Looking for Strokes Well Prepared Imagine you have identified a particular market behaviour in your favourite market. The behaviour occurs about once or twice a day, and is readily identified.     A particular follow-up behaviour of your market occurs with an almost uncanny 80% probability. You design a trading system to exploit these regular behaviours and their common follow-up behaviours.     You paper trade this for a few months, back-test on 25 years data and feel you can make some money. You trade your system with real money, starting with very small units, find there are some unexpected difficulties and you:         • partly overcome the difficulties,         • start making some money,         • increase your trade size steadily,         • have, on average 5 profitable trades a week,         • have, on average 3 losing trades a week,         • make good money after expenses. What Next? Would you feel any compulsion or need to share your market behaviours or trading ideas with other traders with a view to helping others or getting improvements suggested by others?     Maybe. Would you find value in sharing example trades/series of trades for the purpose of illustrating your system? Maybe. As you have many winning trades a week, would you feel any compulsion or need to share an individual planned or successfully completed trade with others for obtaining emotional strokes?     No. As you have many losing trades a week, would you feel any compulsion or need to share an individual failed trade with others for obtaining emotional strokes?     No. So when you see others talking about one great victory or giving a trade forecast or detailing a big losing trade they have made, what does this suggest to you?     Perhaps it suggests that they may have avoided doing several things first:         • identifying their favourite market behaviours on their favourite market,         • designing a trading system to exploit them,         • thoroughly paper testing it on reasonably extensive data,         • trying it with real money using a small trade size,         • refining their trading system,         • making some money,         • increasing trade size,         • looking for improvements. Probably they have not done what you have done. And they take a suggestion that something else needs to be done first as a challenge or a rejection. But what a suggestion to do something else first may in reality be a constructive and well-intended description of the others needs. But, if not taken as such, this does not change the intention.