I read a lot of blogs. And lately a popular topic has been goals for 09. Personally I prefer to concentrate on finishing out the year strongly rather than spending any energy thinking about 09. I will do that when the month ends. Also, we don’t do a whole lot of big speeches at SMB. I don’t believe in that. … Read More
Trade With The Break
For the past few days the SPY’s were trading in a fairly tight and narrowing range. Traders were waiting for them to breakout from their narrowing range. Yesterday afternoon the sellers overwhelmed the buyers causing a break to the downside. The 89 support level was broken with force. In after hours action the SPY’s traded down an additional 2+ points. … Read More
Know yourself!
Over the years I have found it extremely important to keep all kinds of information about my trading in journals. In these journals I have found out more about myself and the way I trade than any other trading tool out there. I use the journals to keep track of the obvious, my daily P&L and the volume I did … Read More
Catching Yourself Before Disaster Hits
I picked up a copy of the new Malcolm Gladwell book Outliers this weekend and read something that caught my attention. Gladwell points out that a typical airline accident involves seven consecutive errors. The errors by themselves rarely have an impact on the overall safety of a flight, yet the combination of them consecutively usually lead to disaster. I started … Read More
FCX Revisited
One of the most important attributes of a trader is the ability to quickly change your bias in a stock. This mental skill is paramount for an intraday trader. In today’s market, a stock is likely to reverse its trend multiple times each day. A stock that is very strong one day will be very weak the next. It is … Read More
A Market Bottom Versus An Economic Foundation
One morning before work about a 2 weeks ago I switched from CNBC to Fox News to get a weather update. I was a little early, since Mike Woods usually comes on at about the 8th minute of every ten in an hour (6:18, 6:28, 6:38…) and I caught their quick daily business analysis. The lady reporting was ecstatic about … Read More
More Buyers than Sellers
HIG finished up 100 percent on Friday. At one point HIG was up 120 percent. At up 50 percent I heard the chirping. And chirping by very good traders. Chirp is an old school term defined as a trader definitively predicting the proper price of a stock. Chirp. Old school traders recognize that anything can happen at anytime. Old school … Read More
Things I Liked About Last Week’s Market Action
Volume stayed pretty consistent. The lowest volume day we experienced was on Monday, which was the sell off to the bottom of the range (82). Market rallied on bad economic news. After an initial sell off right to support, momentum began to build towards the upside. And we closed at the top of the range (88). We closed above the … Read More
