Question: I hear a lot about the value of a competitiveness in trading success. Analogies are made with the striving for peak performance seen in athletes and entrepreneurs. One thing about this puzzles me, and I’d appreciate the thoughts of others with more experience and success. When I trade I am trying to get better: to make good trades and, inhibit … Read More
I felt a rip coming
I caught a scalp for the first downmove in DSW. I caught the upmove from above 52.12 to near 53. And I caught the downmove from below 52.50 to 51.65. I looked at my PnL and I was barely positive. How is that possible? I was not trading DSW on the open with size as it was so early and … Read More
The Pro’s Process – Mike Bellafiore
Richard Chignell from Embrace the Trade on the fourth of his series of posts has been asking Pro Traders about their psychological processes. From Mr. Chignell: The fourth in my series of posts asking Pro Traders about their psychological processes. Delving a little into how it feels to them when trading. The good and the bad. How this has changed … Read More
Are you guilty of Negative Self Talk?
I received this Daily Trading Review from one of our traders. It highlights the importance of learning to combat Negative Self Talk. I am an (expletive deleted). I had a comeback going, at 2:20pm I was down $23 after being down all day.I was calm and selective and thoughtful all mid day and into the 2:30 hour. I lost $250 … Read More
Finding Repeatable Patterns
After the close we discussed some plays from Stocks In Play yesterday. When we look at a stock we search for patterns. Patterns that repeat. Patterns that make sense to us. Patterns that we can work at to master. So for these three stocks we are making risk/reward trades with the patterns we see. We have a full playbook of … Read More
A 2 Day VWAP Trade (CNC)
During a daily review an SMB Trader wrote this about his trading in CNC: CNC pulled back to 2 day VWAP and break out area from yesterday. Waited for break in intraday downtrend to get into this stock. When it began to hold above .70 I was up to 1,200 shares from .72. Was waiting for the push through .80 … Read More
Learn to Process the “Noise” to Improve as a Trader
I received this email from a prop trader: I’m very disappointed with the way I traded today. I had two more paragraphs written here explaining some potential causes for my under performance. When I started to write the third I realized how simple it all is. To summarize those thoughts, I get worked up and anxious when trading on the … Read More
Chill!
Here are two comments made from two SMB traders in their daily review sent to me after the close. Both harm their results by trying too hard. Do you do this? I am slowly becoming less and less content with just making $$$$ (note: SMB cannot talk our PnL because of compliance reasons) and calling it a decent day. I … Read More