General Comments
Last week, I officially started writing my next book, and I want to take a few moments to share some news with you. This book is being written to fill a need I see in the trading literature: a solid, comprehensive-yet-accessible, beginner's book for both trading and investing.
Climax
A quick lesson on trendlines and what they can tell us about market dynamics. Take a look at a fairly long-term chart of the Dow Jones Industrial Average (below) with trendlines doing back to the low in early 2016. First, notice the light little trendline that ends in late 2016.
Market Math
As I was wrapping up a Friday afternoon and getting ready to go play outside, I saw a post in a Facebook group where a guy asked what was up with the market because this was a rare day on which the market was down, and so was the VIX.
Trader Development
My recent blog generated more concern and controversy in my inbox than anything I’ve done in recent memory. Most of the messages I received were extremely well-intentioned, but, at least in my opinion, also misguided. I think this points to some fundamental principles behind mastery and hard work. Let
Individual Traders
I’ve been thinking a lot about failure recently, and I wanted to share a few of those thoughts with you today. It’s a little glib to simply say “failure isn’t bad” and “don’t be afraid of failure.” Failure is no fun, and, in some pursuits (skydiving?
Anti
Institutional Managers/Traders
Here's a look at history and the stats behind the fluctuations in the US Treasury Yield Curve.
General Comments
Given the complicated setup in the market tomorrow... and potential catalyst of post-FOMC volatility, I wanted to take a few minutes to share some stock screens. Keep in mind that these are "second-level" scans, meaning that you will need to do work to go through them and find
Psychology
I’ve had many discussions with traders in the last week in which I see a common theme: many people are very frustrated with this market. Many people feel very much out of sync with the swings, and I heard from more than one person “it’s like I’m
Technical Patterns
The first time you hear someone tell you to ignore something happening in the market, it might be surprising. Ignore it? I thought we were supposed to be trying to figure everything out! Why would we consciously ignore something? If we're trying to be responsible, educated traders, why
Trader Development
A few nights ago I decided to sharpen my knives. As many of my readers know, I spent some time in a professional kitchen, and there was a time when I did this knife sharpening routine several times a week, and often every day. But now I cook casually at
Psychology
This is a followup to my recent blog post on strings of losses in trading systems. I ended that blog with a promise to consider how the probabilities affected our behavior, and I’ve been swamped with requests to write this post! This is a good topic, and one that