piezoe: You forget you'r among real successful traders who make a lot of money here on ET... Now back to reality, I agree, the dynamics of the market, the "Emotions" that make tape reading possible is GREED and FEAR, period. you trade "OTHER" peoples emotions every time you pick a direction.
...and fear is more powerful than greed, which is why the options skew exists. In price, that means down is faster than up. There's a lot you can figure out in how to design a trading system from that one sentence.
Fear is the new Greed. But to clarify.. people fear missing out 4 times more than they fear losing...
I think it is fear and fear, fear of losing, fear of missing out, fear of giving back profits, fear of pulling the trigger. There is no greed in this to me any more. We all have some type of fears or frustrations. As a scalper, most of my trades are getting in with limits and I am waiting for price to get at some area I believe the market will stop, I think most of those on other side of the trade are those just getting in that have no rules but trade by the hip, many beginning traders who lack patience just jump in. They all have to learn one day, maybe.
Personally, I don't think about that. There are too many parties involved, too many strategies, too many computers, making it all quite hard and possibly irrelevant to care. I do worry about my emotions though, them getting in the way of my plan and I make an effort to make sure that no matter what, I end up trading the plan and stopping my emotions from interfering. Crazy A