It is all BS

Hi Mike,

I am writing this letter to tell you how an ordinary trader can see things from a totally different perspective after reading the “The Playbook”. I appreciate your firm for the information it disseminates to the aspiring trader community. I tried to catalog my trades (for eight months—my trading life) as suggested in the book.

Results:

1) I make 5% trades with winnings greater than 30 cents/share

2) All these trades come from stocks trading with unusual volume a.k.a STOCKS IN PLAY

3) All these trades are either GMAN’s pullback on 3-minute chart or THE REVERSAL TRADE suggested to TO in the book (I call it 1,2,3 23.6 play—1-2-3 higher low pattern and break of Fibonacci 23.6% level of day range-market hours)

There was no way I could control that urge to be in any stock I saw moving. But as evident by the data its all BS. During last eight months I have been losing around $1.2/ticket including $8.5 commissions; but, I have firm belief; now, if I focus on these 5% trades, I can become a CPT.

Thanks again for the book. I must have read this before starting to trade.

Better late than never.

**Trader from India

@MikeBellafiore

Telling yourself as a trader that you cannot be better is total BS!

Even in most consistently unprofitable traders there are patterns where a trader has edge. You just have to do the work and ferret through the data to find what you do well. And then build from your strengths.

I will share an anecdote from the desk.

One of the traders we like a lot and has ability was severely under-performing. We were ready to fire him. I gave him one last chance.

I told him to send me an outline of his four favorite patterns, not to trade until they were accepted by me, and that going forward he was only allowed to trade these FOUR SETUPS. He did. Two of them were crap patterns that I told him to discard as he had no edge nor would he ever. He redid his four patterns. The second submission was better and acceptable.

What happened?

He became profitably again.

“You can be better tomorrow than you are today!”

Mike Bellafiore is the Co-Founder of SMB Capital and SMBU, which provides trading education in stocks, options, forex and futures. Bella is the author of One Good Trade and The PlayBook.

He welcomes your trading questions at [email protected].

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