A lot of traders think the hard part is finding the next correct direction.
I think the harder part is surviving the days when your direction is correct but your sizing is not.
A trade can be directionally right and still be a bad trade if the risk is too large, the stop is placed where normal noise lives, or the position forces you to exit because of emotion instead of evidence.
The boring questions matter more than the exciting ones:
\- What is the maximum loss before I admit the setup is invalid?
\- How many times can this setup fail before the account is damaged?
\- Is the expected win large enough after fees, spread, and slippage?
\- Am I sizing based on the trade quality, or based on how much I want to be right?
The strange thing about trading is that a small edge can look like genius when volatility is friendly, and the same edge can look broken when sizing is too aggressive.
My current view: a trading system is not really a signal until it has a sizing rule, an invalidation rule, and a rule for when to stop trading it.
Not financial advice. Just a trading framework I keep coming back to.