I work with a lot of traders trying to “make the turn” – that is the turn to consistently profitable. Among the plethora of issues preventing the average trader from being consistent, one has come up rather often recently. The gap. The gap between what you see as great opportunity at the end of … Read More
Next Step to Improve Your Playbook
Yesterday we talked about how market neutral options traders usually generate their best returns when directional equities traders are struggling to find opportunities. Here’s one practical way you can begin to add market neutral options to your playbook. Action: Use midday as options time The best opportunities for short term equities trading is at the open and close of each … Read More
Trades We Make When Volatility Spikes
In this video Steven Spencer discusses trading during volatile periods.
Volatility Has Returned, But for How Long?
Here’s something that you can learn from and potentially add to your trading to increase your chances of being profitable every month. SMB added an options trading desk a few years ago. Over that time we have seen a very valuable pattern develop. When directional equities and futures traders are struggling with low volatility, the options desk is usually doing … Read More
“Just Tell Me What to Do”
Developing traders are sometimes humble (or desperate) enough to make a request for help that sounds something like “just show me”, “give me a step by step”, “what’s an if-then that I can use”, etc. The response we provide is usually disappointing. The developing trader wants the answer to begin with “whenever you see this happen, do this…”. However, our … Read More
Building your trading team
Performance isn’t exclusively about skill and strategy. In fact, one top coach leaves all of this out of his top three keys to building a team. This is interesting to us as traders, as some of us trade in teams or something like teams, for improved performance. Team Trading is part III of our training for new traders on our … Read More
Stay away from these stocks
Hi Michael, I love One Good Trade. A book on Trading has never been so insightful yet so simple and engaging. Even Mark Douglas and (xxxx) can borrow a leaf or two from the simple, familiar language. I love it. Currently shopping for The PlayBook. Back to trading; in ‘One Good Trade’ you advise traders to avoid stocks with high … Read More
How to make better trading decisions
In this Ted talk below, writer Julia Galef argues that making good decisions is dependent on employing a scout mindset. This talk is helpful for us as traders to make the best trading decisions. Galef breaks mindset into two categories: scout mindset and soldier mindset. The soldier mindset defends their ideas. This “motivated reasoning” tries to make some ideas win … Read More