The above is from a slide for my last presentation at an 800 plus event. This exercise has had a profound impact on my trading and trader mindset. Let’s explain the Gratitude Exercise which you might co-opt for your trading. Each day find time to close your eyes and replay three things for which you are grateful. During the … Read More
Get a Trading Coach Already
There is little evidence of anyone competing at the highest levels without critical feedback, coaching, and mentoring (coaching is what happens in real-time and mentoring after the close). I received this e-mail yesterday that can teach us about the power of trader coaching and education. Dear Mr. Bellafiore, I wanted to send you a quick email to thank you … Read More
Study Trading Not Markets ($TSLA)
Some traders/investors make the mistake of studying markets instead of trading. This can negatively affect your trading performance. More specifically, this certainly was the case with the recent down move in battleground stock TSLA, the growth stock. For those of us who have traded professionally for 15plus years it is hard to watch and read the nonsense about TSLA’s valuation. … Read More
Do Not Fear the Bots
Computer trading has become the largest part of our market’s volume threatening the profitability of many discretionary traders. Many traders/investors fear the bots. We shouldn’t. We should embrace their underlying technology and use it to help us find more of our favorite trading patterns. And even turn quant. Adding support to my thesis above was a recent blog post at … Read More
Bad Luck Boeing?
On Friday the news hit of a fire on a Boeing 787. Yes, that same plane that BA was forced to take out of service because of lithium battery fires during flight. I don’t know about you but I prefer my flights without fires on board. BA tweaked and fixed the battery issue and the 787s were back in flight. … Read More
The 3PM Bull Basket
I was sitting on our trading desk looking at SPY this Friday. I felt a very strange sense of déjà vu that it was 1998, the year I was relative strength trading semi-conductor stocks, and MSFT, INTL, DELL. This was before the Internet Boom but when these sectors were red hot. At 3PM we would add to our strongest-acting stocks … Read More
Real Companies Get Bought When They Gap Down… Except for UPS
If you sit near me on our trading desk you have heard me say, “In a strong market real companies get bought.” What I mean is when a real company gaps down, in a strong market, it is likely to find a big buyer and find a way to trade higher. But then there was UPS on Friday. This was … Read More
A Quant Test on a Trading Thesis
Hi Mike, I was halfway through typing my question when I remembered a blog post similar to my original question: http://www.smbtraining.com/blog/how-do-you-determine-how-far-stock-can-move I was wondering if you’ve found any statistical information by back-testing the above since then. For me personally, I first find important support/resistance levels on a stock & after that do I then consider the likelihood of those support/resistance … Read More