Back in 2021 I genuinely believed I'd cracked it. Six consecutive winning trades. Six in a row. In my head, that wasn't luck, that was proof. I'd developed a working system, an actual edge, something repeatable. I was already imagining scaling it up.
What I couldn't see at the time was that it was a strong bull market. Everything was going up. My "system" was, in hindsight, just the overall market rising regardless of anything I did. I could have picked stocks by throwing darts and probably done just as well. The market was doing the winning, not me.
The seventh trade set me straight. This time the market was flatter, no strong wind at my back, and suddenly my brilliant system had nothing to lean on. It fell apart within a single session. One flat day exposed the whole thing for what it was.
That's when it hit me. Six wins hadn't taught me anything real. They'd just fed my ego and disguised the truth. The market handing you profits in a bull run is not the same as you having skill, and the fastest way to learn that difference is to mistake one for the other right before conditions change. The seventh trade cost me money, but it saved me from betting my whole future on a "system" that was never mine.