Trading Journals: What Format is Right for Me?
Periodically, I get questions about the "right way" to keep a trading journal. There's really no one right answer, as the jou...
The Reason I Don't Partner With Your Firm is Because You Are Cheap Whores
* You are a forex brokerage that lures small accounts with enticing promises of huge leverage; * You are a "prop firm" that requ...
Finding Opportunity in Loss: A Hallmark of Great Trading
Let's say I think stocks will break to the upside and I take a long position. The market goes my way initially, but then reverses. Wha...
Sunday Potpourri: Weekend Perspectives
* What to look for and what to do when trading demons get out of control ; * How to change yourself: seek out discrepancy ; * Is there a...
Keeping an Eye on Three Trading Ranges
Are we in the midst of an ongoing bull market? Are we getting ready for a double dip into economic (and market) weakness? I'm watching ...
When Risks Exceed Rewards: The Costs of Overtrading
In my recent post , I took a look at some of the dynamics of one's trading edge. That post assumed a relatively modest degree of risk t...
What Is Your Edge in the Markets?
For this post, I made extensive use of Henry Carstens' P&L Forecaster , a nifty tool that estimates returns for a given trading edge...
Stock Market Momentum and Price Cycles
The most sensitive indicator of stock market momentum that I've been able to develop is the measure of Demand and Supply that I post eac...
The Risk Oscillator: An Intermarket Gauge of Sentiment
Here I've created an oscillator from the Risk Asset Index presented in the previous post . This measure captures whether risk assets ar...
The TraderFeed Risk Asset Index: A Measure of Risk Asset Performance
Above I'm introducing what I'm calling the Risk Asset Index. It is an initial version of a proprietary measure that assesses the da...
One of the Best Life Lessons I've Learned
Back in the day, I was a graduate student in psychology at the University of Kansas, and I got it into my head that I wanted to experience ...
Five Lessons From Recent Trading
Just a few reflections on my own trading that might be of relevance to readers: 1) So much of my edge is not needing to trade . I had a lo...
Strong Readings for the Week
* The most common problem I help traders with; my fave techniques for dealing with it; * What it takes to sustain market focus as an ac...
Midday Briefing for February 26th: Catching Day Structure
If I had to identify one key skill that intraday traders most need to learn, high up on my list would be the ability to recognize day struct...
Relative Volume: How Busy Can You Expect the Market to Be?
Relative volume is an important indicator that tells you whether markets are more or less busy at a given time of day compared with normal v...
Why Intraday Trading is So Difficult
Imagine the market affected by two relatively independent vectors. One vector describes directionality: the "trendiness" of the ...
Wisdom and More to Close Out the Week
* My checklist for preparing for the trading day ; * Five of my guiding principles ; * Thanks to Ms. Tavakoli for link to this article o...
Morning Briefing for January 26th: Pickup in Bearish Sentiment
Note the recent spike in the CBOE put/call ratio. Spikes in the ratio have been a nice tell recently for market lows, as excess pessimism h...
Brainstorming Notes
Technical indicator constructed with the last X hours of data. A lookback period of Y days. Buy signals at level A in the indicator; sell si...
Daily Profit Targets: Handicapping Likely Directional Movement
This is a follow-up on my post outlining the recalculated daily profit targets . Going back to January, 2000, we find: About 70% of all tr...
Using the Intraday Equity Put/Call Ratio to Gauge Sentiment
The stock market opened sharply lower this morning and broke below important support in early trade. Although this looked quite bearish, th...
Midday Briefing for January 25th: Forming New Value Area
Note how we are forming a fresh value area between 1093 and 1097 in the ES contract, as failure to take out Friday's lows thus far led t...
Reflections on an Intuitive Trade
I'm not sure it's difficult to teach good trading to motivated, capable students. So much of good trading is pattern recognition an...
Accepting vs. Rejecting Price Magnet Levels
Recall the recent post re: price magnets in the market . We've seen a rejection of such a price level (blue arrow above) in early ES tr...
Recalculating Daily Profit Targets
As regular readers are aware, a cornerstone of my preparation for the day is calculating price targets for the trading session, so that I ca...
Finding Your Niche in Life and Trading
Previous posts in this series: Greatness, Creativity, and Trading Success Vitality and Success in Life and Trading The Psychology of Those W...
When Markets Are Weak, Should You Tweak?
I've commented recently on the topic of how what seems visually obvious--the continuation of short-term market trends--is not usually t...
Indicator Update for January 24th
Last week's indicator review found that we had fallen into a range after starting the year on a bullish note. With the stock market de...
Relative Volume Update: Gauging Market Participation
Volume is important in that it gives us some idea of the degree of institutional participation in market moves. Volume also correlates very...
Thinking Without Words
Here is an eye-opening video of what can be accomplished with an abacus . Notice that what's really accomplished here is rapid thinking ...
Midday Briefing for February 24th: Watching Patterns Across Time Frames
We can see from the last several days of market action that we have been forming important support in the 1090-1092 area of the ES futures (...
Using the Day's Pivot Level to Identify Trending Days in the Stock Market
One of the most important price levels for my own trading is the pivot level for the day. The way I calculate pivot level is as an approxim...
Decline in a Firm Stock Market: What Comes Next?
Hats off to Rennie Yang of Market Tells , who identified a worthwhile historical pattern relevant to today's trade. I find the patterns...
Mid-Weekend Wrap: Markets and More
* By controlling trading risk, you control your brain ; * Trading lessons from neuroeconomics ; * Growing perceptions of sovereign debt r...
Key Reads for a Tuesday Eve
* What's your coping style ? * Steps for improving how you cope with stress ; * Anticipating sovereign debt defaults ; * Sobering lo...
Price Rarely Tells the Whole Story
The early afternoon tweet a little after 1 PM CT noted that the ES lows at that time (left blue arrow above) were not accompanied by lows in...
Midday Briefing for February 23rd: Thoughts on Game Changers
We can see from the updated Market Delta chart that we rejected the volume bulge that had built up in pre-opening trade around 1104-1106 in...
The Psychology of Those Who Win
Last year I gave a talk at a conference of traders and concluded the session by giving out my email address and phone number and inviting th...
