Happy New Year to you as well! Thank you for reading.

Ha – I would say that’s extremely common behavior, a cycle that I’ve repeated many times. I honestly think we all need to go through and feel these emotions deeply (and make mistakes) before we can become professional traders. It’s only through making mistakes and learning from then that we cross the amateur/professional boundary and start ‘fading’ the crowd because we have a handle on what they’re thinking because we used to think it or trade that way. People as a whole repeat the same mistakes, which is a basic foundation for successful trading – as harsh as that may seem.

Hmm. I’m not sure that’s a great strategy – waiting for the position to turn profitable regardless of indicators. It almost seems random. I would suggest learning to distinguish market conditions – trend, range, climax, news-driven – that are best suited for the indicators you’ve chosen and only trade when the market aligns to the period when your indicators work best – for example, oscillators in rangebound or moving averages in trend – and exclude all else.

Happy New Year!

I often miss the trend. Initially, I am too doubtful and don’t trust the breakout. Later, as the trend builds up, I am too afraid to enter because of fear of a pullback. The end result is that I miss the entire trend. In fact, I am constantly focused on the trend reversal and even go against the trend too early, get out too early, lose money and then miss the entire reversal. Do you think that this is a common behavior, despite the best of charts and indicators that we look at?

In fact, the only time I make some money is if I just wait, often a long wait, for my position, long or short, to become profitable, despite whatever the charts are saying! My attempts at market timing fail often, except in a trading range market, when the oscillators work fine. However, perseverance, even if caught against a trend, seems to pay off. I know this is not a good way to trade but putting the chart knowledge into practice is not easy.

Looks like we’re still in fractal 4 of larger 3 – we’re in a triangle consolidation.

I’ll try to update soon or when we breakout of the consolidation.