The time already invested
Posted: Sat Oct 31, 2026 10:21 pm
A setup takes twenty minutes to develop. Price approaches the level slowly. The trader has watched every tick, waited patiently, and finally enters. It reverses. And the instinct says to hold, because so much time went into waiting.
That's the sunk cost fallacy in a new disguise: time invested instead of money. The wait has no bearing on whether the next price move favors the position.
In scalping, the trap is subtle because the time is real. Twenty minutes of concentration is a genuine cost. But it's spent, and it doesn't change the odds.
Related is the feeling of owing it to the setup. A setup that took long to form feels like it must work. The market owes nothing for patience.
The test is the same as for anchoring: if the position weren't open, would it be opened now? A "no" means exiting, however long the wait was.
Keeping a log of how long each setup took to form and comparing its outcome to the fast ones tests whether patience earns a premium. In most logs, it doesn't.
Is there any correlation between setup formation time and results in the journal?
That's the sunk cost fallacy in a new disguise: time invested instead of money. The wait has no bearing on whether the next price move favors the position.
In scalping, the trap is subtle because the time is real. Twenty minutes of concentration is a genuine cost. But it's spent, and it doesn't change the odds.
Related is the feeling of owing it to the setup. A setup that took long to form feels like it must work. The market owes nothing for patience.
The test is the same as for anchoring: if the position weren't open, would it be opened now? A "no" means exiting, however long the wait was.
Keeping a log of how long each setup took to form and comparing its outcome to the fast ones tests whether patience earns a premium. In most logs, it doesn't.
Is there any correlation between setup formation time and results in the journal?