General Comments
Today, we will add another data series to our file we created yesterday that had daily SPY data in it. It's not quite as simple as pasting the new data into the sheet; we need to make sure they line up correctly. Tomorrow, we will take a little
Trading tools
Continuing from yesterday's post, let's roll up our sleeves and get into the process of managing data in Excel. The purpose of this short series of posts is to give you tools to look into the market's motions and begin to tease out some
Trading tools
I've received many questions about how to do basic backtesting in Excel. I think I wrote in my book that we all have a love/hate relationship with Excel: it's a good way to do some quick and dirty tests, it is on practically every computer
Breakout
I'm convinced that one of the biggest lies of traditional technical analysis (TA) is that "you can apply any tool to any market or any timeframe with the same results." These claims are usually "backed up" with a few examples of an indicator slapped
Chart of the Day
I thought it might be useful to star the week with a look at trends and possible inflections in a number of major markets. Here's a quick look at stocks, biotechs, Treasury futures, and crude oil. Bottom line: * Stocks failed to develop downward momentum. Further consolidation around current
Individual Traders
The idea of "trading for a living" has, no doubt, motivated an army of new and developing traders over the years. Perhaps people look at their current jobs, and think that trading would be less work. Perhaps it is simply love of the markets and trading, and the
Individual Traders
A reader sent me a question this week on how to develop mental toughness in discretionary trading, noting that his own toughness seemed to be getting less tough as he went through the learning process. I thought it was a good question, and I spent a whole podcast answering it.
Podcast
I received a good question this week from a reader, Vladan: Adam, can you please talk in one of your podcasts about mental strength when it comes to discretionary trading and how to improve it. I know it ultimately comes from conviction, backtesting and knowledge but even then it has
Individual Traders
I've been in this business for about two decades, and I've seen some... let's say... "stuff". One of the most interesting things is that everyone, in developing their process or system, tends to focus attention on the wrong things; part of the
Pullback
So, we live in a world in which investors are nervous. Everyone knows the Fed is going to raise rates, it's only a question of when and how much. Everyone knows that bond prices move inversely to rates, so higher rates will lead to lower bond futures prices.
Pullback
Short answer: probably not. The long answer is more instructive, so let's get started. Context matters, but what does that mean? What is context? In this case, the longer-term relative performance of the broad healthcare sector gives us some insight. The following chart, which I published in my
Readers Questions
A reader, Mira, asks an interesting question: I've been going through your blog and podcast and have been surprised at some of the trading tools you don't use that everyone else seems to use. I thought it might be interesting if you could just do an