Individual Traders
You have to be disciplined to trade successfully; we all know that, and it's one of the few pieces of trading advice that might apply universally. No matter what your trading style, market, timeframe, risk profile--whatever you do, you have to do it consistently and with discipline. It&
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.
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.
Individual Traders
So, I write and talk a lot about the tasks of trading, finding an edge, maintaining that edge, and having the discipline to apply it. Probably and statistics are important tools, and I try to help my readers work toward intuition. I spend a lot of time debunking some of
Guest Blog
I was going through comments on my blog recently (and I apologize for not keeping on top of them. It's on my to-do regularly list now!) I came across an excellent, long comment from Jochen in response to this post on market uncertainty. Frankly, I'm often
Readers Questions
Reader Mark asks a beginner's question that might not be such a beginner question after all: Hi Adam. This might seem like a silly beginner question, but what is the most important finance concept for a trader to know? I'm a college student taking finance and
Podcast
For the beginning trader, here are some thoughts and ideas for the first steps of your journey. For a developing trader, or for the successful trader, here is an invitation to take a few steps back and look at everything with beginner's eyes. Here are the show notes
Psychology
I’ve written and said many times before that simplicity is a good thing—if you have a methodology that is overly complex, there’s a pretty chance it won’t work. However, so many traders feel drawn to complexity—it feels right and good. Why is that? Why would
Individual Traders
In a recent blog post, I made the statement (borrowed from Jack Schwager), that you must have an edge to be successful in the marketplace, and, if you don't know what your edge is, you don't have one. This, of course, prompted the logical question from
Readers Questions
I received a good question from Nick: In many of your writings as well as the most recent podcast, you have mentioned looking at charts prior to going to bed. Given that the stock market closes much earlier in the evening, can you please elaborate on some of the benefits