Technical Patterns
One important question for discretionary traders to consider is how to weigh objective and subjective elements in technical analysis. Some things are simple and clear, which is one reason that many traders focus on indicators: Price is above the moving average, or it is not. The MACD histogram is higher
Pullback
There are patterns in market prices that can point to trading opportunities and potential profits. This is one of the fundamental assumptions of technical/tactical trading (and can be verified by quantitative and statistical analysis.) Most people are familiar with the idea of finding patterns to set up trades, but
Podcast
Process--it doesn't sound exciting, but it's maybe the most important part of what we do. In fact, it's the Holy Grail in trading: having something you can replicate year after year that will bring consistent results--this is how a successful trading program is built.
Trader Development
It's easy to make money in the market. Anyone can place a winning trade; no expertise, experience, knowledge, or edge is possible. It's not so easy to make money in the long run, or to make any kind of consistent money in the market. Knowing that
Podcast
A_Joe wrote to ask me for some thoughts on how to read a chart. Here is his question: A Quote goes "People See What They Have Learnt to See". Would Request to Enlighten me on the Line of Thinking on Seeing a Chart. My Line of Thinking
Technical Patterns
One skill that is often overlooked in chart reading is the ability to look at a bar on a chart and to infer what price action might have created that bar. In practical terms, this means being able to look at a bar on one time frame and immediately understand
Support / Resistance
I can get right to the punchline, and make this a very short blog post: don't trade when the market you trade is in consolidation; more specifically, do not trade when the timeframe you trade is in consolidation. The "small losses" that accumulate when we trade
Intraday Trading
For intraday traders, trend days can offer outsized rewards. For some styles of traders, much of the work of trading is focused on capturing trend days, and most of the profits for the month may come from one or two trend days, with most of the other days showing small
Podcast
Trading is hard, but it's even harder because our emotions so often work against us. In this episode, I look at some ideas for managing emotions and putting them to work for you, instead of against you. Here are the show notes: Every decision we make is a
General Comments
I wrote a post late last week on the value of admitting what we don't know. I made some arguments about the dangers of false confidence, and the errors we can make if we don't take the time to think deeply about the limits of our
General Comments
We live in a world where most of our basic needs are fulfilled; most of us have food and water, we have a sense of safety and security, a sense of community and belonging, and, most of us most of the time, can work on that oft-elusive "pursuit of
Breakout
I've been writing about this for quite a while, tweeting about it, pointing out the relative strength in smaller cap names, constructive sector flows, volatility compression that could support a strong trend thrust, and a number of other factors--US stock indexes are well set up for an upside