As promised four losers/losses I've taken over the past week. Pretty standard stuff and in the case of two of them prices are higher without me. Such is life.

Shorted the market (both QQQ/SPY) last week small as I think we may be a bit overcooked in the near term here. This has been the biggest lockout rally I've seen since 2020 as Nasdaq has not had more than one down week and no more than -3% for a few days. Both seasonally as well

This is misguided on many levels: 1. I said 'for this trade' 2-5% and I took an average as I'm using about a 1% stop so 5% move is a 5R. 2. At 3R (I took the average in this instance) you only have to be right 25% of the time to breakeven, that builds in a LOT of failure. 3.

I've been told at times that I'm a 'contrarian', not usually by market folks but as I've thought about it some of my BEST trades have definitely been contrarian in nature. In markets it's hard to measure but I think it's really important to not be contrarian for contrarians

So one thing I've been thinking about for years is how many of these chains will create fundamental value? Now that some of crypto is finally going mainstream (I think the wild west is gone and alt season probably won't happen like in 2017 or 2020), as when markets mature so

Cubs & baseball fans lost one of the all time greats yesterday! espn.com/mlb/story/_/id…

Well from a technical perspective the Dow chart doesn't get much better than this. Not saying we breakout and take off here but given that I trimmed risk and even shorted last week looking like I may have been WAY early... Add to that the fact that sentiment via AAII has seen

Forgot I had promised to show this but here's the totals of all the trades of what we call the 'discretionary portfolio trades' for the last 12+ years (started in 2013 when we partnered up). So any trade that didn't have a designated bucket but was something we took

This is why Peter Brandt has & will be a friend/mentor for as long as he's around. Short story but we became friends many years ago when he graciously invited me at no cost to be a guest of his at a phenomenal event he was putting in on Colorado. His faith & candor are first

Well both QQQ & SPY had outside day reversals on above avg volume. I'm not a big 'key reversal' guy however given the gap up on earnings and close on the dead low in a pretty extended market looks pretty classic pullback inbound here. This market hasn't really been able to even

This is what you want to avoid... Most perma bears I have found are of one of two varieties. They either don't trade or won't admit they don't trade. Either tends to be useless for someone like me. Bears sound so smart and everyone loves the 'Big Short' and all that I get

A few things I'm watching here in no specific order: 1. Just looking at the volume (all the indexes have this picture just using SPY as reference and its the one I'm still short) looks like classic distribution and low volume snap back. This does NOT mean this rally has to fail

Quick thought on how I handle gaps in real time... So I'm doing my work yesterday and see ETHE setting up pretty nicely here. In a better market (better for me really just means where I'm making $ with ease) I'd have started a decent line on or near the close and looked to add

Follow up... So per yesterday I stated what I'd like to see...didn't happen. I also stated that I will on occasion look for a low risk way intraday to get on board. You can see it took a try or two but for now (today's to my eye was the best, really nice little cheat area)

A few of my thoughts off the cuff: -real traders think in terms of risk, not tickers, stories/narratives, or even dollars -real traders are process driven vs opinion driven -real traders are generally not cocky as the market has served them enough humble pie to not like the

Potential change in character in bound... Remember when I said not to get too beared up here. Small caps ripping here the last two days is definitely a positive and right as the macro bears are getting absolutely run over by this market. Doesn't mean that we have to go higher

Back to the Well... Dipping a toe on the short side again, so basically scratched the last trade which allows the afforded risk capital to be rolled or tried again here. I'm NOT getting overly bearish in fact I'm shocked how much AAII is coming off (sentiment is NOT

Been making the point for years but most are coming to realize that the only brand government in the US is BIG, red or blue they are just different brands of too big

Leaders definitely got hit pretty good today and looks like rotation for the time being for sure and too early to say if this is start of something more ominous. Some of this could be jitters going into end of the week with Powell talking rates, who knows. On the bearish side

Is this all we get? Whenever I'm short the general market and it starts working the temptation is to get overly bearish or start rooting for a big slide and while I've been short for a few of those I have it not overly productive. In this case looking at the QQQs or SPY the