People can learn a lot about life by observing nature's creatures, observations that can benefit every aspect of someone's life. Let us examine a cougar and how it hunts for prey. The cougar is one of nature's fiercest creatures. When hunting for prey, a cougar is strategic. If a cougar fInds a herd of deer, it will wait patiently observing the entire herd looking for the weakness within the herd. The reason for this is that the cougar can only run at top speed for short distances. Therefore, it is imperative to get as close to its prey as possible before making a killing strike. Otherwise, the opportunity will be lost and it may be some time before the next one appears.

The more days that the cougar goes without food, the slower it will be able to run, thus making it harder and harder to attack its prey.

So why are we talking about cougars?

Playing the market is very much like the cougar's hunt for prey. Whether you are trading the Forex market, the Futures market, the Options market, the Equities market, and so forth, you must have a plan before entering each trade. If you do not, it will be harder and harder to find Opportunities because each lost opportunity will take a toll mentally, physically, and psychologically on your well-being.

Therefore, you must observe the instrument greatly before executing a trade. A trader observes the instrument patiently until an opportunity is seen. Once an opportunity is present, a plan is executed. Someone once told me "Trading is neither logical nor predictable." After years of trading, I can honestly say that statement is completely true. It is a probability game, You have to have a system to help increase your probability of success or you are just gambling. By rolling a dice, a person has a probability of 50 percent on the desired outcome. Therefore, one of our goals is to trade with a higher probability of success than 50 percent. How do you do that? This can be achieved by creating a trading system that maximizes profits when you are right and minimizes losses when you are wrong (i.e., play trends instead of consolidation patterns). A trend is when price goes in a certain direction for a long period of time whereas a consolidation pattern is where price goes "back and forth" among a range of prices. As told by Manish Patel in his book Ichimoku trading system