One of our readers asked a great question recently in response to our blog posts. Our reader, Sandor, pointed out that we have the tendency to write about the computer programs that populate most active stocks in the market. But we haven’t really explained fully what they do or their impact on us short term traders. So I want to … Read More
Learning to Grind it Out
Last Thursday after the close I was reading through our newswire service and saw that their in-house traders posted comments about their trading and saw something that caught my attention. Most of them said that they had traded lightly this week given the current market conditions. Further, I have heard from traders on the street that they have found the … Read More
Revenge Trading: Just Walk it Off, Friend
A few weeks backs I wrote about catching yourself before disaster hits. In that entry I discuss what happens when you make a couple of mistakes in a row that lead to complete disaster. Then, a couple of weeks back we got a comment in one of our blog posts that touched on this subject. I would like to expand … Read More
Trading Multiple Asset Classes
From time to time I get asked during interviews if I trade other asset classes during the trading day. My answer is always yes and no. I do longer term swing trades in the FX market but no, I do not trade both FX and equities intraday very frequently. When I do I tend to lose my focus and do … Read More
System Writing Without Trading Skills
Every now and then we receive emails from new traders seeking capital to trade their systems. Their academic backgrounds are impressive. They all have worked very hard at fine tuning their strategy based on historical data. They tend to be avid technical analysis students. Most have crunched statistics on their systems to support their claims. However, most lack the trading … Read More
Picking Your Tier Size, Part II
In my last entry last week I presented an simple yet powerful approach to picking your tier size based on the risk you take on a play. Furthermore, the blog entry describes how to go about picking a tier size that works well independently of what kind of stock you are trading any minute of your day. In this entry … Read More
Picking Your Tier Size, Part I
Happy new year to you all! I have spent some of the last few days off thinking about my trading and things I need to improve this year. While watching my archive of tapes in the days that I struggle I have found some inconsistency with my tier size. I have seen this problem in a couple of our guys … Read More
The Right Daily Stop Loss Amount
There is a fine line between failing and making it as a trader. Whether you trade with a prop firm or trade for yourself it is important to have an appropriate stop loss. Having too small of a daily stop loss will keep you out of the game too many times and will impair your ability to grow as a … Read More