The market alternates between two states
• Trend market: highs and lows move in one direction — following on pullbacks is favorable
• Range (box) market: back and forth between upper and lower bounds — a zone where chasing breakouts is stopped out repeatedly
• A strategy that works in one state but eats into the account in the other is not a skill problem but a state-identification problem
Connection to our data
• The per-timeframe trend verdicts in MarketSurfer's trend briefing are material for judging which state it is now
Where people slip
• They blame the market instead of changing the strategy — what needs to change is not the market but the response
Before entering, ask first: is this a trend market or a box market? That one question cuts out half the stop-losses.
Reviewing your recent run of consecutive stop-losses, were you using a trend strategy in a box market?