In trading, many people believe that chasing the rise and killing the fall is the biggest trap that leads to losses. But after truly long-term trading, you will find that there is a more hidden and deadly operation that is quietly devouring account funds - frequent orders and repeated transactions.

You think you have thought through every order and are cautious enough, but when the market itself does not have trading value, any "active attack" may just break the loss into more occurrences.

In interviews with EagleTrader traders, many traders who have passed the exam and are engaged in profit-sharing trading will repeatedly mention one suggestion, that is: one of the abilities to truly widen the trading gap is to learn to choose not to trade when you should not take action.

Today, we will take the most typical and most error-prone scenario as an example to explain why not trading is the optimal solution in certain market conditions.

Typical scenario: The price fluctuates back and forth in the middle of the range

The price has neither formed a clear upward trend nor a clear downward structure. The K-line repeatedly pulled within a relatively narrow range, sometimes touching the upper edge of the range and falling back, and sometimes touching the lower edge and rebounding, but it was never able to form an effective breakthrough or breakthrough.

Faced with this kind of market situation, many traders will become more impatient. I always feel that "the fluctuation has been long enough" and "there will be a breakthrough next time", so I frequently enter and exit the market, trying to seize opportunities in the small fluctuations.

But it is precisely this kind of volatile market in the middle of the range that is often the most unsuitable stage for trading.

Why not trade? Three core reasons

❶ The profit-loss ratio is seriously unbalanced

When the market oscillates in the middle of the range, the market direction is highly uncertain. Looking upward, the take-profit space only reaches the upper edge of the range; looking downward, the take-profit space only reaches the lower edge of the range, and the profit margin is significantly compressed.

In order to avoid being repeatedly wiped out by shocks, the stop loss often has to be placed outside the range. The result is that the stop loss space is much larger than the take profit space, and the profit and loss ratio is inherently unbalanced.

In this case, there is only one common outcome: when you make a profit, you make very little, but when you lose, you make more and more every time. In the long run, it is easy to fall into a vicious cycle of "small profits and big losses".

❷ Stop loss is easily triggered repeatedly

The biggest feature of the volatile market is thatIt is the repeatability of price. It does not continue to run in one direction, but keeps moving back and forth within the range.

For example, if you go long in the middle of the range, the price falls slightly just to trigger the stop loss, and then rebounds quickly; after being unwilling, you switch to shorting, and you are wiped out in the rebound, and the price then falls back again.

This situation of "seemingly strict stop loss, but constantly being swept away" is extremely common in volatile market conditions. Every stop loss will actually consume funds and energy, but it does not verify any effective trading logic.

❸ Continuous small losses quickly accumulate retracements

A single loss may not seem large, but under the premise of frequent orders, continuous small losses will accumulate quickly, and intraday retracements will be continuously amplified.

What is even more dangerous is that the retracement and rise often destroy the mentality first. When traders become impatient, anxious, and try to "make back losses," trading no longer follows the rules, but gradually slides into emotional decision-making, and risks are further amplified.

Many serious losses are not due to one big mistake, but are caused bit by bit in this kind of "nothing happens" market situation.

Rules are not constraints

In real trading, the most difficult thing is never "whether you can analyze", but whether you can control yourself when you shouldn't take action. It is precisely because of this that the significance of rules becomes particularly important in a proprietary trading environment.

In the EagleTrader proprietary trading exam, the maximum intraday drawdown and maximum account drawdown set are not to limit traders’ operating space, but to block frequent ordering behavior caused by emotional fluctuations at the institutional level.

These rules essentially help traders avoid one of the most common and hidden risks: using a large number of low-quality transactions to continuously drain the account.

And when you have to trade under the retracement constraint, you will be forced to think:

Does this trade really have a structural advantage?

Is it worth taking the current risk space for it?

Should you take action, or continue to wait?

The rules do not let you trade less, but force you to only participate in the market that is worth participating in.

In the volatile market, it seems that opportunities are everywhere, but in fact most of them are traps. A truly powerful trader is never one who takes frequent action, but one who can control his own hands, wait patiently for effective structures to appear, and then strike decisively.

So next time, when the price fluctuates back and forth in the middle of the range again, you might as well stop and ask yourself: If you take action now, are you trading opportunities, or are you consuming your account?

Remember - in a market that does not have an advantage, the safest and most mature choice is often not to trade.