The market has changed a lot in the past few years. When Mike and I started SMB the market was in the early stages of an 18-month uptrend that led to an incredible momentum based trading market late ’07 and ’08. The most important skill by far during that time was being able to read the tape. You had to … Read More
The Money Trade—LNKD
In the fall of 2010 I wrote a post called “The Money Trade“. It outlined the mindset of momo hedge funds and how when they all decide to pile into growth stocks such as CMG, FOSL, CRM, LULU etc. you can quickly identify their fingerprints via after hours and pre-market price action. A few days ago LNKD reported earnings and … Read More
Free Webinar–Following The Big Picture Trend
The theme for Steve Spencer’s 2012 Webinar Series will be “Do The Right Thing”. The first Webinar of the year will break down several recent trading setups and how following a higher time frame trend can make you more money and cause you less heartache. As short term traders it is easy to flip back and forth betwen 1, 5 … Read More
Nasty Is As Nasty Does
On February 7th we discussed CSTR in the AM Meeting. It was gapping higher on a better than expected earnings announcement. But the price action in the pre-market was erratic. There were no clear pre-market trends and when it moved above/below s/r levels it would quickly reverse. This is a stock that I will not touch on the Open. Stocks … Read More
I Deserved To Lose More
(post originally written February 10th 2012) We identified FSLR as an In Play stock this morning (link to story from Benzinga Pro). It was gapping lower in the pre-market to a recent support level. As a trader part of my job is to figure out what other traders and investors will do in any given situation. In the case of … Read More
February 3rd Gameplan Review
SMB Capital Stocks In Play Call Review. Each morning before the market opens we discuss the stocks that we believe will offer the best risk/reward trading opportunities intraday. Today’s review featured GILD, APKT and IDIX gameplan feb 3rd Steven Spencer is the co-founder of SMB Capital and SMB Training and has traded professionally for over 15 years. His email is … Read More
Can You Tell The Difference?
There are three ways short term traders lose money: incorrect analysis, expectancy (a certain % of trades just don’t work), or making trades based on emotion (this one is a biggy for most). Take a look at the price action from GMCR and QCOM after they reported earnings. Since the initial down moves on the Open one has been a … Read More
The AMZN Trade
Here is the followup from my earlier post titled “The Value Added Tweet“. I will break down my thoughts in bullet points to move this along so I can try to get some sleep. AMZN has a history of being bought on large gap downs after earnings. Even if it doesn’t fill gaps it still is capable of having large … Read More