Many traders have experienced this dilemma: they understand the importance of going with the trend and believe in its power, but once they actually participate, they are frequently "face-slapped." Eventually, they start to doubt: is trend trading just a trap?

In fact, the root of the problem often lies in our own biased understanding of trends. Most people’s so-called "belief in the trend" is actually a survivor bias — you only see those breakouts that immediately take off during backtesting. Those scenes are indeed tempting, but they are not the trend itself; they are just your imagination.

Real trend trading’s difficulty doesn’t lie in false breakouts, but in your inability to accept the "muddy" process when the trend unfolds.

**The First Pitfall: Fantasizing about Trend Development**

You have a "perfect script" in mind — a breakout occurs, followed by a straight surge. But the market doesn’t follow your script. Most trends, after a breakout, will first undergo a rather nasty pullback. At this point, if your stop-loss is tight, you get stopped out immediately; if it’s loose, the pain of the drawdown can drive you crazy. Caught between these two dilemmas, most people choose to give up early.

**The Second Pitfall: Lack of clear "recovery" standards and courage**

What’s even crueler is that often your stop-loss isn’t the problem; the market does indeed pull back — the issue is that after the pullback, it slowly starts to move again. At this moment, you face a choice: do you still have confidence to re-enter? Is there a clear "recovery rule"?

Most people’s mindset collapses here. The reason isn’t that your strategy is wrong, but that you’ve never established a systematic response mechanism. This is the truly painful part — it’s not the market playing tricks on you, but your inner expectation of a "clean and decisive" move that is repeatedly slapped in the face by reality.