Getting Comfortable with Uncertainty

Core idea

Trading is a probability profession, not a prediction profession: the highest goal is only to gather situations that win ~70–80% of the time, and that itself means that out of every 10 trades, 2–3 will still go wrong with no one having done anything wrong at all. Demanding a "truly clear signal" is the deep-seated reason people either stand aside forever, or start inventing their own data in zones of the market that genuinely have no data. Accepting uncertainty the right way means still keeping hard rules, while giving up the demand for perfection.

Details

1. Two laws you must accept before even thinking about making money

1. Accept risk first — the market is a place where risk is always greater than profit (80/20, see Risk wave vs profit wave (the 80/20 rule)). Accepting risk means putting it within an allowed limit (≤1% of the account per trade), not enduring it.
2. Accept the fuzzy feeling that comes with making a decision — there is never a 100%-certain situation. Whoever doesn't accept these rules of the game, the market simply doesn't play with them — like moving a chess piece the wrong way.

2. Why a perfect signal doesn't exist

If a perfect signal existed, everyone would see it — and the market-making group would never let that happen. Three reasons trading is "hard":

• Ambiguity always surrounds reading the market.
• Uncertainty itself.
• Signals compete and conflict with each other (this timeframe rising, that one falling).

What you have to do isn't avoid the ambiguity by hunting for some "simple trick" — it's train your mind to handle that ambiguity.

3. Three types of market zones — and the hardest one

The fatal spot is the 50/50 zone. 50% is a large probability, but not enough to make a decision on as an investor. That's where emotion gathers up all the evidence supporting what it wants and ignores the other 50% of the evidence. The line between an investor and a gambler sits exactly here: an investor demands probability, a gambler accepts 50/50.

4. The "no data" zone — recognizing it and handling it

When volume drops off unusually, RSI on every timeframe is coiled in the 40–60 zone, the two moving averages are wrapped around each other, and price is moving sideways: the market is drifting, with no buy–sell contest going on. In that state:

• It isn't that "the market is hard and won't show me anything" — it's that there's nothing there to show. When the sky is neither sunny nor rainy, don't invent sun or rain.
• The harder someone tries to analyze it, the more they lose. Sharks find it very easy to manipulate price when volume is thin.
• What to do: shift your entire focus to capital management, risk management, and psychology management.
• A hidden danger: if you happen to catch a winning trade in this zone by luck, next time it breeds overconfidence and you'll repeat it — that's the truly expensive part.

5. Flexible ≠ arbitrary

The same pattern gets entered differently depending on context: sometimes all you need is for the lower timeframe to reset all of its selling force and you enter right away (when the context is supportive); sometimes you must wait for the RSI on the timeframe with the pattern to fully cross over and wait for a pullback before entering (when you're trading against the prevailing context). The underlying principle stays fixed (a pattern must exist = force must have accumulated), but how you apply it has to be read off the overall picture.

Distinguishing two easily-confused things:

• Habit = rigid thinking, mechanical action, lacking awareness (walking while your mind is elsewhere → you trip).
• Mastery = full attention on what's happening right now, reading the market's language without being attached to any particular tool or pattern.

6. "Most of your wealth comes from the process of waiting"

The market has hundreds, thousands of waves — you don't need to take part in all of them. There are stretches where a whole month only sees 1–2 trades. Keeping your money during a phase with nothing to trade is just as much an accomplishment as making money.

7. The OFFENSE–DEFENSE metaphor from football

A football team that's only strong on offense or only strong on defense never wins the title — it has to master both. Trading is exactly the same:

• Offense = when the market has a clear signal and the profit is laid out right in front of you, you must decisively take that trade.
• Defense = when the market is ranging and the signal isn't clear on timeframes that are too small, you must know how to stay out to avoid unnecessary trades.

A figure the teacher gives: one great trade banking 10–15% is normal; but if you don't show restraint during an unclear phase and trade indiscriminately, burning through all of it is equally normal. Standing out at the right time (defense) protects the very achievement of trading at the right time (offense).

Putting it into practice

A set of 3 gatekeeper questions before every trade:

1. Which timeframe currently has a pattern? (None does → don't enter, period.)
2. What probability do I estimate for this trade? If I honestly think it's around 50/50 → drop it.
3. Am I trading because there's data, or because I regret missing the wave that just ran?

The "no rain, no sun" rule: when you see unusually low volume + RSI on every timeframe coiled at 40–60 → switch modes: stop analyzing for an entry point, and only do capital management + reviewing notes + reading.

If forced to trade a fuzzy zone: cut your size down to 0.3–0.5%, keep the stop-loss very tight, close early, and decide beforehand that "this trade doesn't matter to the account either way."

The mantra "the less clear it is, the more certain you must be": the murkier the market's trend, the stricter your entry standard needs to be, not looser. A common paradox: right at the moment there's the least data, people lower their standard trying to find a trade just to relieve their own restlessness → and burn through their capital. The 100-million due-diligence metaphor: if someone said "give me 100 million a month, and I'll pay you back 3 million," you'd grill them hard on how they manage capital and what their business model is before handing over the money. But in trading, because the barrier to action is so low (open the app, tap one button, you're in a trade), people skip that entire due-diligence step — entering setups they would never, in real life, dare to put money into. The murkier it is, the harder the "due diligence" must be.

A habit that builds "market sense": keep a journal of the market's behavior (not a trade journal) every day — what did price do today, what do I think it's saying, where was I right or wrong. After long enough, this forms a feel for subtle signs that no pattern can describe.

A chart-watching exercise: put yourself in the position of admiring a painting, observing the whole picture first — instead of diving straight into hunting for a pattern. Most students fail to notice an abnormal signal (like a sudden volume drop) simply because they never observe — they only ever hunt for patterns.

What the teacher stresses / common traps

• The biggest trap for someone with knowledge: inventing data. In a zone with nothing there, don't go looking for a triple-top divergence, a double-top divergence… Divergence only ever says "this leg's wave is weak," full stop — it adds no further data.
• Fear of losing → avoiding experience → is itself the thing that slows down learning. Making mistakes and taking losses (within a controlled limit) is a necessary condition for learning fast.
• "Stop demanding things that are truly, perfectly clear" — a line the teacher quotes and repeats over and over.
• If you see a big wave running and you have no data to enter on → grit your teeth and let it go, even if it runs 5,000–10,000 points. Regretting an unclear wave is the seed of the string of stop-losses that follows.
• Making the acceptance concrete: losing 0.5–1% of the account on a single trade is not allowed to trigger emotion. If you're still "haggling over every little bit" with the market at that level, you're not ready to play yet.
• On reading: reading a lot means nothing without following through with Action. Psychology books are worth reading and re-reading precisely during unclear market phases.

Accepting risk is the first condition — Not the last one

The teacher cites Trading in the Zone (Mark Douglas) as a must-read book for improving trading psychology. The first factor the book lays out: you must accept risk, because risk is an inseparable part of trading — not an accident, but an operating cost.

But "accepting" is only feasible when the risk sits within an allowed limit:

• 1% stop-loss: 100 million loses 1 million, leaving 99 → "even if it happens, it's fine" → only then are you calm enough to keep discipline, and only then do you dare hold through for a 1→10 gain.
• 10–20% stop-loss: 100 million loses 20 million, 1 billion loses 200 million, 10 billion loses 2 billion — the teacher says flatly, "even a genius couldn't accept that." The knock-on effect: even small swings become unbearable → trading H4 while staring at the account 24/7 → losing your clarity of mind → jumping into the wrong side of the trade → losing money the whole rest of the wave.

The sharpest point: the act of raising your stop-loss to 10–15–20% is itself already proof that greed/expectation is at the wheel — you don't need to wait for the trade's outcome to know the psychology went wrong. From the very moment you set a size you can't accept the risk on, your psychology has already broken.

An illustrative case: the knowledge already said "momentum's gone, close it," but because of wanting to get rich in one or two trades, the position wasn't closed; afterward, regretting the 10% that should have been pocketed → bitterness → keeps destroying more. The full chain is in tam ly chi giu duoc bang ky luat.

The hunter doesn't shoot while the prey is still blurry

A metaphor that closes out all of section 4 above with an image you can actually use: a hunter sees prey, blurry, off in the distance, and raises the scope — but the distance, the wind, the bullet's path don't yet add up to enough data. Shoot now and the miss rate is high, and the gunshot scares the whole flock away. The second half is the expensive part: a careless trade doesn't just lose its own money, it also wrecks the state of mind needed for a good trade right after it.

Three things you must have read before pulling the trigger:

1. The trend — read on the higher timeframe.
2. The stage of the trend — using the RSI fuel-tank theory, see The wave's fuel tank (RSI = fuel tank).
3. Whether there's already enough capital flow / story / a sudden burst of force — this is the most commonly skipped part, because the first two already give the feeling of "I've read the market already."

A sample case from the session: multi-timeframe agreement on the upside, but 2D/3D/4D/5D are all in the final D-leg of their rise, the fuel tank has already gone a long way, there's no burst of force, and the trend/story isn't clear yet ⇒ maximum caution, don't commit large capital on timeframes ≥1D. Bullish agreement here is a necessary condition, not an entry signal.

A number the teacher gives from his own judgment: committing capital to a big wave when you're only holding around 55–60% confidence is still an extremely risky decision — so the teacher himself treads carefully, unwilling to commit capital there. This is an important correction for beginners, who tend to treat 60% as "sure enough." (A verbal estimate given in class, not a threshold from the system itself.)

Don't force yourself to make money in every phase. From the start of April up to close to the day of this session, the teacher only had one clear trade — and still managed it very carefully because price was still inside a ranging zone. This is a benchmark for students to check themselves against: if every single month brings dozens of "clear" trades, your own "clear" threshold is likely set far too low.

The barrier to entering a trade is lower than the barrier to buying land

The same person, when buying a plot of land, weighs the location, schools, hospitals, supermarkets, zoning plans, the number of traffic lanes, the property's history, its legal standing, whether the land title has been issued, how many names are on it, whether it's shared marital property — they'll ask about even the most peripheral things. That same person, entering a futures trade, drops every single one of those weighing steps.

The difference isn't in the amount of money — it's in the speed: land gives you weeks to think it over, while the market sweeps a decision away in minutes, so the step of "counting how many factors support this trade and how many are risk" never gets the chance to happen.

The second half, about expectation: buy land and wait 3–5–10 years for it to appreciate, and you're still happy about it — time takes the pressure off a land buyer. In trading, you enter and you have to win, you have to make some percentage, right now. Compressing an expectation into that short a timeframe runs completely against the rhythm the market is actually willing to pay out on — and that is the source of most rushed decisions.

How to use this: write out your own list of due-diligence questions, the same as when buying a major asset, stick it beside your screen, and require yourself to fully answer it before entering any trade of meaningful size. If that list is shorter than the one you'd use to buy land, your barrier is set in the wrong place.

Related lessons

• The betting mindset — accepting both the risk and the advantage — how to make decisions under uncertain conditions
• Risk wave vs profit wave (the 80/20 rule) — the 80/20 filtering criteria
• The 4 psychological stages & how to survive a dull market — living through a dull, quiet market phase
• Tactical mindset — the process to determine before entering a trade — the process for setting your mindset before a trade
• Notes & trading journal — the process that turns analysis into discipline — the market-behavior journal
• High-probability patterns — how to trade "solo, taking the scraps" when forced to enter while the higher timeframe isn't clear
• Characteristics of each market (Forex vs Crypto vs Gold/Oil) — every market has its own character, and you must get used to it before putting money in