It was Spring 1997 and I walked into the lobby at 60 Broad Street to head to my firm’s trading floor. As I entered the elevator the firm’s head trader commented to me “hope you aren’t long Intel”. I responded that in fact I was short Intel and a few other technology stocks that had behaved weakly the prior trading … Read More
SMB Trading Lesson of the Day: Buying Pullbacks on The Open
In this SMBU Trading Lesson of the Day, Bella, author of the “trading classic” One Good Trade and The PlayBook, talks about a trading pattern that’s been working in this Bull Market. Highlights from this trade: 1) This pattern works extremely well in a Bull Market. 2) Incorporate this strategy into multiple timeframes. 3) LOW gapped up significantly on earnings; see Mike’s thoughts … Read More
Who Has Made The Most Money in 2014
As a partner of a trading desk I get to observe many different trading strategies at work. One of the most interesting aspects of this to me is seeing which traders at any given point in time are pulling money out of the market. Five weeks into 2014 and three separate groups have done extremely well. And they have done … Read More
What is Risk?
What is risk? Imagine a word that everyone threw around constantly, but that no one could define. A word that was critically important, but never used properly. In trading, that word is “risk”. Of course, we have to use the word constantly. We are taking risk in order to generate a return. We put on positions and make sound … Read More
All Hedging is Not Created Equal
In this post I will show you a strategy that can be long and short financials at the same time and end profitably. The concept is based on pairing instruments that have different natures. The nature of leveraged instruments is to increase the impact of one-way movements. The nature of unlevered broad-based indexes/funds tends to have more reversion and overlapping … Read More
Spencer Trade Review–$AAPL “Sell The News Trade”
One of the few short setups that has consistently worked in 2013 has been shorting stocks after extended moves that then gap higher after some sort of news catalyst. We saw this on Monday in $AMZN after the “drone story” on Sixty Minutes and again yesterday after $AAPL inked a deal with China Mobile that had been discussed ad infinitum … Read More
NFLX is the New AMZN?
Netflix is the new Amazon. What does this mean? It means for the foreseeable future hedge funds will step in and buy this name on every large dip and it will continue to have huge breakouts after periods of consolidation. Why is this the case? In the case of AMZN it got enough large players in the market to buy … Read More
Monkey Trading Series: Some IPO Basics
“Monkey Trading” is a broad term I have used lately to describe some of the short term trading I observe that shows a lack of respect for the market. Whether it is a failure to have a detailed trading plan or understanding the nuances of how stocks trades in the HFT dominated marketplace Monkey Trading usually leads to a transfer … Read More