General Comments
What a long, strange year 2020 has been. It’s too early to write any kind of meaningful retrospective, but I think it’s fair to say this has been a challenging year for everyone—and it’s not over yet. This has not been a productive year, for most
Technical Patterns
Just a quick lesson here, but an important one. Take a look at the chart above. Was there anything that could have helped us predict the breakdown on that last bar? There's a lot going on on any chart. In this case, we had a long bull flag
Support / Resistance
This is a continuation of a recent blog post in which I introduced the MarketLife PowerLevels. These levels are predicted support and resistance with a robust quantitative edge, available on all timeframes, and before the open of the bar. Even more important, the concepts in this blog can be applied
Trading tools
Levels are everywhere in trading. There are thousands of ways to find, define, use, and misuse levels. Many levels simply don’t have an edge. In this blog post, I want to share some work we’ve done recently for our MarketLife members, and I’ll give you some concrete
Trading tools
Kpos is short for "Keltner Position" and it boils down many elements of price action into a single number. I want to share some ideas for using this powerful tool, and give you some insight into how we think about it. Channels, in general The idea of drawing
Trader Development
I received a question from a reader, Cian, who asks: … My goal is to become a career trader. I am 30 years old and I am currently unemployed due to the covid 19 situation. I have a lot of free time on my hands and I want to really dedicate
Anti
Today, I want to share some thoughts I’m having on a pattern I usually skip in my own trading. I’m wondering if maybe these are trades I should be taking… The chart above shows a pattern that is almost an anti. (See other examples here.) But not quite.
Technical Patterns
When I discuss a chart or market, I often talk about the “dominant technical factor.” This is a useful concept that can help anyone, regardless of your experience level, to read a market better. What is a dominant technical factor, how do you find it, and what can go wrong?
Breakout
Patience is a critical skill in trading. But, like everything, balance matters. Being “too patient” is as bad as being impatient. How do we find the balance? One answer is to think about how and where patterns fail. The chart above shows a trade that we discussed daily with our
Psychology
What is different and what stays the same? This is one of the key questions traders who trade on different timeframes or in different markets face. We often hear the argument that a technical tool or pattern works just the same on any market or any timeframe, that we can
Breakout
Just a brief blog post here to share some pattern lessons from the S&P 500. First, context matters, and that context is: * Bullish because of the existing uptrend from the March 2020 lows. Trend integrity matters. * Bullish because all-time highs just overhead provide a “magnetic” pull for indexes.
Psychology
Continuing from my last post, I want to explore how emotion influences our thinking and bias. Humans are not (purely) rational In my trading and investment work, one of the things I stress is that all human decisions are made from a combination of reason and emotion. Even if you