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You know what gets me? It’s not just when the market misbehaves,it’s when it whispers its plan, and we choose not to listen. We’re talking about zones, people. Overbought. Oversold. Defense lines on your charts where buyers and sellers dig in, plant flags, and start hurling their strategies at each other like it’s Thermopylae. And if you’re not watching for those signals,well, you're stepping onto the field without armor.

Case in point: Apple (AAPL). Just look at it. Overbought for a week straight, and every time the bulls tried to push through 203.90, the bears met them with a wall of shadow. Not opinion,just chart. That’s six straight candles where the sellers said, "Not today." You can love the company, hold their stock in your IRA, even use their products every day, but if you're trading, forget all that.

Trade the chart. Here’s what I mean… 

Now I’m not saying you jump into a short just because the bears are defending. No. You wait for confirmation. A bearish divergence in the stochastics,my favorite weapon,or maybe another momentum tool you trust. But the core principle stands: where the market shows you the defense, don’t try to storm it without a plan. That’s just how traders get wrecked.

Same story in the indices. SPY sitting at fair price,smack in the middle of the monkey bar range. Volume isn’t exploding, and stochastics are yawning. That’s balance. That’s neutrality. That’s when the smart money is protecting trades, not pushing new ones. If anything, it's the spot where you tighten stops, take profits, maybe even sit on your hands until something breaks. You don’t need to be a hero when the market doesn’t care which direction to go.

We saw this behavior across the board,transports, industrials, even copper. Look at copper’s range. One candle chewing up the entire monkey bar zone from last month? That’s your clue. Either the range was too narrow, or the energy was too concentrated. Either way, it doesn’t scream “breakout,” it whispers “reset.”

Bottom line,this isn’t about being bullish or bearish. It’s about listening. About seeing where the buyers and sellers are building their defenses. Use your monkey bars. Use your indicators. But above all, wait for the confirmation. Let the market tip its hand. And when it does, be ready,not just to react, but to strike.

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