What is the Dominant Technical Factor?
When I discuss a chart or market, I often talk about the “dominant technical factor.” This is a useful concept that can help anyone, regardless of your experience level, to…
Failure is NOT always an option
Patience is a critical skill in trading. But, like everything, balance matters. Being “too patient” is as bad as being impatient. How do we find the balance? One answer is…
Different markets are… different
What is different and what stays the same? This is one of the key questions traders who trade on different timeframes or in different markets face. We often hear the…
This is how breakouts work: lessons from the S&P 500
Just a brief blog post here to share some pattern lessons from the S&P 500. First, context matters, and that context is: Bullish because of the existing uptrend from the…
Here’s why you can’t win that argument on Facebook
Continuing from my last post, I want to explore how emotion influences our thinking and bias. Humans are not (purely) rational In my trading and investment work, one of the…
Thinking about thinking: lessons from the coronavirus
It’s been a rough few months for all of us—everyone, all over the whole world. I want to share a few thoughts on the coronavirus epidemic, politics, and what this…
A new (FREE) tool to help you
“The benchmark Dow Jones Industrial Average is off nearly 300 points as of midday today…” You can hear a similar quote on nearly every news outlet many times a day,…
New podcast episodes
Just in case you missed them, I dropped two new podcast episodes this week! The first, an introduction to the second season of the podcast, and some general comments on…
Make your own disinfecting spray
This might be a little off-topic, but I think it’s actually very on-topic. With most of my readers probably working from home due to the 2020 coronavirus outbreak, we are…
What really moves markets?
In the face of recent historic moves in stocks, crude oil, bonds, and many currencies, it is a good idea to step back and think about a fundamental question: what…
This is what manipulation looks like
I'm always looking at new ways to look at market data, and specifically new ways to present the data visually. Much of this finds its way into my work at…
Hello, regret, my old friend…
Trading can be emotional. The market often has volatile moves and it seems new highs or the end of the world are just around the corner. In this environment, it’s…
Knowing the future with market stats
So, you’ve seen the headlines and, if you somehow missed it when it happened, you know that last week was a period of historically high volatility in the stock indexes.…
What’s new with me and my work in 2020
I want to share some things Tom and I have been working on over the past year, and tell you about some exciting things that will be coming this year.…
Support and resistance… right now
Support and resistance is a controversial topic. Traders’ cognitive bias and random price motion conspire to play tricks on the mind. Many technical analysis books and gurus parrot conventional wisdom…
New Year, New Decade, New You?
I started this blog post on the day with the longest night of the year, and it’s taken a bit longer to get finished than I expected! So, here’s a…