Every strategy should explain WHY it works: If you can’t explain it, you won’t trust it.

Most struggling traders don’t lack strategies—they lack belief in the strategies they’re using. That belief doesn’t come from back tests alone. It comes from understanding why a strategy should work in the first place.

On professional trading desks, no strategy survives without a solid story. A clear explanation of what market behavior the strategy exploits and when it should fail.

Why “Story” Matters More Than Signals

When markets move against you (and they will), your reaction depends on whether you understand the logic behind your approach. If you don’t, doubt creeps in. Doubt leads to rule-breaking. Rule-breaking destroys edge.

Behavioral research shows that uncertainty without explanation increases emotional behavior, stress and reduces adherence to plans.

Here’s an example: Let’s say you’re not familiar with the depth and duration of a drawdown your strategy is likely to encounter. When...

Approach trading with the same energy you brought to your best career years.
You’re not playing “not to lose”—you’re playing to learn, grow, and win with wisdom.

A typical mistake retail traders make later in life is shifting from a “play to win” mindset to a “play not to lose” mindset.

It’s understandable. Capital matters more. Time feels more precious. Losses sting differently. But here’s what countless studies both in and out of the trading world reveal:

Playing not to lose slowly drains performance, confidence, and edge.

The most successful traders approach the market with engaged intensity, not fear-based caution.

Why “Playing Not to Lose” Backfires

Behavioral finance research shows that loss aversion causes people to reduce risk too much after setbacks, leading to missed opportunities and inferior long-term results.

In trading, this shows up as:

• Passing on valid setups
• Cutting winners too early
• Hesitating on execution
• Focusing more on avoiding pain than following pro...

Many novice traders believe trading success comes from prediction. If they could just predict what the market will do next, profits would follow. That belief sabotages more trading accounts than bad strategies ever could.

Consider scientists. Do they invent and discover by predicting and hoping?

No, scientists don’t. They observe, form hypotheses, test ideas, and revise their thinking when the evidence demands it. Successful traders operate the same way.

A scientist never says, “I think this experiment will work, so I’ll ignore the data if it doesn’t.” Yet traders do this every day. They fall in love with an idea, defend a bias, or rationalize a loss instead of learning from it. That’s not trading, that’s ego management.

Trading like a scientist starts with replacing opinions with questions. Instead of saying, “The market should go up here,” a scientific trader asks, “Under what conditions does price tend to move higher from this level?” That shift alone changes everything. You’re ...

Earnings season kicks off with gusto when the financial stocks start reporting on January 13^th (JPM before the market opens).

Given the huge price and volatility spikes for many stocks, you’ll want to have a solid plan with edge ready to deploy. Trading options will give you the most flexibility.

Here’s some proven strategies for your plan:

#1: Earnings Are a Volatility Event First

Retail traders often focus on direction: “Will they beat or miss?” You should focus on volatility.

Academic research shows that implied volatility rises sharply before earnings and collapses immediately after the announcement—a phenomenon known as the volatility crush. Many traders lose money even when they’re directionally right because they ignore this effect.

Quick Tip: There ARE two directional trades that DO work well. Learn more here.

#2: Define Risk Before the Announcement—or Don’t Trade It

Earnings can gap beyond stops. This is where you'll learn painful lessons.

Research on gap risk shows t...

One damaging habit retail traders develop is subtle and often invisible to them: “I think…” language.

• “I think this level will hold.”
• “I think the market should bounce.”
• “I think this looks bullish.”

On the surface, these statements sound harmless, even intelligent. However, they are a warning sign. In professional trading environments, “I think…” is replaced with something far more precise: “If price does X, I do Y.”

That simple change removes emotion, ego, and prediction from the decision-making process.

Why “I Think” Is Dangerous

“I think” language suggests forecasting. Forecasting activates the emotional brain, not the execution brain. Research in behavioral finance shows that prediction-based thinking increases overconfidence and attachment to outcomes, both of which degrade trader performance.

When you say “I think…” you unconsciously commit to being right. Now you’re more likely to do something that violates your strategy, like:

• Ignore contrary signals
• Widen stop
...

A repeatable morning routine tells your brain, “It’s time to trade.” Consistency builds clarity.

One of the most underappreciated edges in trading has nothing to do with indicators, setups, or market forecasts. It’s how you begin the day.

After decades of trading and working alongside consistently profitable professionals, one pattern is universal: the best traders start every trading day the same way.

They don’t wake up and “see how they feel.”
They don’t jump straight into charts or P&L.
They don’t let the market decide their mental state.

They use a repeatable pre-market routine to shift the brain from everyday life into execution mode.

Why a Morning Routine Works (Science, Not Motivation)

Neuroscience and performance research show that the brain performs best under predictable structure. Repeated routines reduce cognitive load, stabilize emotional responses, and improve decision quality under pressure.

Research in behavioral psychology demonstrates that consistent pre-performa...

One of the most persistent mistakes retail traders make is treating support and resistance (S/R) as precise, surgical price levels. They draw a single horizontal line at a prior high or low, expecting the market to respect it to the exact tick.

But real markets don’t behave that way. Professionals understand something crucial:

👉 Support and resistance are zones — dynamic, flexible, and influenced by volatility.

This “breathing” behavior of S/R is not subjective. It’s observable in both market microstructure research and decades of trader experience.

Why S/R Behaves Like a Zone — Not a Line

1. Order Flow Is Not Concentrated at a Single Price

Institutional orders rest across ranges, not exact levels. Market microstructure studies show that liquidity providers layer orders across multiple price increments, creating clusters of buying or selling interest rather than pinpoint boundaries.

2. Volatility Physically Stretches and Compresses Levels

When volatility rises, support/resi...

Quick Tip: Measure them, plan for them, and reduce size when they last longer than average.

Every trader, professional or retail, experiences drawdowns, the period of more losing than winning trades sending your equity curve trending lower.

Don’t be surprised, they’re as normal as changes in volatility and trend on your price charts (although not as frequent!). Yet most traders treat drawdowns like personal failure rather than what they truly are: a common occurrence in a probabilistic business.

The best traders I know don’t fear drawdowns, they respect them. That respect keeps them in the game long after traders with bigger egos and weaker discipline get washed out.

What hurts the inexperienced trader is what they’re likely to do next…

1. Doubling size to “make it back fast”
2. Abandoning what works
3. Overtrading
4. Revenge trading
5. Predicting instead of following valid signals.

These reactions stack emotional risk on top of financial risk. A drawdown shouldn’t break your account. I...

One big distinction between professional traders and retail traders is this:

Pros know their exit before they enter. Retail traders try to figure it out once the heat is on.

If you’ve ever felt stressed, uncertain, or emotionally tangled inside a trade, odds are your exit wasn’t defined. And without a defined exit, your mind fills the vacuum with emotions like fear, hope, hesitation, revenge, even justification.

Clarity of exits equals clarity of mind, which in turn equals consistency of results. Every clean trading day is built on this principle.

When you don’t know where you’ll exit, every second of the trade becomes a negotiation:

• “Should I take profits here?”
• “Should I just tighten the stop?”
• “Maybe I should let it run…”
• “Maybe it’ll come back…”
• “Maybe I’ll just wait one more candle…”

That internal debate is one cause of inconsistency. 

Novice traders often underestimate how much mental bandwidth is wasted deciding mid-trade what they “should” do. Meanwhile, professi...

One of the quietest confidence-killers in trading, especially for retail traders, is something most people don’t even realize they’re doing: narrative thinking.

Narrative thinking happens when you start telling yourself a story about what the market should do.

• “It should bounce from here.”
• “It should fill the gap.”
• “It should go back to fair value.”
• “The Fed said X, so the market should do Y.”

In my trading career I’ve lost too many times by building stories instead of following signals. You may be falling into the same trap.

The market doesn’t care about what seems logical. It doesn’t care what feels deserved, fair, or reasonable. It moves on order flow and price—nothing else.

Narratives make you feel informed, prepared, even superior. They give you the illusion of knowing something. But there’s a problem: When you believe a story, you might:

• increase size
• widen stops
• hold losing trades longer
• ignore signals that conflict with “your view”
• convince yourself the marke
...