We are now 1-week into the Football World Cup. This is the 23rd time the competition has been held, and tens of millions of fans are tuning in to watch matches across the globe.
By the end of today (18/06/2026), all the teams will have played at least one group game, and a few will have taken the field for their second match.
Football is a simple game. The team that scores the most goals and concedes the fewest will win
48 teams are competing in North America, initially for the right to play in the next round of teh competition.
Each of these teams has a manager and coaching staff, who have selected what they believe to be the best players available to them, and they will have a strategy/ plan for each game they play.
Of course, another sportsman, the boxer Mike Tyson, famously said that
“ Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face”
Metaphorically speaking, that's just as true in football as it is in trading; the skill in both cases is to have factored in the possibility of an upset, and to be ready and able to adjust your tactics /approach to take account of an unexpected development, once it's happened.
It remains to be seen if Portugal, a contender in some people's opinion, can recover from the shock of being held to a draw by the DRC.
Head coach Roberto Martinez has been widely criticised for his tactics and his unwillingness or inability to change them, and his personnel during the game.
In football, management failure is often met with the sack, though this is usually cushioned by a substantial payoff.
Traders in the market don’t usually get a golden parachute.
And if they fail to adapt or adjust their trading tactics in time, they end up with a zero balance in their account.
Albert Einstein famously said that the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
Capital preservation is often said to be the no.1 rule in trading
In football, it’s don’t concede a goal.
Sometimes these rules are modified to “score more than the opposition” and “have more winners than losers”, but that rarely works long term, and in both football and trading, consistency and longevity are what sort the winners from the also-rans.
At heart, every football fan thinks that they could do a better job than their team's manager, but of course, they are unlikely to ever find out if they are right.
In the market, however, you get to test yourself against all other traders, and just like in football, the results are largely binary; that is, for every winner, there must be a loser.
Lose too many “matches,” and you are out of the continuous competition between buyers and sellers, that is, the financial markets.
So what tactics can a trader use to ensure they stay in the competition?
We have already touched on the idea that capital preservation is key; we can translate this to a phrase that's beloved by managers of smaller football clubs, in cup competitions, which is:
“You have got to be in it to win it “.
The key to becoming a successful/profitable trader is being exposed to as many high-probability trading opportunities as possible.
And to trade as many of these as you can, without compromising your risk and money management rules.
We can think of the trades you put on as your attacking players or forwards, and the money management and risk rules as your defenders.
The Midfield is the way you manage trades, while they are open, and the way you exit from a position when it's time to close them out.
Trailing stop losses can be likened to wing-backs, getting forward when the play allows, and the goalkeeper is the stop loss, the last line of defence that aims to protect you from larger losses.
Breaking your money management, risk, and exposure rules is equivalent to scoring an own goal or giving the ball away to the opposition striker in your 18-yard box.
A football team has two main choices when it comes to setting themselves out on the pitch: they can either aim to play with the ball, that is, play a possession game, or they can let the opposition have the ball for the majority of the time, but make it very difficult for them to break down their defensive formation.
Teams that set up defensively and play without the ball often counterattack when the opposition makes a mistake.
And that's the way I approach the markets
In counterattacking football, you look for opportunities when the opposition loses the ball, are out of position, have committed too many players forward, or perhaps when the goalkeeper is way off his line.
It's these types of moments that the defensive team tries to exploit.
In the market, I look for outliers, for stocks that behave differently from their peers or which are showing positive or negative relative strength.
The chart below is of cybersecurity firm Palo Alto Networks PANW US, which I highlighted to Idea Factory members back on 08/05/2026.
The reason I picked it out was that it started to behave differently. Having effectively traded sideways since January, the stock gapped higher on 7th May and posted another bullish candle thereafter.
That suggested that there was an appetite for the stock and scope for further upside momentum, which was confirmed by the fact that PANW US closed very close to the day's highs on May 8th.
The stock moved gently higher over the next couple of days, then it spiked once more, and never looked back.
Source: Barchart.com
Rallying from $194.85 to stand at $287.78, as of the close on 18/06/2026.
Note how there are far more up days than down days in the HLOC data below, and that the moves seen on up days are far larger than those seen on the down days.
PANW US HLOC 08/08/2026-18/06/20269
Source: Barchart.com
If you want to adopt a counterattacking strategy in the markets, here are some suggestions;
Look for changes in behaviour, for example, moves in stocks that have been trending or moving sideways.
Keep an eye out for reversal patterns on the chart, such as a hammer, which can highlight market bottoms or a shooting star, which can often signal a top or the rejection of a move higher.
Watch how a stock finishes relative to its daily high-low range. It's bullish when a stock consistently ends a session at or near the highs of the day, and bearish if it's often near the day's lows.
Source: Barchart.com
Watch out for broker comments and other news on the stock, which can bolster momentum, but may not always be picked up on immediately.
News Headlines in PANW US
Source: The Fly
Set price alerts at key support or resistance levels, round numbers, etc., a break of which might also act as a call to action in the trade
Pay attention to what the stock's moving averages are doing.
Short-term MA lines are a good guide to what's happening in the stock, and the direction they are pointing/heading can be a good guide to where the path of least resistance lies.
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