A trade must know what must happen, where it must happen, how much he's willing to risk and what would prove the idea unfit otherwise emotions with take over.
The market is allowed to contradict you. Your
responsibility is to notice when contradiction becomes meaningful. If you had no position right now, would the current evidence make you open this exact trade?
If the answer is no, ownership may be
influencing a decision.
It is not brilliance that brings success in trading. It is not college degrees or complex theories or elaborate systems. It is simply the ability to wait, to observe, to recognize the pattern, and to act only when the odds are in your favour.
The rules are eternal, but the difficulty lies in obeying them. A man can write them on a card and keep them in his pocket, but unless he has mastered himself, the card is worthless.
The great illusion is that the market is new each day. It isn't. The actors change, the companies change their names, but the play is the same. It is always a struggle between hope and fear, between weak hands and strong. And if you learn to read the signs, you can foresee it.
Market move in trends, whether upward or downward, and the great profits are made by aligning with that tide and riding it until the signs say the movement has spent itself.
When you start seeing patterns that aren't there, signals that don't exist, and moves that never come. The tape isn't lying, it's just not speaking. And when the tape is silent, you must learn to be silent, too.
The wealthy trader, the wise trader, sees the market as a machine that pays only when conditions are right. He doesn't beg it for a wage. He waits for it to offer a fortune.
The tape always tells the truth if you know how to read it. But only a fool demands it speak when it has nothing to say. Have you ever forced a conversation with someone who clearly didn't want to talk? The more you push, the more awkward it gets.
The market once punished me for my arrogance. It was like the old street game of three-card monte. I thought I knew where the queen was hiding, but all I did was feed the man dealing the cards. Have you ever made a win and then handed it right back to the market the very next day
In speculation that tug in your chest that says, "Do something, anything, because standing still feels unbearable." That's the devil whispering in your ear, and I know him well. I've listened to him before, and he's cost me more money than I care to count.