Breakout
Take a look at the chart above. Notice three things near the right edge of the chart: * An intermediate term moving average is flat * Price is never moving far from the moving average * Price is chopping back and forth on both sides of the moving average These are three simple
Trading tools
This weekend, a reader, Paul, asked: When is one better than the other or what are the subtle differences?Add stochastics to the discussion We had some discussion around this topic, but I think the answers really point to a deeper way of understanding indicators. In my first book, I
Market Math
As we round the corner into the Thanksgiving holiday, I thought I would share another piece of my old writing. I recently found this paper as I was searching through old documents; it was my first attempt to really crystallize my pattern testing and research into an academic format. Reading
Guest Blog
[Here's a guest post from a great system developer, honest guy, and my friend Kevin Davey. He beat me to the punch with an article on option selling/writing premium. Tom and I periodically revisit this concept to see if we are missing some way to package selling
Market Math
This is a slightly edited version of the note I sent to my Talon Advisors clients this weekend. There is always a lot of discussion about seasonality at the end of the year. This is a troublesome topic—on one hand, there are reasons why seasonality should work: portfolio managers
Chart of the Day
I write a lot of words, but sometimes words aren't really necessary. I'll just leave you a look at the current chart of the S&P 500 index (daily), alongside the chart from last year. This suggests that the market environment may have changed, perhaps?
Individual Traders
In a Facebook discussion group I run, Dan asked if anyone was worried about the market. In this own words: Should have gone to cash, taken a day or three off, and turtled up, gone small. Didn't.Struggling with fomo, missing out on the big one, when it
Intraday Trading
Most people know that stock markets tend to be much more active on the open and close, and are often "dead" in the middle of the day. This is important information for everyone. For intraday traders, the need to focus trading activity on the open and close is
Pullback
FOMO (fear of missing out) is a killer in the markets. One of the surest ways to lose money is to miss a trade, get frustrated, and then bang into a bunch of bad trades trying to make up for your miss. These emotions lead to many mistakes. This is
General Comments
At the end of last week (week ended 11/9/18), many technical analysis were pointing to "recoveries" in Europe and Asian stock indexes. The observation was that most global stock indexes had rallied over the past two weeks and were holding above lows. Throw in some (incorrect)
Market Math
Let's think a bit about "signal generation". When we test something in the market what we're looking for is an answer to "What happens after _______ occurs?" This is really the essence of all backtesting and system development--that question covers everything from casual
Breakout
I firmly believe the best trading lessons come from the market... and the best of the best trading lessons come from your own work and trading. Let me share some recent trades we published for our MarketLife clients. Below, you'll find every trade we published as part of