In today's piece, I am going to break down ten market lessons that I wish I learned earlier. Market participants who thoroughly understand these principles will be on the fast track to profitability. Let's jump straight into it: 1. Markets Discount the Future Wall Street and financial markets are master manipulators because they often bottom on poor news and vice versa. For example, Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) bottomed within days of the FTX crypto exchange collapse, and hasn't looked back since. Image Source: TradingView For equity markets, the psychology is the same. The S&P 500 Index ETF (ARCA:SPY) and the other major indices bottomed the day inflation hit 40-year highs in the U.S in late 2022. Image Source: TradingView 2. Fundamentals Mean Little in a Vacuum To successfully analyze fundamentals, investors must account for the context of said fundamentals. The struggling e-commerce firm Carvana (NYSE: CVNA) has soared more than 500% over the past year and provides a perfect fundamental lesson for investors. Why has the stock run so much? In late 2022, Carvana was on the brink of collapse. However, the company secured funding to keep the company in business. Later, it turned its earnings from awful to less bad. Image Source: Zacks Investment Research 3. Valuations are Not a Timing Device An important lesson is that valuation metrics like the price-to-sales (P/S) ratio are not a valid timing tool – especially for innovative growth stocks. While the numerator (price) is known, the denominator (sales) is not known (moving forward). Because of this misconception, Zacks Investment Research heavily weights its analysis and ...