The Greatest Trading Book Ever
About 3 months ago, a 22 year-old friend of a friend (we'll call him Mike) asked if he could sit down with me and pick my brain about stock trading. I agreed, and we met for an hour over a couple of beers. At the end, Mike said to me: "I asked to discuss trading with you, and for the last hour you gave me great advice, but you said NOTHING about trading?" Last week, [...]
Please Stop With The Nonsense
I haven't written a blog post in a while, so here are a few thoughts going through my head right now: 1) I see so many angry bears out there. They argue EVERY DAY with such bitterness about the market grinding up. My advice to them is: "Don't focus on what you THINK the market should be doing, focus on what it is ACTUALLY doing." There's tons of liquidity out there, STOP ARGUING WITH IT! [...]
Stay Humble
"Every day I assume every position I have is wrong." --- Paul Tudor Jones When the market is strong, everyone is a genius. Since 4 out of 5 stocks move with the general direction of the market, pretty much any stock you pick will move higher during an uptrend. I have always said that "strong markets tend to forgive your mistakes." In other words, you can buy extended stocks or not be as strict with [...]
The Number One Challenge For Traders
I get many emails about stock trading. Although the questions cover a wide range of topics, I usually read the same theme in between the lines: Uncertainty, fear, lack of confidence, etc. I can sum them up in one word: Indecision. The number one challenge traders face is the ability to make decisions. When do I sell? I own too many stocks, what should I do? I see the setup, but I can't pull the trigger [...]
Defending Jim Cramer
Oh boy! If the title of this blog post alone bothers you, then do me a favor and don't continue reading. If you're cool and open-minded, then please read on 🙂 I don't know Jim Cramer. I've never met him, never spoken to him, but I have tremendous respect for the man. I was recently on a plane reading his book Confessions of a Street Addict (which is a great book by the way) and the [...]
Pay Attention to Price Action
Back on July 22, 2011, I was long 6 stocks. A sharp trader friend of mine looked at the 6 charts and said: "Those are REALLY good setups, if they fail, the market is screwed." Two trading days later, I got stopped out of the 6 stocks and went into 100% cash (I wrote a blog post about it on 7/26/11). In the following 10 trading days, the Dow dropped nearly 2,000 points due to [...]