Frequently, friends ask me: 'After spending so long in this market, is there really a rule that makes you instantly know something will go up?'

I can only tell you: patterns are vague, not precise.

Many traders always try to treat the market like a precise clock, believing that if they disassemble the parts, they can calculate exactly what time the next second will be.
But in reality, the market is more like the weather—you can predict 'there will be a thunderstorm in summer,' which is a pattern; but trying to predict 'this raindrop will fall on which step at exactly 2:05 PM tomorrow' is just setting yourself up for frustration.

1. Don't confuse 'standards' with 'laws'.
History does indeed repeat itself, but it never simply repeats.
If you insist on seeking that precise law, like 'as long as there's a MACD golden cross, it must rise', you will definitely end up questioning your life.
Real traders do not have rigid 'laws' in their eyes, only 'standards'.
What is a standard? A standard is the bottom line you set for yourself. When the market reaches a certain position that meets your entry conditions, you execute. Whether it rises or falls after execution is up to the market, not a law you can control.

2. The truth of price movements: this is a 'spring' experiment.
No matter what technical school you study, peel back the shell to see the core. The rhythm of the market actually consists of just two words: convergence and divergence.

You can think of the market as a spring:
Convergence: it means the spring gets tighter and tighter. Both sides are struggling, neither can push the other, and price fluctuations become smaller. At this point, you find the market has become quiet.
Divergence: it means the sudden rebound after the spring is compressed to its limit.

The logic point is here: the more the spring is compressed (convergence), the greater the force it will rebound with later (big market movement). This is inevitable logic, a physical law.
But if you ask me, 'When will this spring bounce? Will it bounce left or right?'
I'm sorry, that's unknowable. If you insist on guessing a direction stubbornly, what we need to do is to comply and establish the rules for triggering.

3. Trading is not about 'divine prediction', but 'divine response'.
Many people lose money because they think they've 'discovered' the direction of divergence, and then they go all in.
But how do real veterans do it?
They figure out where the convergence is, which is equivalent to figuring out where the opportunity is, and the rest is just waiting.

When the market starts to diverge, I enter to make a 'response'.
If the direction of the market divergence is different from what I expected, or if it bounces just a bit and then loses momentum, I will immediately exit. This is called 'correct retreat'.

Have you noticed? This is not about predicting the future at all, but about making probabilistic bets.

4. Why can you survive in this market for a long time?
It's not because you can see more accurately than others, but because of your risk-reward ratio. You must find a way to achieve a 7-10 times risk-reward ratio. This is the first step.

Since the laws are vague, we acknowledge that we can be wrong. When we are wrong, the structure of convergence will protect you, allowing you to escape with minimal cost (small stop loss).
When you are right, the potential of divergence will propel you, enabling you to earn several times or even a dozen times your losses.

As long as you lose very little when you're 'wrong', like a mosquito's blood, and earn like a thigh when you're 'right', even if you are wrong half the time, you are still a winner in this market.

This is the underlying logic of trading profit: abandon the obsession with finding infallible laws, capture the explosion after energy convergence, and then exchange 'asymmetric' gains and losses for long-term profit space.