Market regimes: why one strategy cannot work all year

Markets alternate between conditions. In a trending regime, breakouts follow through and pullbacks are shallow. In a range, breakouts fail and fading extremes works. In a volatile-choppy regime, both approaches suffer as ranges widen without direction.

Traders who do not classify the regime experience it anyway — as a strategy that 'stopped working'. Usually the strategy did not change; the environment did.

Classify objectively. Compare current average range to its longer-term average, measure how often the previous day's high or low is exceeded and held, or use a standard trend-strength indicator. Any consistent rule is better than intuition.

The simplest response is size, not strategy. Keep trading your approach in unfavourable regimes at half size rather than switching to an unfamiliar method — switching mid-drawdown reliably produces the worst of both.