In my course of work, I am rewarded directly how accurate I read the future. If I get it right, clients make money and I am rewarded with trading fees. Often, I base my decision on a combination of logic, pattern observation and intuition. Sometimes the trend are extremely obvious, eg we should be buying USD or HKD ever since there are talks from the Fed to hike rates last year; we should have been (and still) borrow in Eur, in which the interest rates is below 1% and buying into higher yielding assets like USD or good grade SGD bonds. When Capitaland issued a new 10 year bond paying 3.8% (reduced from initial price guidance of low 4%), everyone who has money should have bought it, as banks are willing to lend at least 70% of the purchase price and your outlay is only $75,000 for a $250,000 ......