Indiana is a basketball school, not a football school.
That first good year was a fluke.
The Hoosiers can’t possibly beat Ohio State. Or Oregon. Once—let alone twice.
Those assumptions were everywhere. Among sports experts, podcasters, and plenty of fans, whether they had skin in the game or not.
The turnaround of the Indiana football team, as I’ve said before and I’ll say again, is one of the greatest stories of all time. And tonight marks yet another historic moment with the championship matchup between the Hoosiers and the University of Miami.
There’s an obvious narrative around that game. It’s Miami. It’s at Hard Rock Stadium. Home field matters. But that framing skips over an important reality: Indiana University has the largest alumni base in the country—around 800,000—and I’m one of them.
So I want you to take a moment today, especially on this Martin Luther King Jr. holiday with the markets closed, to look at your trading through that same lens.
What assumptions are shaping your decisions right now?
Assuming Extended Trends Are About to End
One assumption traders fall into quickly is treating extended trends as if they’re on borrowed time. When markets continue higher without a meaningful pullback, it’s easy to start waiting for a deeper correction than what actually develops. That waiting can stretch on longer than expected, quietly pulling traders out of alignment with what price is doing in real time.
In some cases, that waiting turns into something more aggressive—trying to anticipate the turning point itself. Both paths draw attention away from the actual condition of the trend and toward an expectation about how long it should last.
A strong trading approach includes specific, data-based ways to evaluate whether a trend remains intact.
That evaluation might come from momentum, forecasting, direct price behavior, or another method you rely on consistently. The key is having defined signals that guide your decisions as conditions evolve.
Think about Indiana’s 15–0 season so far, and the possibility of 16–0. Longevity alone doesn’t end a run.
Assuming News Dictates Direction
Another assumption shows up around unexpected or high-intensity news. Greenland. Tariffs. Those developments have driven activity in gold, silver, and European markets, and movement followed quickly—as expected.
What varies much more than traders often anticipate is how far those moves extend and how long they persist. Markets can react sharply, stall out, reverse, or compress, all while headlines remain the same.
When you review your recent trades or your trade log, notice whether entries were based on observable setups or on expectations about how a market should respond.
Markets provide information continuously, and trades work best when they respond to that information directly.
Assuming System Changes Create Problems
Let’s come back to Indiana. NIL money and the transfer portal changed how college football programs recruit and retain players. That shift gave coaches new tools to build teams faster and with more precision. Coach Cignetti used those tools to bring in talent that fit his system and to apply his coaching approach immediately.
That adjustment reshaped what was possible for the program in a relatively short period of time.
Trading systems evolve in a similar way. You might change timeframes, or add or remove indicators as you refine your approach. Those updates are part of staying engaged and improving execution. What matters is tracking how those changes perform over time and letting results guide the next step, rather than projecting outcomes ahead of evidence.
Where Assumptions Start to Cost Real Money
Anyone who held tightly to their assumptions about Indiana football over the past couple of seasons—and acted on them—felt the consequences.
Trading carries the same dynamic.
When assumptions replace observation, decisions drift away from what the market is actually offering.
Taking time to identify those assumptions creates room to adjust, refine, and improve results.
And if Indiana can rewrite its story, there’s plenty of room for your trading to do the same.
~Hima
📅 PS — Trader Trainings This Week!
The calendar has been updated. Here’s what’s coming up:
Hima at the Wealth365 Summit
📅 Tuesday, January 20 at 10:00 AM ET
Ticker Request Live — free weekly trading show
📅 Tuesday, January 20 at 4:30 PM ET
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