Reader question: How to trade with a day job?
Ok, so here is my question. I've been struggling with this all year, but now I start working next week again during the day, so am trying to figure this…
What’s wrong with modelling successful people?
"If you want to be successful, find someone who has achieved the results you want and copy what they do and you'll achieve the same results." That advice, from self-help…
10000 hours, trading, and what really matters
This is the third, and last, post in a series of three posts that started by looking at the 10,000 hour fallacy and the importance of deliberate practice. Those posts…
Building expertise: beyond the 10,000 hours
This post is a followup to my recent post which looked at Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hour fallacy. That post focused on what is wrong with pop science soundbites. This post…
There is no 10,000 hour rule
Have you ever heard someone say they are "working toward their 10,000 hours?" I'm sure everyone reading this has heard of the "10,000 hour rule": the idea, drawn from Malcolm…
These things will happen to you
Trading is great—you’ll have no boss, can work whenever you want, and make boatloads of money! (Or so the email I got from a MLM forex scammer this morning tells…
The power of vulnerability
"I'm looking for a portfolio that will make about 20% a year but I don't want any down years." "Can you give me a hedging strategy with options that will…
Dealing with no followthrough
One of the frustrating things about current market action is that very few setups have good followthrough. We can follow a market faithfully for weeks, wait for the best possible…
Why you think you’re getting worse
Do you ever work really hard and feel like you got nothing out of it? Or, even more to the point, ever work a long time on developing a skill,…
What to do with missed profit targets?
A trader I work with, Glenn, sent me this note: Adam, I think this would be an excellent blog post because when it happens it is so frustrating. I got…
Reader question: what am I missing?
A reader, Denys, sent me a question this week: Dear Adam, . In short, i've been doing some trading for about a year and read dozens of different books and…
Learning, deeply and well
Let’s face it—we need a lot of skills to get through life. Even the basic day to day requirements can be daunting, and most people have specialized skills in certain…
Thoughts and advice for new traders (and experienced traders too!)
I’ve been talking a lot with new and developing traders, doing some one on one work, and also hanging out in some forums that cover a very wide range of…
How to find trading ideas
There are patterns in market prices—of this, there is no doubt. Some small set of these patterns even can help us with our trading and investing. Some are worthless. And…
Five reasons you lose
In trading and investing, there are good losses and bad losses. This post is about the bad losses, but let’s begin by touching on the good losses. A good loss…
The importance of ritual
I spent much of the last two weeks or so traveling through the south west of France (think in the direction of Toulouse, toward Spain), and had a chance to…