Why Did the Market Always Turn After I Exited?
I didn’t lose money because I was wrong—I lost it because I was visible.
At first, I thought I was refining a strategy. Tight stops, strong entries, textbook setups. But then came this haunting rhythm: I’d enter with conviction… and just before the move began, I’d be wicked out to the cent. It happened too often to ignore. And it always reversed right after me, as if someone—or something—was watching. I realized I wasn’t trading in a vacuum. I was being mapped.
The more I studied order books, heat maps, and algorithmic flows, the more it clicked: my decision points weren’t hidden—they were harvested. These systems don’t wait for price; they provoke it. They don’t chase trend—they create the illusion of one, just long enough to exploit emotional precision. My stop-loss was never safe; it was data.
This wasn’t a market built on risk and reward. It was engineered tension, meticulously designed to extract predictable reactions. I wasn’t wrong—I was readable.
And that’s when I stopped trading like a participant… and started thinking like prey.
