Every so often a trader will find me and say,”I am going to step it up.” I love confident traders. And every so often Steve, GMan, JToma, or I will tell a trader that they need to step it up. And you can sense after the talk they would run through a wall if that is what it took to … 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
From the Mailbag
I received the email below today. Great question. I thought I would share. I am sure others who read SMB Blog have had the same question. So please read the email below and our response. EMAIL Hi Mike, I’m an equity trader at a hedge fund and read your SMB trading blog routinely and very much enjoy it. I’ve read your … Read More
Revenge Trading: Just Walk it Off, Friend
A few weeks backs I wrote about catching yourself before disaster hits. In that entry I discuss what happens when you make a couple of mistakes in a row that lead to complete disaster. Then, a couple of weeks back we got a comment in one of our blog posts that touched on this subject. I would like to expand … Read More
Fake Breakdown- ROK
I traded ROK today. It was an excellent trading stock. And it’s still acting well. Tomorrow if ROK holds above 23, then I will get long. At 20.60 the bid would not drop. This was the catalyst for an explosive upmove. I was in this move. Chop! And later ROK would not trade below 22.80. And I started a long … 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
Making Money IN AMZN
So I ran out of the office after the Close to grab a couple of slices of pizza. By the time I got back AMZN was trading up 5 points. About six traders on the desk were actively trading it in the after hours. I quickly gathered some information from those who had been watching it. There was selling at … 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
