Why it produces the worst prices
The strong move that attracts you is the same move that consumed part of the available distance. Entering after it means a worse price, a nearer target and a wider stop — the reward-to-risk collapsing before the trade begins.
Worse, late entries tend to happen near the end of a move, where the pullback is closest. So this bias is not managed by resisting the urge in the moment but by a rule written before it: if price has moved beyond my planned entry by more than half the stop distance, the trade is gone and is no longer mine.
Measuring a bias you cannot feel
Behavioural biases are not fixed by general advice, because in the moment they do not feel like biases — they feel like sound decisions. The only practical approach is for each bias to have a measurable signature in your trade record.
So each page here gives the numerical marker that exposes the bias rather than asking you to "be disciplined". You do not need to be told to have discipline; you need to know whether you currently lack it.
A worked example
Your plan: buy gold on a pullback to 2,420 with a stop at 2,405 — a $15 distance — targeting 2,465 for 1:3.
Price never pulled back; it jumped to 2,445 and you entered there. The stop is still logical at 2,405, so the distance is now $40, and the same 2,465 target is $20 away — 1:0.5 instead of 1:3. At that ratio you need a win rate above 67% simply to break even. Neither your analysis nor the market changed; only your entry price did, and that alone invalidated the trade mathematically.
Common mistakes with this term
- Raising the target after a late entry to repair the ratio, making the target unrealistic instead of the trade sound.
- Reading a strong move as confirmation, when it is consumption of the available distance.
- Not writing a maximum entry-price deviation, leaving the decision to impulse every time.