In the book “Reminiscences of a Stock Operator,” Edwin Lefevre writes: 
“The speculator’s deadly enemies are: Ignorance, Greed, Fear and Hope.“

In today’s commentary we will take a look at “Hope” and see why it is one of the four deadly enemies of successful market timing. 
Each of us has a desire for success. That is why we use market timing in our investing. Not only to increase our gains in both bull and bear markets, but importantly to protect our capital against loss. 
But that same desire for success can stand in the way of our ability to recognize reality, even if it is right before our eyes. All of us have a survival instinct that typically causes us to focus on good news. Bad news is avoided, or at least put on the back burner. 
When we take a position in the market, whether bullish or bearish, we hope it will be successful. Hope can be such a powerful emotion, that when the same trading plan that told us to enter a position originally, reverses and tells us to exit immediately, our emotions may very well focus on the possibility that if we just hold on a bit longer, any loss may be erased.  (more…)