New traders are trained by the financial media to believe that accurately predicting the market is the only way to gain an edge. Meanwhile professional traders and prop firms around the world successfully navigate the market without forward-looking analysis. Here are three over-simplified components to a portfolio strategy that do not require predictive trading: 1) Buy (long) instruments that are … Read More
Sign Up for Our Free Trading Webinar: How to Achieve Your Trading Goals for 2014
“You can be better tomorrow than you are today!”– Mike Bellafiore, The PlayBook At SMBU we asked our trading community to share their trading goals for 2014 with us. If you have not shared your trading goals for 2014 with us, please consider sharing them here. I made a list of my goals in a recent post, Seven Goals for This Trader … Read More
What is Risk?
What is risk? Imagine a word that everyone threw around constantly, but that no one could define. A word that was critically important, but never used properly. In trading, that word is “risk”. Of course, we have to use the word constantly. We are taking risk in order to generate a return. We put on positions and make sound … Read More
SMBU’s Top Ten Trading Blog Posts of 2013
SMBU’s Top Ten trading blog posts for 2013: The Failure Rate of a Proprietary Trader The Opportunity for a Prop Trader Lessons Learned From a Million Dollar Loser What I Learned From the Best Trader at Citibank Ten Takeaways From a Top Trading Coach Do You Have a System to Identify and Trade Breakouts? Ten Ideas for Creating a Good … Read More
Seven Goals for This Trader in 2014
Here are my personal goals for 2014: 1) Hit my target weight goal. I had a bit of a health scare this year, when an EKG came back abnormal during a routine life insurance exam. Hitting my target weight is now essential according to my cardiologist. I wear a fitbit to calculate my steps each day. My goal is 10k steps a … Read More
Enhancing Trader Performance by Resolving To Keep Trading Simple
*****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 As we kick off the new year I thought it would be fitting to suggest a trader resolution designed to enhance trader … Read More
A Consolidation Trade ($TDC)
During SMB’s most recent The PlayBook Checkup with Bella we discuss: A Consolidation Trade ($TDC). This is a basic intraday technical analysis pattern that every developing trader should learn. We discuss: Who cares what $MS thinks about $TDC and how this should affect your trading? A 52-week high is more important than an intraday high in $SPY A news pattern … Read More
Trading Lesson: Fade Trade—$TSLA
Tesla has demonstrated itself to be one of the very best short term trading vehicles in 2013 (no pun intended). After putting in an all time high above 190 it has presented numerous setups on both the long and short side. READING THE TAPE This trade began as a “pattern recognition” trade but morphed into a “tape trade” as there … Read More