Tues Feb 16 Trades & Journal

20160216
Long 1 TF 981.1, -1.4
Long 1 TF 979.9, +2.2
Long 1 TF 977.3, +1.7
Long 2 TF 976.8, 977.3, +1.4, +0.6
Short 1 TF 978.8, -0.0
Long 2 TF 976.1, 976.1, +0.5, +2.0
Total TF +7.0

Is good to remember how the action can deceive at 1st Trend lows ....how price seems to just keep puking up the longs, like after too much to drink or something bad to eat. This tends to give the impression that something bigger is behind the selling, that there's an overriding fundamental at work that you missed in the morning news. And then, when the vomiting is all done, the selling just dries up and price explodes upward, catching the come-lately shorts by surprise. This is where that false narrative that so many less experienced traders fall prey to and repeat appears, that there's a 'they' out there, manipulating prices to their benefit. ...that the more fundamentally informed institutional traders or the hedge funds are somehow orchestrating these events so 'they' can load up while pushing 'us' little guys aside while getting us to fall for their fake sell-offs. ...that the market is all somehow rigged and in order to better level the playing field, we have to examine closely what these cognoscenti are doing, what footprints they may be leaving, what tea leaves they've left disturbed in order to better get in sync with their evil machinations. Such nonsense. Market activity forms patterns, not footprints. There is no orchestration. There is no cognoscenti. There is no 'us' versus 'them'. Those guys compete with each other more than they compete with us. Price, structure and momentum models tend to repeat themselves at the right edge of your video screen with great regularity. It's our own emotions we must contend with that would have us believe something outside the market itself is actually at work. Put these models into a Trade Plan. See nothing else. Know nothing else. Be the Plan.