The Long Mile: Why Trading is a tough profession

{THREAD} Chapter One
At First, You Think It’s the Horse

In the beginning, it all seems simple enough.

You think the key is in the strategy.
You study patterns like scripture—head and shoulders, breakouts, moving averages.
You backtest every setup, fine-tune your entries like a trainer adjusting a saddle.
You believe that if you just find the right system, the wins will follow.

And when things go wrong, as they always do at some point, you look outward.
Maybe it was the market conditions—too slow, too wild.
Maybe your broker. The news. The 'Operator'!?
You tweak, switch, adjust.
Anything but pause long enough to ask the harder question.

Because the hardest truths don’t live in the charts.
They live in the mirror.

There are 3 unwritten rules to Trade Thursday expiries efficiently with 100% accuracy.

A Thread. 1.

Back in 2015, I resumed Gym after a gap of almost 6 Years and I started doing a lot of treadmill everyday.
This continued for about 3 Months. Later after that, one fine day, while walking, my left knee twisted. A couple of days later, my right knee twisted as well. Doc said, I should stop the gymming part as I have completely damaged my knees and just one step short of knee replacement.
This was incomprehensible to me.
I didn’t listen to him.
I used to walk with knee caps for about 3 Months.

Sometime in Jan 2013, I was running my first algo for a prop desk on a 50 Lac account. It was a trend following algo. I’d managed to code on Ninja Trader with my limited understanding & much exploring the msdn site. Integrated with Interactive Brokers & it was totally good to go. Started off well. By around April, we stood at 65L. But then began the drawdown phase. For months forward till September, equity curve was swinging back and forth but mostly headed downwards. The higher watermark wasn’t happening, it was a slow and gradual slide.

There’s an old adage that Markets trend only 30% of the time & remain sideways in a Trading range for the remaining 70% of the time.
That’s not true across the board, but only for most widely traded instruments like broad flagship Indices, major commodities & primary fx pairs. My major part of the Trading on NIFTY is within such Corrective Sideways Markets within large Trading Ranges. Catching the end of Corrective structures and Trading the beginning of New Impulses is another one of my focus areas, esp Wave 2/4/B terminations.

A snippet from my Life

Back in 2010, I was still pretty much at the abyss of my career despite spending several years into Stock Markets. In those moments of despair, I went to Shirdi alone sometime in October.
To my surprise, it wasn’t much crowded that day.
1/ So I managed to spend a few hours near the shivling there. And al that time I remember I was only asking to show me the way.
Nothing happened right away or even for next several weeks but I continued to stay receptive and wait positively.
2/

With US Dollar Index #DXY seems to be bottoming and US 10 Year Yield #US10Y seems to be topping, the Macros appear to be in place to disrupt the Equities.
However, I must make certain things very clear.

1/ One, the Inter Market Movement is not exactly point-to-point. That is, if DXY & US10Y turn on a particular day, it doesn't mean that Equities also turn on the same day itself. The past experience shows that there can be a lag or sometimes a substantial lag of up to 1-2 Months.
2/