I received the following inquiry from one of our talented new traders while going over our mentoring spreadsheet. “I took a pretty big rip late in the day in this stock and wanted to know if I got out of it the right way; there was a battle between 48.12 and 48.15 and I paid for 100 at 48.16 when … Read More
Don’t Overthink the Market
Saw a lot of tweets about whether the market could trade higher this afternoon. Chirp! There were the call outs that volume was light. Chirp! Some pointed at the financials not rallying. Chirp! Others highlighted the weakness in V, MA, JPM, etc. I have to share a funny story. One of the smartest guys we have traded with … Read More
The Week That Was: May 26 – 29, 2009
The action in this shortened week started on a strong note, and finished on a strong note. After popping above 90 on the SPY in the opening minutes of trading on Tuesday, the bulls seemed to be in control for the most part, never dropping 89, even when it appeared on Thursday that we would be trading down to the … Read More
Why Inexperienced Traders Fail to Hold Their Winners
One of the most difficult skills to master for a younger trader is holding a position for a larger move. I’m going to discuss the reasons that I believe this is the case and some of the things SMB does to help its traders improve on this very important skill. I will also briefly discuss one of the younger traders … Read More
Fundamentals
Trading is not just about reading charts, or reading the tape. We also must understand the market’s and a stock’s fundamentals. We are not fundamental traders but we use fundamentals to help us increase our win rate. For the intraday trader we use fundamentals very specifically. Let’s discuss. We used fundamentals to help us profit in JCG yesterday. Yesterday JCG … Read More
The Face of a High Short Interest
Before I trade a stock I check its short interest. Why? Because it may affect how the stock trades. Simply, the higher the short interest the more buyers there may be intraday. 26 percent of the float is short JCG. I considered this with my every trade today. Let’s discuss. In our SMB AM Meeting we discussed 25 as resistance … Read More
Sabotage
Today on the desk I heard,”Oh that MON is so hard.” And it was at times. In fact it was very difficult about 90 percent of the trading day. But it was not hard. There were three simple trades that if made would have left even the average trader profitable. Let’s discuss. At 82.75 the offer would not lift in … Read More
Find the Best Teacher
Mike wrote a very thoughtful article for SFO Magazine about how to find the best teacher. In the article, Mike discusses the characteristics of a great teacher and why it is important to find someone with these qualities when searching for guidance. You can read the article here. Feel free to leave comments on this blog.
