I like to play snooker and pool and through the years I’ve learned a lot about how the cue ball moves along the table depending on the forces and spins that you place on it. At first when you start to play, you are not so sure how the cue ball will react when it hits other balls or when it hits the rail. Even when you apply spin to the ball you have to witness its reaction many times until you get a certain level of comfort and confidence in understanding what will take place with the ball when these certain forces come into play.
I’ve come to learn that watching the markets move is the very same way. At first you are not sure how price will react when it hits a trend line, then you draw your zones but you are not so sure your zones are drawn correctly so you wonder if price will actually react from them at all. Eventually you watch price react from trend lines, you practice drawing your zones, you become comfortable with what it is you do every day and then you begin to “know” what to expect when price reacts from the forces you perceive and recognize. Then the process of trading becomes a thing that you just do, but this doesn't come without doing the work and practice.
As with snooker and playing pool, I had to practice every day and witness many different scenarios play out with their individual nuances before I could establish a large database in my head of how the cue ball played out when it reacted from hitting other balls, the rails and when it reacted from these obstacles when I applied different forces and spins on onto it. It took many hours of practice until my mind became comfortable enough to hit the cue ball with confidence and “know” that it would react the way I anticipated before I could consistently win when I played against my opponent.
In the markets we don’t have a specific opponent that we play but I like to think that it’s always the larger institutions that take the other side of my trade but because we trade alongside the banks it will likely be unsuspecting retail traders. When we place a trade in the markets and risk real money, money we worked hard to acquire, we have to get to the point that we can do so with confidence, with a database of memories in our mind that we witnessed with our own eyes before we can ever be comfortable trading, with confidence and a strong sense of knowing that what we are doing will work out.
Kevin Araujo
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