Stop trading the candle that just closed

[Amanhasnoname]

Blunt claim: a big share of scalping entries are reactions to the previous bar, not applications of a plan. A strong bullish one-minute candle prints, the brain files it as momentum, and a buy goes in on the open of the next one. Then price retraces half that candle, because that is what price very often does after an impulse into nowhere.

The tell is the entry location. Go through recent losers and mark where the entry sat relative to the last swing or level the plan actually cares about. If a pile of them sit in the middle of an expansion leg with no reference point, that is recency bias doing the clicking.

Two things worth changing. First, write the trigger as a condition that does not mention the last candle's size or colour: for example, "pullback into prior-session level, then rejection wick plus break of the previous bar's high." The candle becomes confirmation of something pre-defined, not the idea itself.

Second, add a forced pause of one full bar after any candle larger than, say, twice the average of the last twenty. Large bars are where the pull to react is strongest and where entries are worst.

Anyone measured how their entries perform after an oversized bar versus a normal one?