Using Qualitative Research Methods to Develop
Imagine waking up to find your strategy captured a 15-tick move on the E-mini S&P 500 before the market opened—while you were still reviewing yesterday’...
Imagine waking up to find your strategy captured a 15-tick move on the E-mini S&P 500 before the market opened—while you were still reviewing yesterday’s trades. This isn’t magic. It’s the result of understanding the why behind price movements through qualitative research, not just chasing numbers. Manual traders often miss this critical layer. They focus on candle patterns or indicators, but fail to grasp the context driving those patterns. As one veteran trader put it: "You can’t build a strategy that lasts if you don’t understand the human behavior behind the charts." Qualitative research is the key. It’s not about backtesting or statistics—it’s about uncovering the meaning and experience dimensions of market behavior. This approach transforms how you develop futures strategies, moving beyond guesswork to intentional design. Qualitative research is the systematic study of meaning, experience, and context in human behavior. It seeks to understand why things happen, not just what happened. In trading, this means analyzing the psychological and contextual drivers behind price moves—like how institutional order flow interacts with retail sentiment during earnings season.