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Overconfidence

Believing your predictions and skills are more accurate than they are, which shows up as oversized positions and skipped stops.

Overconfidence rises after wins and is highest right before the biggest losses. It makes a trader estimate a 70% chance on a setup that historically wins 45%, and size accordingly.

Calibration comes from the trading-journal: compare your confidence at entry with the actual hit rate over a real sample-size.

Example: after a 12-trade winning streak, a trader triples his usual size on a setup that is only slightly better than average. The loss equals the previous eight wins.

Related: recency-bias, confirmation-bias, position-sizing, trading-journal

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