I’d like to ask a question: Thinking about casinos, would you rather have the house edge, or would you rather be the gambler?? Other than entertainment value, of course, being the house is the only way to consistently make money. That’s what system trading is all about—developing a system that has a well defined, consistent edge—called expectation in the trading … Read More
SMB Welcomes Rick Martin As A New Blogger-Systems Trading
SMB is proud to introduce a Rick Martin as a primary blogger for the SMB Blog. Rick is the lead developer for SMB Systems Trading, LLC. His career on Wall Street has spanned over 25 years and has included stints as director of research for Ryan Beck, Tucker Anthony, Swiss Bank, and The Chicago Corporation. Beginning in 1999 his focus moved … Read More
How Framing Impacts Our Trading
How do you decide what stock to buy? How do you determine the best time to buy? And once we have made the decision to buy when do we sell? These questions, and how we answer them, are a direct result of how we frame the questions, thus directly impacting our trading performance. Framing determines the viewpoint from which we … Read More
Avoiding Indicatoritis
Would-be traders all tend to focus on indicators. The sense, I suppose, is that if there’s just some magic indicator to be added to the chart, then trading becomes easy. They’re way off. Personally, I don’t rely on indicators. I am price-and-volume based when making decisions on trades, and although I might occasionally glance at a moving average or something, … Read More
Free Options Webinar: SMB’s Options Tribe: Tuesday, October 18, 2011 at 5pm EDT: Broken Wing Butterflies
Tuesday October 18, 2011 at 5:00 pm Eastern Daylight Time SMB’s Options Tribe is an online community of options traders dedicated to sharing successful options trading ideas with all of our members worldwide. Each week the community will meet online for the primary purpose of watching live presentations made by outstanding veteran options traders and experts in the world of … Read More
So You Want To Fade This Market?
Over the years I have seen a very strong tendency with traders wanting to be short the market at the first signs of any strength after they have just observed major weakness. It feels like yesterday a former trader I worked with was shorting SPY at 76 one or two days after we had put in the March 09 bottom. … Read More
Understanding The Volatility
We are about two months in since the market broke its longer term uptrend. With the break of that uptrend has come a sizable increase in the market’s volatility. There are trading opportunities up the wazoo. But one thing we have noticed about this volatility versus what we saw in the fall of 2008 is the time stocks spend trending … Read More
Free Options Webinar: SMB’s Options Tribe: Today at 5pm EDT: Debit Spreads
Today at 5:00 pm Eastern Daylight Time SMB’s Options Tribe is an online community of options traders dedicated to sharing successful options trading ideas with all of our members worldwide. Each week the community will meet online for the primary purpose of watching live presentations made by outstanding veteran options traders and experts in the world of options trading. This … Read More