It simply depends on the time frame you are looking at. If you are a five-minute candle trader, you don’t care that the trend on the weekly chart is down. You care about the trend of the five-minute chart.

Our minds tend to seek out the information that confirms the bias that we have already decided upon.

Top pickers and bottom pickers soon become cotton pickers.

The more patterns we know, the more we are inclined to talk ourselves out of good positions.

once walked in at 6 am to find that a Russian client was on a margin call for $10m. I quickly calculated that it would take me 133 years on my current salary to make $10m. By 7 am he had wired the funds over. This was a private trader. I was in awe. Inspired.

This is a common trait amongst traders. They think that every single little counter reaction against the trend is the beginning of a new trend. More fortunes have been lost trying to catch the lows in a falling market than in all wars put together (okay, this is an unsubstantiated statement made for emphasis, but please don’t attempt to catch lows)

Whatever happens, my job is to read the sentiment and to keep my own emotions in check.

Neurobiology has shown we experience a financial loss 250% more intensely than an equivalent financial gain. After going through this exercise of feeling pain and then not feeling pleasure, I then swap back to feeling the loss again.

You should. You really should ask yourself what makes you different to the 90% of traders that do not make money. If you are normal – as in you do what everyone else is doing – then you won’t make it.