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
What Do You Wish You Knew When You Started, Your Favorite Book and Setup?
Mr Bellafiore, I want to thank you for taking the time to read this email. I know you likely receive innumerable emails each day and reading and responding to them takes a considerable amount of your time. As a busy trader and a managing partner of your own firm, time is likely your most valuable asset, so the time you … Read More
What is a Growth Stock?
This week I wrote a post Study Trading not Markets ($TSLA) where I shared the power of studying trading patterns over stock fundamentals. After all I play the game of trading pro not economics professor or Uber-Confident Financial Media Entertainment Complex Guest. My job is to make excellent risk/reward decisions with my firm’s money to which for some trades longer term … Read More
Study Trading Not Markets ($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
A Trade from a PlayBook Reader
An SMB reader, who is not on our desk (yet?), read The PlayBook and was inspired to co-opt a particular concept for her own trading. We encourage all our readers to develop a methodology for your trading. Building a PlayBook of the trades that make the most sense to you is that methodology. Here is her PlayBook trade. Mike Bellafiore … 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