Most platforms that run automated back testing and trading systems have extensive reporting capabilities to analyze performance. In these reports the software developers have included seemingly every possible statistical metric they could find. Reading these line by line quickly becomes information overload and can often leave the systems developer with more questions than answers. So we have narrowed down the … Read More
Losing Trades are Good for You?
One of the most overlooked opportunities in the speculative world of trading is the valuable information hidden within trading losses. Less experienced traders usually have a hate/hate relationship with losing trades and don’t want to spend much time thinking about them. We are conditioned to be winners! Losing trades are part of doing business, a necessary expense or as many … Read More
The Wandering Trader: Answers Lie Within
I’ve been wanderin’ early late From New York City to the Golden Gate And it don’t look like I’ll ever stop my wanderin’ –James Taylor As traders we want to spot best practices and co-opt them for our trading. I offer one for your trading in this post from a trader on our desk. Let me set the scene. I … Read More
Six Lessons on Systems Trading
In my recent post, Confessions from a Discretionary Trader, I wrote how I was spending more time each day learning about quantitative trading. Today I attended the live taping of our new course, SMB Systems Foundation, with market veterans Rick Martin and Andrew Falde at our NYC headquarters. Here are the six most interesting ideas I found shared in this course from … Read More
What Would You Like to Spend More Time Doing?
Dr. Steenbarger wrote an important post on optimal downtime for peak performance. This got me thinking about improving my downtime so I could increase my creativity and performance in my domain. Our modern society sets up procrastination and wasted time road blocks with Web surfing and endless options of unproductive TV. Months of wasted performance opportunity can pass without our … Read More
Four Ways Market-Neutral Traders Can Benefit From Technical Analysis
Even though Market-Neutral Traders may not be picking a direction, we are dealing with price movement. Knowing what directional traders are thinking and where there are likely to be areas of high volatility can be extremely beneficial. Knowing the market conditions you’re entering into, in advance, can help you to modify your entry or avoid entering a trade that’s not … Read More
Enhancing Trader Performance with James Montier
*****David Blair, The Crosshairs Trader, is a blogger/trader/educator who does a wonderful job of sharing research on elite performance and how it relates to trading. Below is his latest post for the SMB trading community.***** — Editor’s Note If you are not studying the markets with those who study market participants you are missing out on a vitally important aspect … Read More
Confessions from a Discretionary Trader
Okay, I have a confession. I am spending more and more time each trading day learning more about quantitative trading. And by that I do not mean learning to code. What do I mean? 1) Learning to use data to improve my discretionary decision-making 2) Working with our quants to build and tweak filters for my favorite setups, which perpetually … Read More