I shorted ROH in the Premarket. Chop! I shorted CAT on the Open. Chop! And then CAT got hard. I made some and I lost some. And as I like to kid our desk, then people started bothering me. Roy generally bothers me first about something I need to do for him. Roy runs SMB Training. So if you are interested in … Read More
Bidding, Offering, or Sweeping
The most difficult thing for us to teach is when to bid and offer or sweep. To sweep means to pay the offer and potentially through the offer if you want to get long. I set my sweep key to pay the offer or through the offer by up to three cents. This is a matter of preference. Some traders … Read More
Trading Multiple Asset Classes
From time to time I get asked during interviews if I trade other asset classes during the trading day. My answer is always yes and no. I do longer term swing trades in the FX market but no, I do not trade both FX and equities intraday very frequently. When I do I tend to lose my focus and do … Read More
A Day on the Street
SMB offers the very best intraday equities training program on the Street. We meet hundreds of college students seeking an invitation from our desk. And many ask what it is like to trade with us. Before anyone is asked to accept an invitation we mandate that a candidate meet with traders on our desk. A candidate may ask any question … Read More
System Writing Without Trading Skills
Every now and then we receive emails from new traders seeking capital to trade their systems. Their academic backgrounds are impressive. They all have worked very hard at fine tuning their strategy based on historical data. They tend to be avid technical analysis students. Most have crunched statistics on their systems to support their claims. However, most lack the trading … Read More
A Core
Most of the trades that intraday traders make are from move to move. We short a stock when it shows some temporary weakness and then cover when it slows into its downmove. These trades can be held for less than a second at times. But most good intraday traders also hold longer intraday positions. We hold a core position. Basically … Read More
Consolidation
My views about just trading with charts are well known on our desk. This is the most difficult way to start your trading career. This is like trading with one hand behind your back. Learning how to read the order flow is essential for most to be consistently profitable traders. Chart reading is best used to supplement reading the tape … Read More
Picking Your Tier Size, Part II
In my last entry last week I presented an simple yet powerful approach to picking your tier size based on the risk you take on a play. Furthermore, the blog entry describes how to go about picking a tier size that works well independently of what kind of stock you are trading any minute of your day. In this entry … Read More
