I had a tough Open today covering two shorts within pennies of their highs and then watching them trade several points lower. The rest of the day was fairly productive as I observed some of the most In Play stocks and called out significant levels to other traders on the desk. But my mood changed from neutral to very positive … Read More
Using Levels
SMB shares a ton of important price levels with its traders. Occasionally, we tweet these levels to the at large trading community as well. For a skilled intraday trader there is a lot of money to be made trading off of these levels. But without trading skills and an understanding of various trading setups these levels don’t offer much value. … Read More
How Many Trades Should I Make Each Day?
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