I was talking to one of our trainees today about starting to trade a live account. He said “Steve, I don’t want to make a lot of trades each day.” I told him that he should be looking for the best setups in the stocks he is watching and execute on those trades. That is certainly my goal each day. … Read More
Trading Our Best AM Idea – December 8, 2009
Each morning ALJ comes into my office and requests I give him our “Best AM Idea” for the Open so he can blog about it. Bella is not a huge fan of putting out the specific trades we are considering making because he believes successful trading is about having trading skills and not about having some great trading idea. My … Read More
Stages of Successful Trading Part II
The stock I was alluding to in my first post was AMZN. It had been trending up for five days and most of our trades have been on the long side. I mentioned in the morning meeting that 147 would be a 50% move since the gap up on earnings so I would like for signs of a top as … Read More
Stages of Successful Trading
I am certain that there are a myriad of ways to describe how a novice trader moves from lack of expertise toward mastery. I would like to use the below as a framework to describe the progression of the traders on our desk. In Part II I will give an example of a specific stock that was In Play today … Read More
Putting the Pieces Together
I highlighted SEED today during our Stocks In Play meeting. I mentioned a few levels that I thought would be important and how I would trade it from a bigger picture perspective. I talked about how AMZN traded yesterday and the level I viewed as the best possible entry for a long trade. I then discussed AIG and highlighted some … Read More
Morning Recap
Normally during a strong market we look for a bounce with such a large gap. Circumstances are a little different this time as Asia has sold off hard for two days and we need to play catch up. I’m still a buyer at key support outlined below. Especially in the stocks that have been strongest recently such as AMZN, FCX, … Read More
Holiday Interruptus!
It looks like holiday interruptus for the traders at SMB. The financial/real estate bubble that is better known as Dubai has burst like a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon. As I write this quick note the Hang Seng is down about 550 points but 200 points off its low. The S&P futures are off 23 and the NAS 100 futures … Read More
Focus on The Fundamentals
Wouldn’t it be great if every day you could turn on your trading platform at 9:25AM, quickly type up a few stocks, and then start trading the Open? Woudn’t it be great if every day you could buy/short 5,000 shares at some great technical level and cash out for 10K by 10:00AM? Wouldn’t it be great if the stocks you … Read More