MR-
I assess patterns of behavior. If someone acts in a certain way half a dozen times, I conclude it's not an accident or simply bad mood. Is that "presuming evil?" It is more like an assumption that an object in motion will tend to stay in motion. A thief, most likely, will continue to steal. Regarding your gold trades - trading is really hard, mostly because we are all emotional creatures - yes even us engineers - and emotions wreak havoc on trading. Fear causes you to sell, greed causes you to buy, and that happens at exactly the wrong times. I can't count the number of times, intraday, I've sold at the very moment that marks the very low of whatever that instrument did that day. Its uncanny. Much of the time - now - I can feel that urge to sell, and say to myself, "well now, that probably marks the low. Do you really want to sell the low again?" Mostly that works, because I laugh at myself and that relieves the tension. I find it really helps if I don't care about the thing I'm trading. I find it really hurts if I'm trying to prove how good or clever I am by executing this trade. The less ego you have about it all, the better you will do.Dave, you seem to be presuming evil here.