Technical Patterns
A few months ago I wrote a post on a certain kind of trending pattern I have called "slide along the bands." This pattern is characterized by a market that pushes into either the upper or lower Keltner channel, and trends against that channel with relatively few pullbacks.
Trading tools
Continuing on with the short series on backtesting in Excel, let's look at some tools to visualize data and make some simple calculations. Excel is a good tool for quick and dirty data visualization in some cases--basic Excel graphs can be made quickly and show the relationships between
General Comments
If you've been following along with the short Excel course, you've created a spreadsheet using SPY daily data, and added daily TLT data to the sheet in another column. I received a few questions about why we needed to match the two series with a VLOOKUP
Nested Pullback
Patterns are important in trading; you might even say that trading is basically a game of recognizing the right patterns and doing the right thing when they happen. Most of you who have read my blog or my book, or have seen the research I write every day, know that
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
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