Counter Traders Anonymous

George names the pattern the way a support group names a disease. If you stare at a chart that’s ripping higher and the only thought in your head is “where can I short this,” you have the symptom. That’s a compulsion. Name it out loud before you can fix it.

The tell is simple. You watch a strong move and your eyes go hunting for the reversal. George catches it in his members constantly… “that’s where traders really get killed in their trading is they see that move up and they’re just like, where can I short this?” (Dec 25, 2025). Same instinct, dressed up as conviction: the old you knocking on your shoulder, whispering that’s the top, that’s the bottom, get the reversal here. You resist it. That voice has cost you before.

And it hides inside the fun part of trading too. Pullbacks in a strong uptrend feel great to trade, so great that they lure people into picking tops and then abandoning their whole risk protocol… “they do not follow proper risk management protocol, they add to losers, they move their stop losses, they blow their accounts” (Dec 4, 2024).

Why does this particular mistake grip traders so hard? Speed. Down-moves are fast and violent, and a short that catches one pays big and pays instantly. The body remembers that hit and wants it again. George is blunt about the chemistry of it.

The cruelest version is the fast, monster short profit early in a trader’s career. It feels like a gift. It’s a curse. George calls it the worst thing that can happen to a futures trader… “a monster profit from shorting ES. And it’s even worse when that profit comes fast. They spend the rest of their life chasing that high” (Apr 15, 2026). After that, most people short-sell simply because it moves so fast. It becomes the drug of choice.

These scalps intoxicate people. Fast makers. And then a historic trend arrives and cleans them out… “these will make traders intoxicated with taking shorts. And then when you get a historic move like this, they lose everything” (Apr 16, 2026). The serial shorter loses even without a historic move. Short every short you ever see and you’ll drop 25 in a row waiting for the one big win. That is not the way to trade ES futures.

Here is the single most valuable idea on this page. On a trend day, the market tests your discipline. George reframes the whole scorecard around one question.

Read that again. What grades the day? Whether you fought the trend and compounded the damage… “If you didn’t make things worse, you passed today. Whether you’re green or red, that doesn’t matter. What matters is on trend days that you don’t make things worse” (Mar 26, 2025). A losing day where you stayed disciplined is a passing grade. A green day built on stubborn counter trades is a warning.

Don’t Make Things Worse is the operating rule that flows from the test. When a trend day runs against your bias, you don’t force trades to get even. You take break-even trade after break-even trade after break-even trade and you wait for the next high-probability setup. That patience is a core discipline of the group. Never make things worse.

The trend day is rarer than the fear of it. Roughly one day in ten is a real trending sale day. You can’t let that one day hurt you, and you can’t build your trading life hunting for it… the massive short is the rare exception.

Willpower fails in the heat of the move. So George doesn’t rely on it. He builds hard numeric limits that fire before emotions get loud. Once you take a losing trade against who controls the market, you’re done… the count itself does the deciding.

Every one of these exists to protect you from yourself. That’s the whole design… “all of that is designed to protect yourself from yourself, because if you’re going to want to play counter and you take a loser, what’s the high likelihood you want to take another counter trade? Pretty high” (Mar 5, 2025).

George is honest about the root of it, especially for the men in the room… “men just have to be right. It is a weakness of men” (Apr 17, 2026). Left unchecked, that need to be proven right makes you cut off your nose to spite your face. The rule cuts it off first. And the response to a red flag against your position is never to flip and short it. You Stand Down. You don’t counter it. You be smart.

Here’s the release valve for the whole addiction. You can make every point you’ll ever need without shorting ES a single time. That’s George’s stated, repeated, humble opinion after years of trading this instrument.

He didn’t start there. George had to deliberately retrain himself out of the shorting bias, because he decided it’s the wrong way to look at the ES… “I had to beat it out of me. I had to beat that tendency out of me. And I will never go back to it” (Mar 19, 2026). He’ll tell you plainly he’s a long trader now, and it took a long time to beat the desire to be in every single short. Your natural tendencies as a trader run the wrong way until you retrain them.

The ES is a long-based instrument. Price gets pulled toward all-time highs like a magnet, and more traders hurt themselves picking a top near that magnet than almost anywhere else on the chart. When bulls control and nothing on the tape is bearish, keep your eyes off shorts entirely… it is simply much easier for the market to keep grinding up. Understanding who controls the market is the whole foundation here.

That’s the mindset that beats the hero complex. Don’t try to be the hero shorting a strong uptrend. Be the twig on the mighty stream and let it carry you… “You don’t need to be the hero trying to short this. Everything is saying strong. Stay out of the way. Look for a way to get long” (Jan 1, 2026). By June 2026 George was saying it flat out: “If you’re looking at this chart figuring out where to go short, you should walk. You should walk” (June 3, 2026).

Underneath the addiction sits one stubborn belief: it has to come back. Traders went broke for weeks insisting a strong up-move owed them a reversal… “By being bullheaded like it has to come back, it has to come back. No, it doesn’t. Apparently, it doesn’t” (May 20, 2026). The market doesn’t owe you the pullback. It never did.

The deeper problem is perception. When the crowd shorts a market printing fresh all-time highs, it’s projecting a wish onto the tape. George put a number on the madness of one such day.

Sit with that figure. On a record-high day, seven of every ten Dow positions were betting against the record. We lose money because we refuse to accept what’s right in front of us. Even George isn’t immune… he admits that after a long directional grind he gets sick of it and starts fighting it, and the longer you’ve been trading, the more you’re programmed to that reflex. Recognizing you’re offsides and deliberately getting in line with control is trader maturity. Reps build it. Start by mentally trading the moves you wanted to fight, and let the record teach you what the wish never will.