SMB’s newest trainees have now been trading “live” for four weeks. Before going live they went through an intensive five week program to establish the building blocks for a successful trading career. During the first five weeks of their training they sit near each other on the trading floor. This helps to build a sense of team and encourages them … Read More
Wow–I wish they were all this easy
Occasionally, you come across setups where your risk is 10 cents and your reward can be multiple points. I usually find these trades no more than three times per month. These are trades that I cannot accept missing when they occur. I found such a trade yesterday afternoon. AAPL had been trending up strongly. It appeared to be heading to … Read More
Excellent Risk/Reward Trades
This post is going to be short but sweet. I will highlight two trades from today. The first is a technical trade that was highlighted on our AM Ideas Sheet. The second is an example of a low risk entry point in a stock that is usually quite difficult to trade intraday. Recently, gold has been very strong. For the … Read More
The Right Trade For Today (February 17th)
Part of the training the traders on our NYC trading desk receive is instruction on the trading setups that offer the greatest statistical significance for In Play stocks. What is not part of our formal training is the most statistically significant trades for specific kinds of “trading days”. Usually, I give a quick comment at our AM Meeting as to … Read More
Tools of the Trade
The best short term traders have a multitude of ways to make money. They are able to recognize patterns on the Box, they will take advantage of great technical setups, or they may identify the overall strength/weakness of the market on any given day. Today I was unable to trade due to a never ending flu. I don’t have access … Read More
Advantage–SMB
About 18 months after we created SMB I remarked to Mike that one of our key advantages over other trading desks was a trading philosophy that is not broadly shared amongst our peers. The focus of our desk is to trade things that are In Play. We have a set of criteria used to find these stocks before the market … Read More
Do Not Give Up On The Best Setups
There are several setups for intraday traders that offer the greatest risk/reward. An essential part of our job is being able to identify these setups and not to abandon them if they fail to reap a reward initially. One such setup was offered in CAT this past week. CAT gapped down on abysmal earnings. It spent several days flirting with … Read More
Trading Unusual Weakness
Many short term traders get killed trading weak stocks on the short side. What is the root cause? The most common error is they have poor entry prices. We all know that a stock in rapid decline is on the radar of every day trader and hedge fund on the Street. This attention creates spikes that some interpret as a … Read More