Having a bias doesn't mean having a trading opportunity

4월 29일

Having a bias doesn't mean having a trading opportunity.

We all have a bias on the market, that is defined by our experience and trading approach. And it's not wrong or bad to have it. Problem starts when we're holding onto it too much and when we start to think we know almost for sure where and more importantly - how - the market will move into certain direction.

Indeed, it's pretty easy to read basic trends and "predict" the direction of the market. However, it's basically impossible to tell how the market will do it. And it can move in a number of ways. For example, even though we might be right on overall bullish direction, market can make numerous manipulations to the downside before making a move higher ("Ha! See, I told you it will move higher!"). Or it can move higher, but in a very unclear, rangy fashion. Add flats, accumulations and distributions, fundamental factors etc.

So, objectively, anything can happen and no one really knows the outcome of any particular trade. Having a bias doesn't mean having a trading opportunity. What one knows is if he's following the backtested process of finding and executing on setups. So we can say if the decision is good in the moment of placing trade, not after the outcomes happened.

This uncertainty is how we can ease our greed, fear, pride or shame.. Because if no one really knows, and that's the only truth, than what's the point of getting so serious about our bias. It's not that WE predicted some market move or moved it with our trend lines, zones and any other concept. No one actually did.

What we did is worked and explored to understand approximate patterns and than executed on something familiar, having only one realistic expectation - that we don't know how the price will develop.