The most difficult thing to do is to work without preconceived notions. Yet, it's a worthwhile pursuit because then and only then will you become data-dependent. The problem is that the source of the data has become tainted with preconceptions and hence tends to point us in a particular direction.

These preconceptions today, are most often born out of political leanings, but they could have links to employment, society or even religion. In our market, almost everything put out these days has an agenda attached to it and almost every writer writes a piece in his head first, before the first data point has been collected. The cart is already before the horse and from that point on, a selection process begins to get the data to fit the predetermined outcome.

The actions of all those preconceived notions on the market place appear to give a better read of the collective thinking of participants and possibly the direction of the preponderance of sentiment. However, in the last few years, the increased use of AI and machine learning has probably muted the ability to "read the screen". As each algo gets tweaked and fine-tuned, the machine tries to "anticipate" human action based on rules set by humans. But with machine learning, machines are anticipating machines with diminishing human intervention. A perfect recipe for a perfect storm and one will never know which straw will break the camel's back.

Add to this, the rules of the game have irreversibly changed since GFC and taken a blind turn in the COVID era. To look at history for trends and patterns when history is being made is a fool's errand and one that will only begin to pay off once a new trend is established and read. With that in mind and with 11300-11500 broken, I leave it up to the machines to pick a point when they decide that enough has been squeezed out of this lemon and we head back to 10800 and possibly 9700. Everything else in between is just Brownian motion.

The author is an independent trader-cum-blogger and has worked at leading brokers on the institutional sales desk over the course of his near three-decade long career in the stock market.