After using a trading journal for a while, I noticed something remarkable. For one specific reversal strategy I trade, around 75% of my trades were sell orders. Unknowingly, I seemed to have a bearish market bias.
Have you ever experienced something similar?
You might think that this sounds very similar to what people call a “permabear”, an investor who continuously acts in the expectation that stocks will fall. However, I don’t believe this is the same thing. In contrary to these investors, I don’t have a strong overall bullish or bearish feeling to any market. I will buy just as easily as I will sell. I do, however, have a harder time “seeing” certain bullish reveral setups.
I found this a bit unusual, so I looked into it. I found it easier to discover the bearish setups on my charts. I would often look over bullish setups that are exact mirror images of their bearish counterparts, but fail to either spot them or don’t find them convincing enough to trade. After I started monitoring this more closely in my weekly reviews and watchlists, I decided to do something about it.