The real thing that market makers fear is not skilled or well-informed retail traders, but retail traders who do not follow the market maker’s routines and can trade against human nature.

The common tactics used by market makers include breaking out to induce buying, pulling back to shake out weak hands, and exploiting retail traders’ psychology of chasing gains, cutting losses, panic, and greed, tightly trapping retail traders in their script. And the retail traders who can break out of this script mainly fall into three categories:

1. Traders with strict trading rules who resolutely follow them
No matter how the market maker manipulates with heavy selling or rapid rises, they only operate according to their rules, unaffected by emotions, making it impossible for the market maker to shake them through shakeouts.

2. Traders who can endure loneliness and setbacks, and do not watch the market constantly
Even when facing prolonged oscillations and fake breakouts by the market maker, they hold their core positions without wavering, ultimately only benefiting from the market maker’s passive lifts that allow these traders to profit.

3. Traders with very light positions and extremely stable mindsets
They use a small amount of capital to test the waters, and both gains and losses do not affect their mental state. The market maker cannot drive them away or exhaust them, allowing these traders to easily capture profits.

Ultimately, all of the market maker’s tactics are designed around human weaknesses. As long as you do not be greedy, afraid, impatient, or hesitant, and maintain a calm mindset, it will be very difficult for the market maker’s routines to take effect.