Confidence.
Again, I want to minimize negative terms. I could have said lack of fear. From whence cometh confidence? It's precursor is alertness. Nothing can catch you by surprise. Hence nothing can hurt you too badly. Conversely, you know that you probably observe and understand events that other lesser traders don't. Maybe you even see things that the machines can't, or events so subtle that the cleverest programmer could not capture them (like SCT).
A confident trader knows the score. The markets don't exist to serve US. They exist to serve THEM. The markets don't exist for US to make money. It's for THEM. And they'll do anything and everything they must to assure that traders in the aggregate lose money. Not enough to make us quit, of course, but enough to bleed us to death. Not enough to give the markets a bad reputation, no, we don't want to scare ever-hopeful newbies away.
So the confident trader knows what HAS to happen. The BO must almost always be faded. Even the absence of a fade is a fade. Highs must almost always be tested. And lows. And the unwary must be seduced with neat little stair-stepping runs that look like they'll go on forever. All conceivable price-based indicators must be triggered at once, the more conveniently to fade them all at once. And our floor rotations must be tuned to trigger the most common stops. And, lions tigers and bears, oh my, how we love our bull and bear flags!
And, if we're pros, we never ever on ET recommand that you read Alan Farley. No no no. A bad book! And Schabacker? Who? 1930? Nah! That was then. This is now!
The confident trader is grounded in history. And he remembers his George Santayana.
