It's not stupidity, just a consequence of not having really engaged the material, like the difference between watching a tennis game and playing tennis.
This is pure gold. Keeping this one. It's already in evernote I've integrated something very close to this into my trade plan. Being prepared like this takes other considerations out of the picture that could cloud my judgement. Douglas talks about this in the disciplined trader:
Or to put it yet another way: The degree to which one experiences anxiety before and during the trade is in direct inverse proportion to the amount of preparation he has done
yeah - once again I have to say I've read that a few times You know - I used to think that you meant preparation in this case as referring to the amount of observation and market characterisation one had done. Not necessarily prep for each trade. Therefore I always assumed I simply wasn't 'getting' price action because I hadn't put enough work in. But in reality the two are one in the same. You have to have done the observation and backtesting in order to come up with the rules and objective criteria that you will utilise on each trade..... sound about right?
You may want to review the posts I and others made to gears' journal at the end of March (you were there as well) and to lajax' journal at the beginning of April. All sorts of questions one needs to ask himself in preparation for the coming session.