The Alphabet · step 9

What can nobody tell you?

The honest wall

ten tries, one plan -1R +2R -1R -1R +2R -1R +2R -1R -1R +2R four wins, six misses · after ten: +2R, about +0.2R a try the gold line is the running total; it dips below zero and still ends ahead ten tries made for the picture · a real record needs many more
ten tries, one plan green: +2R · red: -1R after ten: +2R, about +0.2R a try the gold line is the running total made for the picture

Ten tries from one plan: four reached the target for +2R, six reached the stop for -1R. The running total dips below zero more than once and still ends at +2R, about +0.2R a try.

Nobody can tell you what a price will do next. Not a book, not a person on television, not a confident stranger, and not this house. Every chapter so far has been about what you can see; this one is about the wall where seeing stops.

What you can know is your own record. Write down every idea: the entry, the stop, the target, and what happened. Over many of them a number appears: the average result per idea, wins and misses together. That is your expectancy.

It is arithmetic, and it is kinder than it sounds. On paper, with targets twice as far as stops, a record can be wrong six times in ten and still come out ahead, before costs: four wins of 2R make 8R, six misses of 1R cost 6R, and you are up 2R after ten tries. You can also be right most of the time and still lose, if the misses are large.

But ten tries is a coin toss. A record says something only after many ideas, taken the same way. Until then, the honest answer to "is this working?" is "not enough tries yet." Certainty sooner than that is not on offer from anyone.

A paper book is one place to build that record: the same method, the same writing down, nothing real at stake. That is where the primer begins, inside the house, with your first chart.

Said with a food truck

At the end of the year your friend does not ask whether one Tuesday was a good day. She opens the ledger: what came in, what went out, what is left. Some days lost money and some made it, and the only question that matters is what the whole year adds up to.

Your slips are the same. Write every idea in a notebook the way she writes every day in hers. After a season you will not need anyone to tell you how your way of doing it is going. The notebook will say, in your own handwriting.

That is the whole alphabet. The primer, inside the house, starts where this ends: a real chart, read with every letter you now own.

Nothing here is advice. The whole ladder is on one page; the app behind it is free to start - the door opens to any address. Education only. Pumpstradamus is a paper trading app: no real money is traded, and we are not a broker or an adviser.