[Red Envelope] How to avoid the biggest pitfalls in review? Sharing my insights on "Enlightenment"

You’ve been in the market for years—do you really know how to review and reflect? [Tao Guba]

When it’s late and quiet, you’re still doing your review—but have you ever thought: what exactly are you reviewing? Is it that “God” standing after the close with all the information, judging the confused and helpless version of yourself in that chart?

During the Qingming holiday, no trips out—put out a practical how-to post. Welcome everyone to follow, like, and keep going. On the road ahead, let me know you’re there too—let’s meet each other halfway in both directions.

If it’s like that, then no matter how long you review, it’s nothing but futility.

Today, I want to talk with you about what kind of review truly helps you get out of the fog.

Always sense the rise and fall of market forces, always break down the strength and weakness changes of themes, always focus on the key windows, and then prepare to snipe the strongest one. This paragraph—most people who’ve been reviewing with me for a while can recite it. But how many truly do it? It’s not that your skills aren’t enough, and it’s not that you don’t review often. It’s that most people start out by taking the wrong direction.

1. Traps: Don’t mock yesterday’s self in the sunlight

Open your trading app and take a look at yesterday’s sell points: “Damn, if I’d held on ten more minutes, I would’ve made another five percent.”

Flip back to the day before yesterday’s buy points: “So dumb—clearly I should’ve stayed in the back row, but I went in and caught a falling knife.”

This is what most people “review” every day. To put it bluntly, this isn’t reviewing—it’s that God-like perspective that stands on results to pass judgment on your past self, who didn’t have complete information.

You mock the version of yourself that stumbled around in the fog. But have you thought about this: when that day opened, you didn’t have the right half of the K-line, and you didn’t have the closing price in front of you—you only had countless noise, all kinds of extensions, and real temptations.

You saw the road through yesterday’s fog once it was in the sunlight, and then you mocked yourself for why you didn’t take the right path. Besides making you more anxious and more hesitant next time, it changes nothing.

The purpose of review has never been to make you a better “armchair strategist after the fact.”

Its purpose is only one: to return to that foggy morning, when you can’t see mountains and rivers, can’t make out the stars and the Milky Way, and all you see is thick fog—then learn to pull yourself, step by step, out of the fog.

Not to stand outside the fog, following that distant light, to find the self that got lost in the fog.

That’s watching, not reviewing.

**Case 1:
**

Today you made a move into the back row. After the close, instead of scolding yourself like you usually do for being stupid, you did one thing: you opened the intraday chart, turned off the right half so you only kept the data up to before 11:00 a.m. Then you asked yourself: what did you see back then? Two “one-price-limit” stocks in the front of the sector, and the third one switching to turnover and getting back on the board—that’s a classic arbitrage model. It looks fine.

But you missed one signal: by that point, the theme had already moved into the middle-to-late stage, and the back-row position no longer had any arbitrage value—it was just cargo crawling onto a rotten ship. More importantly, you recalled what you felt at the time: you’d missed trades for two straight days, and your heart was like a cat scratching—once you saw an opportunity, you pounced on it.

That “rush” is the real problem.

Then you wrote that “rush” on the notebook and circled it in red. After that, you set an iron rule for yourself: if you miss trades for two consecutive days, on the third day you’re forced to only watch the market and not place orders—no matter if you miss a limit-up, you won’t regret it. This rule is the “stone you pulled out” from that losing period.

2. Watching: People who look at the fire from across the river will never find a way out

Why do most people review for years and still end up going in circles at the same level?

Because you’re always a “spectator.”

A spectator’s typical state is:

· After the close, you open the intraday chart and point at a high, saying, “Here is where it should’ve been sold.”
· You pull out the trade records and point at losing trades, saying, “This is where it shouldn’t have been bought.”
· You replay the day’s limit-up boards and then sigh, “I could’ve hit that board originally.”

See? You always stand outside the fog. You hold a complete K-line chart, marked every high and low point, and then you start pointing at that self trapped in the fog.

The question is: when the next thick fog rolls in, can that spectator make the decision for you? No. Standing in the fog is still you.

There’s definitely someone like this around you: they talk fluently—cycles, leading stocks, positioning—everything. Their review articles are more beautifully written than anyone’s. But once the market opens, they still chase highs and cut lows, and they still hold and die holding through positions.

Why? Because when he reviews, he’s a “spectator,” but when he trades, he’s a “participant.” Between these two roles there’s a chasm that can never be crossed.

A truly effective review must have the “participant” do the reviewing, not the “spectator.”

How do you change from “spectator” to “participant”?

Step one:
Real-time notes during market hours. You don’t need to write long essays—just use a few words at key moments to record what you thought at the time. For example: “9:45, see a certain stock suddenly extend, feel it’s strong, want to chase,” “10:30, the market dips hard, my stock is still holding up, a bit panicked,” “13:15, it hits the stop-loss line, reluctant to cut, wait a bit more.” Those words are your “footprints in the fog.”
**
Step two:**
When you review after the close, don’t rush to look at the result—first look at those notes. Then ask yourself: did the information I saw at the time truly support that decision? Did my emotions at the time interfere with my judgment?
**
Step three:**
Compare the “correct answers” of a spectator with your actual state at that time. You’ll discover that in many cases it’s not that you didn’t know what to do—it’s that your emotions prevented you from doing it. Once you find the emotion, you’ve found the root of the problem.

I personally have a thick notebook of “intraday emotion notes.” It’s filled with things like “anxiety from missing trades,” “fear of drawdown,” “arrogance in holding positions,” and the like. After each entry, there’s a corresponding rule.

This notebook is worth more than any technical book.

3. The essence: Step into that fog and touch every stone

A true review isn’t standing here today, looking at yesterday.

It’s throwing yourself back into the exact time point, environment, and emotions of that moment.

What you need to ask yourself isn’t “was the result right,” but:

· What information did I see at the time? (not the information I learned later)
· Why did I make that judgment then? (not the judgment that seems stupid now)
· What was my emotional state then—greed? fear? anxiety? impatience?

Only after you break down these “real states in the fog” can you possibly recognize the way forward the next time fog rises.

That’s what it means to “step into the fog, touch every stone, and wade through every undercurrent.”

Case 2:

A stock breaks down at the open. According to the plan, it should stop out at -3%, but at that time I’m watching the intraday action, and there’s a voice in my head saying, “Wait a bit longer—it might pull back.” I keep waiting and waiting until it reaches -7%, and then I cut it. After the close, review it the “participant” way and find that the real reason wasn’t “thinking it could pull back,” but that three straight stop-outs the week before had already made you afraid to lose money again. That “wait a bit longer” was really the fear of admitting you were wrong.

So you set another rule: if daily losses exceed 5%, or if you lose three days in a row, liquidate unconditionally, shut down, and go out for an hour. In the first week you follow the rule, you run into another breakdown. Your hand hovers over the mouse, hesitating for five seconds—then you remember that rule and, with your eyes closed, hit sell. After the close you see the stock hit the limit-down. That’s the moment I truly felt what it means that “rules are life.”

Every time you pull a rule out of the fog, your trading system becomes one notch more solid.
**
4. Practice: You may hold the map, but you still have to walk the road yourself**

Tao County has never lacked theory.

Jiaying’s methods, dropping out and Ming’s story, A Shen’s quotes—you can memorize them all. But from theory to practice is exactly the shift from “watching someone else walk the path” to “walking it yourself.”

The path others have walked is drawn as a map for you. The map is real, and the road is real too. But every pit and every turn on the map—if you haven’t personally stepped on them with your own feet, they’ll always remain lines on paper.

You ask me, how can you walk it yourself?

Step one: Move “review” from after the close to during market hours.

Real review starts from the open. You’re not supposed to start “reviewing” only after the close—you start recording while the market is live: record the psychological activity at each key moment and the immediate basis for every decision. The review after the close is simply revisiting these records.

I keep a stack of notebooks next to my computer. Whenever there’s an important decision or a strong emotion, I write down the environment, the time, the stock price, and what I thought then. You don’t need complete sentences—just keywords. For example: “14:20, the market dips, a certain stock rallies against the trend, feels like there’s capital supporting it, want to follow.” After the close, if you piece these fragments together, you can reconstruct your complete mindset at the time.

So what everyone sees of my review now is written before 11:00. Friends who pay attention will notice that the data inside are screenshots from the open, not the results after the close.

Step two: Review only the “decision process,” not the “profit/loss outcome.”

A trade that makes money doesn’t mean your decision was correct; a trade that loses money doesn’t mean your decision was wrong. Profits and losses are given by the market; decisions are made by you. Review only asks whether the decision was right, not whether you made money. If this mindset doesn’t change, review will always be hijacked by results.

For example: if you buy according to the pattern and it hits limit-up that day, you’re happy. But the next day it opens lower and drifts down—when it hits your stop-loss according to the pattern, you exit with a small loss. Spectators will say, “You shouldn’t have bought yesterday,” but if you think carefully: the buy point yesterday matched the pattern, and the market paid you a premium—only the next day’s environment changed. The decision was right; you just lost because of the outcome. No problem. Conversely, you bet on a stock and you’re right, and you make 20 points—but if that decision was a bet with no basis, then it’s still wrong.

Before the Spring Festival, I followed Joy Reader. This was my biggest drawdown in 2025. I thought about this trade for two weeks. If I were back to that moment, I would still participate—it’s a buy point within my model. But the variable during the Spring Festival period was something I couldn’t predict, so the result was a loss. Still, it was a very beautiful trade.

So when I review, I split “whether the decision was correct” and “profit/loss” into two columns. Correct but losing? I check it and encourage myself. Incorrect but profitable? I cross it and warn myself not to get lucky.

Step three: Turn every “stone you’ve touched” into a rule.

If you find yourself always making impulsive trades during the call auction, set a rule: no trading in the call auction; decide again at the open based on the order book and the tape. If you find yourself always betting big after continuous losses, set a rule: if daily losses exceed X%, force a rest. If you find yourself always chasing highs because you’re “afraid of missing out,” set a rule: after missing out, you must stay in cash and watch the market for one day.

Each rule is a roadside marker you carried out of the fog.

At the time, my personal rule list had already filled three pages of paper. Some rules later found to be useless, so I crossed them out. Some rules were repeatedly verified effective, so I bolded them and marked them in red. That process—iterating and evolving your trading system.

5. Going solo: No one can do it for you—cross through that thick fog

I can give you this hand-drawn map: how to break down the strength and weakness of themes, how market forces rise and fall, how to snipe in the key windows.

But all of that is only a map.

The rest of the road—you have to step on each step yourself.

Only when you step on it will you know that the seemingly perfect buy point was already two points higher by the seconds you were hesitating. Only when you step on it will you know how heavy your fingers feel when the mouse is hovering over the “sell” button at the stop-loss you planned. Only when you step on it will you know that the “mistake you said you couldn’t possibly make,” after three days of consecutive losses, you’ll commit it again very naturally.

Once you’ve stepped firmly, the fog disperses.

It’s not that the fog really disappears—there’s always fog in the market. You just stepped out a path with your own feet, and your heart no longer fears the fog.

About mindset training: from “confrontation” to “acceptance.”

Many friends have asked me how to control emotions. I can tell you clearly: you can’t control them. Emotions are instinct— the more you try to control them, the harder they rebound. The truly effective method isn’t control—it’s acceptance: admit that you’ll be greedy, you’ll be afraid, you’ll be anxious, and then give these emotions an “exit,” instead of letting them take control of your trading.

For example, you admit that you’ll feel anxious after missing trades. Then give anxiety a rule: after you miss trades, you can’t force trades—you should review the past three months’ notes of missed opportunities, look at how many of those missed stocks later truly became big bull stocks. When you tally it up, more than 90% are junk. That data is the best weapon to fight anxiety.

Or, for example, you admit that when you have drawdown you’ll feel fear. Then give fear a rule: when drawdown exceeds a certain level, I won’t look at my account anymore—I’ll instead flip through my records of times after drawdowns when new highs followed. Every drawdown is a washout; every washout is a chance to be reborn.

These “mindset rules” are just like the trading rules: they’re also pulled out of the fog step by step. No one can take that step for you.

Conclusion: Step on every step firmly, and the fog will naturally clear

Trading is a thing where, for a minority, you may not get returns for what you put in—but reviewing is the only thing that can make your effort compound.

But the prerequisite is that you have to review in the right way.

Stop standing in the sunlight and mocking the self trapped in the fog.

Go back to that foggy morning, walk back into the thick fog, touch every stone, wade through every undercurrent—turn every step that brought you out of there into your rules, your discipline, and your muscle memory.

No one can walk it for you, but each step counts.

Starting today, try moving review from “after the close” to “during market hours,” from “reviewing profit/loss” to “reviewing decisions,” and from “spectator” to “participant.” After a month, when you look back, you’ll find that the self who used to panic and flail in the fog is already gone. In its place is a trader who holds the map in hand and keeps rules in their heart.

There’s always fog in the market—but you’re no longer afraid of it.