{"id":1816,"date":"2009-09-01T20:44:55","date_gmt":"2009-09-02T01:44:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.smbtraining.com\/blog\/?p=1816"},"modified":"2023-04-04T19:11:25","modified_gmt":"2023-04-04T23:11:25","slug":"our-approach-makes-the-most-sense-really","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.smbtraining.com\/blog\/our-approach-makes-the-most-sense-really","title":{"rendered":"Our Approach Makes the Most Sense (Really)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When I began trading in 1996 we identified the stocks we were going to trade from something called the &#8220;ticker&#8221;. This window that appeared on our trading platform identified stocks that were moving. We were taught to get long stocks that were going up and short stocks that were going down. We were momentum traders with state of the art technology that allowed us to take money from the hapless NASDAQ market makers each trading day.<\/p>\n<p>Some traders decided that more time should be spent on preparation and identifying additional trading opportunities. I worked with two excellent traders in my third year using longer term technicals to identify stocks that were poised to make large breakouts. I also learned the business profile of the top 500 NASDAQ stocks so that I was able to trade them if news broke on a competitor or in their sector. A new service emerged called briefing.com that tracked earnings reports and other breaking news on publicly traded companies. As traders we were able to identify certain news items that would make a stock move intraday.<\/p>\n<p>During the past nine years we have further refined what we believe are the best strategies for making money intraday. We recognize that the market will always change and we must add new things to our game. But the one constant will always be &#8220;Stocks In Play&#8221;. The idea is quite simple: If there is enough interest in a stock on a given day the best intraday trading setups will occur more frequently in this stock and work a greater percentage of the time.<\/p>\n<p>Many prop trading firms have struggled recently. A large part of their struggles is related to the idea that they need broad market movement intraday for their strategies to yield positive results. This is a flawed model. It is great to take advantage of major intraday moves in the market. I know that SMB has had unbelievable results on these types of days.\u00a0 But there is an ebb and flow to the market and you MUST have a strategy that will yield P&amp;L on the days the broader market is quiet.<\/p>\n<p>I was having a conversation earlier today with a trader at one of the top prop\u00a0 firms in the country. He mentioned that last week his firm had very good results but that Friday hadn&#8217;t provided much opportunity. I said I was confused as Friday had been SMB&#8217;s best day in 2009. He said that the broader market didn&#8217;t move. I agreed. Almost all of the action was in the few stocks that were In Play. Because his firm&#8217;s best traders were more &#8220;market&#8221; focused as opposed to &#8220;stock&#8221; focused they were unable to generate much P&amp;L.<\/p>\n<p>Our goal when we started SMB almost four years ago was to create the best short term trading desk on the Street. The only possible way to achieve that goal was to create a framework for traders to extract profits from the market each day. So out of necessity we developed a comprehensive <a href=\"http:\/\/www.smbtraining.com\">training program<\/a> that emphasizes intraday fundamentals, skill development, stock selection, and the trading setups with the greatest risk\/reward profile for intraday trades. Without <em>All<\/em> of these things we would have no chance of achieving our goal. Only time will tell whether they are enough&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/sspencer_smb\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/twitter-badges.s3.amazonaws.com\/follow_me-c.png\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Steven Spencer is the co-founder of SMB Capital and SMB University and has traded professionally for 17 years. His email is sspencer@smbcap.com.<\/p>\n<p>No relevant positions<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When I began trading in 1996 we identified the stocks we were going to trade from something called the &#8220;ticker&#8221;. This window that appeared on our trading platform identified stocks that were moving. We were taught to get long stocks that were going up and short stocks that were going down. We were momentum traders with state of the art &#8230; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.smbtraining.com\/blog\/our-approach-makes-the-most-sense-really\" class=\"more-link\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":143,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,8,15],"tags":[2223,2852],"class_list":["post-1816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-comments-2","category-steven_spencer_steves_blogs","category-trading_theory","tag-approach","tag-sense","no-post-thumbnail"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.1.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Our Approach Makes the Most Sense (Really) | SMB Training<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.smbtraining.com\/blog\/our-approach-makes-the-most-sense-really\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Our Approach Makes the Most Sense (Really) | SMB Training\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"When I began trading in 1996 we identified the stocks we were going to trade from something called the &#8220;ticker&#8221;. 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