Very odd day. Breadth down with QQQ up almost 3%. If you told me at the start that we'd have more stocks below their 40sma than yesterday, I'd tell you we'd have a pullback in the market, not a a day where most of the names on my watchlist are green and every MAG7 green.

Reading some of my favorite excerpts while at kids baseball practice.

Mental game, entire book is fantastic.

One of the reasons why I didn't like buying pullbacks is because in the past, after large rallies, I would often start trying to buy pullbacks as the market pulled back (when it finally felt "safe" to do so). It would be in leaders that were in the topping phase (stage 3). I would try again and again and often dig a deeper and deeper hole. I know buying pullbacks can work in the right environment, I see a lot of traders here who do it very well. I would rather buy break outs to highs. Yes, they squat, reverse, fail. No strategy works all the time. Some environments your strategy works great, others, not at all. There are pros and cons to everything. I do know (from studying history) that in the most explosive bull markets buying break outs works extremely well (late 90s, 2003, 2007, 2013, 2017, 2020, 2024, etc.) I always want to make sure that I can participate in those incredible rallies and I know that the break outs will get me in the best names. In these long sideways/choppy environments, there are very few stocks breaking out to new highs on volume so, in theory, you should be able to avoid getting chopped up too much because there simply isn't anything to buy.