Chasing is entering a trade after the move has already started — buying the breakout after it's extended, because the fear of missing out overrides the plan. It feels like decisiveness. It's usually the opposite: a late, emotional entry at the worst possible price, right before the pullback.

The mechanism

By the time a move is obvious enough to chase, the good entry is gone and the spread has widened as everyone piles in. You buy near the top of the impulse, the move mean-reverts, and you're immediately underwater on a position you took at a bad price. On short-dated options, chasing a spiking contract is especially brutal — you pay peak premium and peak IV.

The psychology

Chasing is FOMO in action — the discomfort of watching a move happen without you overrides the discipline to wait for your actual level. It's the mirror image of hesitation: first you freeze on the good entry, then you lunge at the bad one. Both are the same failure — emotion overriding the plan under pressure.

The market punishes the chase twice: a worse price going in, and a worse position coming out.

The fix

The only durable fix is to take the entry mechanically at the level you defined — or not at all. A system doesn't feel FOMO; it either got its price or it stands down and waits for the next setup, with zero emotional residue. Removing the human's fear-driven timing is one of the clearest arguments for non-discretionary execution — and it's built into how NoVo takes (or skips) an entry.