Today's Quote: “Doubt is not a pleasant condition but certainty is an absurd one." Francois Voltaire.

There are quite a few traders that take on too much risk. They don’t manage trades properly, and they don’t manage their money properly. Eventually, taking high-risk trades will take its toll as the odds always do play out. However, there are traders that have the opposite problem. They are so risk adverse they pass all of the best opportunities.

The truth of it is that our job as traders is not to eliminate risk. That cannot be done. Without risk, there can be no reward. Out job is to minimize risk. Minimizing risk means looking for the right trade at the right time, and then taking the entry when the balance of the evidence says to do so. We play the probabilities at the time the probabilities say it is a good risk. Any delay beyond that, only makes the entry late, and makes the trade less favorable. Some traders want to have such great confirmation that a trade should be entered, that it is now obvious to everyone that the trade is ‘safe’. At this point, who is left to buy? Waiting for too much confirmation actually makes the trade riskier. The truth of it is, that trading will never be a certainty. We have to play the odds, and there is no such thing as ‘absolute confirmation’.

So the next time you have a nice VCM buy setup (VBS), that is ready to hit its predetermined strike price, and it has a green bar reversal (GBR) and a narrow range bar (NRB), at a rising moving average, right on minor support, with the futures having just pulled back to a support area, don’t ask if you are ‘sure’. Simply ask if this strategy is in your trading plan, and if it meets the requirements you have set out. By the time you are ‘sure’, it might be too late.