Rewinding to mid-December. While the noise was deafening—people screaming 75k everywhere, FUD drowning out everything else, bear market calls coming from all angles—I stood firm. No panic needed here. The picture was clear: 80k wasn't breaking. We'd push higher from that level.

Then 84k hit. That's when things got messy, psychologically speaking. For many, 84k felt uncomfortably close to the feared 75k zone they'd been obsessing over. Suddenly the fear that had been simmering surfaced. People lost their nerve. The short-term momentum created this optical illusion—like we were somehow back to danger levels—even though we'd actually climbed substantially.

Market psychology is brutal. When price moves don't match expectations or feel "wrong" relative to recent lows, conviction crumbles fast. The traders who panicked at 84k missed what should've been obvious: a pullback near previous resistance doesn't erase the underlying structure. The conviction remains—you just need the stomach to hold through the noise.