Prejudice In Patience

You hear the maxim “Patience is a virtue.” bandied about endlessly. However, when it comes to both trading (i.e., Wall Street) and technical analysis, this is one of those areas that many fall to the whims of their emotions rather, than the discipline to stick with their analysis. Or said differently…

They become impatient (trust me, I’ve done this myself more times than I care to remember) and move rather, than standing pat and allowing the full length of time originally given.

If you move too soon – you won’t fully know whether your original thesis was right or wrong because, you didn’t allow it to play out fully. Therefore, going forward, you have no true empirical evidence to go by, you’re just into a never ending cycle of guesses. And that’s not how you learn as to make better decisions – that’s how you learn to just guess and guess wrong more often than not.

Today is an example of that in spades.

As many of you have heard me say over the years, one of the greatest things I truly comprehended via my short life as a glorified day-trader, was when I truly understood: you weren’t trying to “beat” the market, per se. What you were really doing to win more times than lose: was winning the game between your emotions and discipline itself. For that’s where the real game is played and won. Here’s the example…

The “markets” made a very unexpected move today in relationship to my hypothesis now running on for a few months. Or, again, said differently: Today was really about the last day for the original thesis to play out, for time was the far more important signal than price, as I’ve stated repeatedly. So let’s see what transpired shall we? To wit:

Same as above only zoomed in…

And here is the same Ive been using in tandem only of the futures market. Again, to wit:

As I state repeatedly: It doesn’t matter if you know what all the lines, shades and more mean. I do. And what I would like to draw your attention to in the first two charts is the following…

Remember I’ve stated ad nauseam “It’s more important about time than how much higher.” In other words: the price from a technical perspective had some flexibility to go higher (and it did and I noted it back then), but not the time schedule. So take special note of precisely where my notation “Right there…” is pointing to on the “zoomed in” one.

Look at the precision that is directly centered at that moment of time where the “markets” reversed and never looked back wiping out all of today’s original gains and moved lower right back into my demarcation lined boxes. (aka my “thinking like a machine” placement points)

A bit uncanny, no? i.e., the pattern isn’t done till that pattern is complete and is either fulfilled in accordance of the original thesis or, the rejection of it and proves it null and void. Today it fulfilled far more higher the original hypothesis than rejected it if only by a whisker, indeed. But none the less, that’s all that was needed either way.

“So what does all this mean in the bigger picture?” you ask. Great question, for it is this…

If there is continued weakness going forward from this point onward?

Today marked both the possibility as well as higher probability to my original thesis which is this…

As always, we shall see.

© 2023 Mark St.Cyr

Note: This is not trading or investing advice of any sort. This commentary is for “big picture” discussion purposes only. Please read, or re-read the “About This Site” page for any questions or clarifications.