Being right and wrong at the same time
I’ve been thinking and writing a lot about uncertainty lately—and about making decisions with incomplete information. Over the past two years, we've all had to make decisions in an uncertain…
Did you miss a trade?
What happens if you miss a trade? Newer traders will often make a frustrated FOMO trade, and add a loss to what should have been a non-event. More experienced traders…
Life hacks and learning to trade
One of the interesting developments of the past ten years is the gradual death of the “life hack” approach. This is a good thing. The reason this movement has died…
Are you asking the right questions?
I took part in an interesting exchange in a Facebook group last night, in which a trader was asking “should I buy puts or calls for the spy or qqq?”…
A look at some recent patterns
Summertime is here, and, as far as markets are concerned, it's been here a while. One of the characteristics of summertime trading is generally lower volatility and poorer followthrough. Summer…
Breakouts and breakout failures: real world trading
One of the disconnects for new traders is seeing how patterns play out in the real world. When we learn patterns, we usually start from pristine, idealized examples. But in…
It’s Hard to Learn from the Market
How do we learn? For most things, a pretty simple plan works: do something and evaluate the results. Make some changes to what you do, and see how the results…
Free bars: little patterns after big moves
Bands or channels are usually set up around some type of moving average. They define what is normal for a market, so excursions outside the bands are potentially interesting. There…
Entering trades: some ideas from down under
One of the key questions that comes up with developing traders is “how do I get into trades? Where exact do I enter?” On one hand, the answer to that…
Happy New Year and a Peek at What’s Ahead
As history will remember, 2020 was a strange year, to say the least. While it might seem that, with everyone more or less staying home and shutting out social interaction,…