Having a legitimate game plan and strategy is the first step to having any success in the stock market, or any market you are trading. The second part is just as important: following the rules of the strategy. Now, if your strategy does not actually make sense or is flawed to begin with (which I see all the time from new traders), none of this matters; however, if you do have an actual strategy and then don’t follow the rules… as you’ll see in this scenario, “rule breaks” can be nasty.