their chips in, feigning ignorance or interest, etc. You can’t really win at poker if you don’t have a mastery of tells.

In the same way, the stock market provides “tells”. If you know where to look. Today’s market tell, as I mentioned yesterday, was obviously, Citigroup (C).

Let’s take a look at today’s intra-day action to see what this market tell offered us. As you’ll see from the chart, Citigroup acted as a reliable tell by breaking down from its morning range before the market did.

It then continued to lead the market in sinking lower. So if you were watching Citi, instead of, or at least in conjunction with, the general market indices, you would be able to react much faster.

The concept of a market tell is a useful one but just like in poker, the “tell” itself can change from hand to hand. So while today’s market tell was obvious, tomorrow’s may not be.