A veteran trader reveals how to supercharge your investment profits

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Investing and trading in financial markets isn’t about physical strength—there are no prizes for running faster, punching harder, or lifting heavier. Success in this arena demands mental agility.

We are “brain warriors," winning (profiting) with our ideas. To stay ahead, we need to sharpen our thinking, visualize future trends, and account for more variables than our competitors. Markets operate on probabilities, not guarantees—there are no “sure shots" here.

To outperform, investor-traders must develop a mental edge, honing their decision-making process to select better stocks than their peers. Naturally, this means refining our stock selection strategies to improve the odds of success. I rely on what I call the 360 degree worldview for evaluating stocks.

This approach involves considering as many factors as possible to increase the probability of success, starting with an in-depth examination of a company’s profitability metrics. Read this | Is it goodbye gold, hello bitcoin? Every successful business begins with buying raw materials at favourable prices—that’s the first layer of profit. Selling the product at a higher price brings the second layer.

However, conventional financial analysis, which focuses on balance sheets, profit-and-loss statements, and ratios, only tells part of the story. A deeper understanding emerges when we extend our analysis to commodity markets, where raw material prices impact profitability. For most manufacturing companies, commodities are the backbone of production.