A common mistake that new and developing traders make in the options market is to trade strategies that involve high commissions relative to the earning potential. We often see newer options traders applying great options strategies to the wrong instruments. Option trading strategies that involve frequent management to control risk can be commission intensive. This is especially true if you’re … Read More
New Insights For Swing Traders
SMB is often thought of as primarily a day trading firm. However, over the years we have expanded our playbook to include a diversified set of strategies and tactics. Some of these strategies include options, order imbalances, statistical arbitrage, automated trading, and position trading. The SMB Virtual Trader Floor is an exclusive and proprietary platform for traders to interact with … Read More
How to Buy a Stock that Already Went Up 20% in 4 Days
Early today we posted the awesome setup in AMBA. Here’s another trade that Steve Spencer talked about before the market opened. ACAD has been a high flyer lately. Many developing traders run into a psychological barrier when it comes to long ideas on stocks that have already risen 20% in a few days. Here was Steve’s take pre-market End result… … Read More
Live Example of How to Find the Best Trading Opportunities Each Day
Each day our firm broadcasts an AM meeting to cover the best opportunities that we see in the market. This meeting occurs in the minutes prior to the opening bell. What you don’t see in this meeting are the countless hours of preparation from earlier that morning and the night before. The traders at our firm work tirelessly each day … Read More
Why I’ll Be Trading Netflix Tomorrow
Netflix is the undisputed heavyweight champion of momentum stocks. Many have the false impression this makes it a great stock to trade on a daily basis. Oh contraire! For years its intra-day behavior has been quite erratic. But occasionally it sets up quite well. And when it does you should pay attention. Tomorrow, NFLX will begin trading split adjusted 7:1. … Read More
The Negative Drift of VXX
VXX has been a hot topic on the desk at SMB during the recent increase in market volatility. If you aren’t aware, the VXX is an exchange traded note (ETN) issued by Barclays that has the objective of following the cost of owning implied volatility. The biggest challenge with owning implied volatility is that implied volatility has a limited shelf … Read More
Cool Technology With Some Great Ideas
In the past few years SMB has built some remarkable trading tools. We led the pack in moving to HTML5 years before others (can use on smartphones and tablets). But beyond the cool technology in Scanner, Radar, and Real Time it is the actual idea flow that comes from very experienced traders. Traders who have spent years learning how to … Read More
What it Takes to Go Live at Our Firm
SMB receives approximately 5,000 applications each year to trade for the firm. As you can imagine, it’s nearly a full time job to sort through 400+ new applications each month. Of the thousands that apply each year, the net acquisition of new traders that go live with the firm is less than 50. That’s right… Less than 1% of applicants … Read More