BRETT STEENBARGER'S TRADING PSYCHOLOGY RESOURCE CENTER

Below are resources to help traders become their own trading coaches, improve their trading processes, and develop a positive work-life balance.  All the TraderFeed posts also contain links to valuable resources and perspectives.  

RADICAL RENEWAL - Free blog book on trading, psychology, spirituality, and leading a fulfilling life

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The Three Minute Trading Coach Videos

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Forbes Articles:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/brettsteenbarger/
  

My coaching work applies evidence-based psychological techniques (see my background and my book on the topic) to the improvement of productivity, quality of life, teamwork, leadership, hiring best practices, and creativity/idea generation.  An important part of the "solution-focused" approach that I write about is that we can often best grow by focusing on what we do well and how we do it--and then doing more of what works for us.  The key is to know our cognitive, interpersonal, and personality strengths and leverage those in the pursuit of performance. 

FURTHER RESOURCES

*  A Creative Way to Use TraderFeed 

*  Brett Steenbarger Bio

*  Brett's Books on Trading Psychology

I wish you the best of luck in your development as a trader and in your personal evolution.  In the end, those are one and the same:  paths to becoming who we already are when we are at our best.

Brett
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The Power of Persistence

 

2/18/25 - Straightforward questions to assess your growth trajectory as a trader:  1)  Who are you interacting with regularly to make them better at what they do?  2)  Who are you interacting with regularly that make you better at what you do?  In any performance field, success requires an enriched environment for development.  Shay's strength was passionately seeking out his enriched environment. 

2/17/25 - Very important observation for developing traders:  Notice how Shay (see below) was able to find his positive future by giving what he wanted more of.  He was isolated in a cage, but when he saw us in a room, he immediately went to us and was extremely loving.  It was because he gave love that we were inspired to provide him with a loving home.  Developing traders who are struggling reach out and what do they talk about?  Their struggles!  What they don't share are their lessons learned and their successes (no matter how limited).  If you want to learn with and from others, you're talking about forming and becoming part of a team.  If you want to team up with others, offer teamwork!  Give and give your successes and observations and accomplishments and others will be inspired to share their strengths with you.  That is how everyone makes everyone else better.  Give and give what you want more of. 

2/16/25 - Every one of our cats has had a story to tell.  I've written about Molly Ruth and making a fresh start in life.  We've also encountered Mia Bella and the importance of finding opportunity amidst adversity.  Naomi taught us about overcoming trauma, and now it's Shay's turn.  Shay (above) is one of our four rescue cats and the latest addition to the family.  He was in an animal shelter in southern New Jersey, after losing his home when the homeowner passed away.  He was treated well in the shelter, but was stuck in a small cage most of the day.  For a large, active boy, this was not easy.  When Margie and I came to the shelter to visit Shay (his name then was Chumungus!), we were placed in a room where he could interact with us.  Immediately, he went from Margie to me and back to Margie and back to me, rubbing against us and purring loudly.  He wouldn't stop:  his desire to interact was much stronger than any concern about strangers.  His persistence reminded us of Mia, who would not leave our side once she was out of her cage.  So we adopted Shay, and every night he sleeps between the two of us, going from one to the other and purring before plopping down to sleep.

Shay was in the animal shelter for quite a while.  He could have easily grown lethargic in his small cage and withdrawn from the world.  Instead, when opportunity came, he was all in.  He persisted and persisted with his back and forth between Margie and me until we had to bring him home.  In trading and in life, we can face setback after setback and find ourselves in a situation that seems hopeless.  If, like Shay, we can reach out and reach out and find those who can help us move forward, we can achieve our successful future.  Shay gave love and gave love and gave love when no one was loving him.  And that is what brought him to his forever home.  When we are feeling most abandoned and lost, that is when we most need to give and reach out.  If, in some small measure, you can be the future you hope to find for yourself, you'll inspire others to join you in that future.

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Succeeding at Life

 

2/13/25 - One thing I've learned from my participation in recruitment/hiring/onboarding at hedge funds is that whatever the trader does to be successful in markets leverages strengths that they have developed previously in their lives outside of markets.  Whatever that underlying process/talent/skill set may be, it is something that the trader is good at and that is intrinsically meaningful and rewarding to them.  The example I use in my upcoming book, Positive Trading Psychology, is how I gather stories and information from the clients I meet with as a psychologist and figure out themes running through their lives.  Only once I understand those themes do I know how I can help them in a way that will make sense to them.  Not coincidentally, it's sitting back and observing, observing, observing markets that helps me figure out their themes and frame my trades.  Same process.  Identify what you've been doing to make you successful in life so far and then figure out how to bring those strengths to markets.

2/12/25 - One incredibly valuable lesson I've learned from my experience with the traders at SMB Capital is that consistency of profitability comes before the achievement of absolute profitability.  In other words, the developing trader first becomes consistent in generating good ideas, structuring and sizing positions well, and managing their trades.  Only after they have demonstrated consistency in how they trade do they bump up how large they trade.  Another way of thinking about this is that process precedes profits.  Do things well one trade at a time and you internalize the sound trading that enables you to take more and more risk and earn more and more.

Now imagine applying this framework to your life!  Focus on living each day productively and meaningfully in a goal-oriented fashion and, once you've found that consistency, gradually elevate your goals.  Thus, achieving small goals every day builds the mindset for eventually tackling larger goals.  If we focus on making each day consistently profitable in life's rewards, we build the mindset for tackling greater and greater life visions.  For better and for worse, we internalize what we do each day. 

2/10/25 - The single most important ingredient of a successful life is regularly doing things that you find to be deeply meaningful.  Research in psychology finds that happiness is necessary but not sufficient to produce overall emotional and physical well-being.  In addition to doing things that are fun and enjoyable, it is important to engage in purposeful activity that is fulfilling for us.  A great question to pose each day is, "What am I going to do today that is so meaningful and fulfilling that it will inspire me and give me positive energy?"  For many market participants, it's not solely P/L that provides that emotional fulfillment.  Perhaps it's the intellectual challenge of discovering new edges in markets; perhaps it's being part of a trading team and learning from and helping others; perhaps it's continually reviewing and refining performance to become better and better at navigating ups and downs.  What about your trading process is meaningful to you?  

Of course, when we are engaged in meaningful, energy-producing activities outside of trading, we're best equipped to bring our best psychology to our market activity.  Younger people make the mistake of seeking a fun life.  Older people make the mistake of seeking a comfortable life.  Every day should bring meaningful goals and challenges that push us to become more than we are, even as they pull us to greater and greater energy and engagement in life.

2/9/2025

*  Margie and I celebrated our 41st anniversary this weekend.  We met at a singles event in Ithaca, NY, during which I had way too much to drink.  When I got home, I wanted to sleep in and was concerned that the morning light would wake me up, so the idea came to me to sleep in my walk-in closet.  I woke up hung over, stumbling out of my closet.  I knew that Margie was special, and I knew that I would have to grow the f*ck up to be in a great relationship with her, especially given that she had three children by her prior marriage.  What I couldn't do for myself, I was able to do for her:  great relationships inspire us to be more than who we are.  We become who and what we love.

*  Great traders invest in their careers:  they constantly study to find new sources of edge, and they continually work on their game.  I have never met a successful trader who copies the work of others.  The same can be said of successful artists, scientists, and businesspeople.

*  We cannot live energized lives with out of shape bodies.  Our emotional and spiritual development draw upon our physical energy.

*  Mali teaches us that strength comes from how we compensate for our weaknesses.  

*  Mia teaches us that persistence pays off, even when you're on death row in rural Kentucky.

*   We internalize what we consistently do.  We succeed at life when we turn each day into small successes.

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What Goes Into An A+ Trading Opportunity?

 

2/9/25 - Once we identify an A+ opportunity, we've only begun to exploit its potential.  By tracking short-term action where buyers/sellers cannot move the market to new highs/lows (the inefficiency pattern mentioned below), we have potential entry points with solid reward relative to risk.  If the inefficiency patterns break for some reason, we can exit quickly when the market makes a new relative high/low.  Because we're overbought/oversold over multiple time frames, the potential reward is significantly greater than the risk.  

Still, this leaves us with two crucial aspects of the trade:  *what* we trade and the sizing of our positions.  We're looking for instruments that show clear overbought/oversold levels at the multiple time frames and we're looking for instruments that are moving most between these overbought and oversold levels.  In other words, we look for what is trading:  1) cleanest and 2) what is moving the most.    

With respect to sizing, every subsequent inefficiency (selling that can't move the market to sequential lows; buying that can't move us above our most recent peaks) becomes an opportunity to add to the position.  When we hit overbought/oversold levels at the three periods mentioned below, we have opportunities to take profits.  What this means in practice is that, early in the unfolding of the opportunity, we're sizing up and, as the pattern is working out and we are moving to overbought/oversold levels on the three time frames, we're taking profits.  Position management is every bit as important to profitability as the timing of entries and the selection of trade setups.  By taking profits quickly when we hit first levels of overbought/oversold on the adaptive moving average measures and moving our stops accordingly, we generate fresh risk/reward.  Too often, traders focus on entries, less on exits, and very little on dynamic trade management and *what* to trade.  If profitability were simply a function of the setup, it would be easy to automate the setup pattern and make money consistently.  It's how we select opportunities and what we do with them that defines our success.  

2/7/25 - Two ideas go into an A+ opportunity in my own trading.  The first is a lining up of time frames.  As I've shared in the past, following the work of Marcos Lopez de Prado, I construct my charts on event time, not chronological time.  These charts utilize open-high-low-close, but the bars represent an amount of volume traded, not units of time.  For instance, with the MES contract, I follow three periods, with bars of 5000, 15,000, and 50,000 contracts traded.  Each chart then tracks overbought and oversold levels based upon the adaptive moving averages created by John Ehlers.  These averages track crossovers of short- and longer-term lines, but the lines adjust their speed based upon how markets are moving at that time.  When we have all three event time periods oversold at once or overbought at once, we have a lining up of time frames.  Trade opportunities may present themselves based upon overbought/oversold levels of individual adaptive moving averages at a particular event time period, but the A+ opportunities occur when we're stretched at multiple periods.

The second thing I look for once the market is stretched across periods is what I call inefficiency.  I use indicators of buying and selling pressure, such as the NYSE TICK, to tell me what traders are doing in real time.  When we see buying/selling pressure that cannot move the market higher/lower, that tells us that the buyers/sellers have become exhausted.  Their buying/selling is being absorbed by larger market participants.  

When we see buying/selling inefficiency in markets that are stretched on multiple time frames, the ingredients are there for major unwinds.  I want to take advantage of the buyers/sellers who are trapped.  Because a large amount of volume is trapped, as measured by the volume bars, the resulting move is generally significant--not a quick scalp.  My experience is that the batting average on these trades when all the variables line up is quite high.  In my next post, I'll outline ways of making the most from these A+ opportunities.

The key here is to find a way of understanding market action that makes sense to you and that plays into your information processing and personality strengths.  When you trade the unique patterns that reflect your best understanding of markets, you can then achieve unique returns.     

2/6/25 - What goes into an A+ trade for one trader is often quite different from what goes into the best trades for others.  This is because each of us brings unique talents to markets and varied skills that help us make us of these talents.  Studying your best trades over a period of time can help you figure out how you best detect and exploit opportunity.  Too often, developing traders are interested in trading and making money and not interested enough in figuring out who they are in markets and what they do well.  Those traders have emotional disruptions of their trading, not because they are so emotionally troubled, but because they are pursuing something important to them without drawing upon their greatest strengths.  The best way to be calm, focused, and secure in trading is to stay connected to what we do really well.  That is what ultimately gives us the energy and enthusiasm to persevere and succeed.  What do you see most clearly in markets?  What interests you the most in trading?  What are you doing well when you're making money?  What kind of markets bring you the greatest opportunity?  In relationships, we date before we commit.  It makes sense to date markets--try out different markets and styles of trading--before figuring out what you will commit yourself to.  Premature commitments yield failed marriages--in all areas of life.  Next, I'll share what I do best and worst as an illustration of building trading success on what we do most successfully--  

Over the years, I've been struck by how many top performing discretionary traders don't have win percentages of much over 50%.  Most of their trades are relatively small winners and relatively small losers.  They are *very* good at risk management and so they have very few large losers.  But they are also good at recognizing their best opportunities--what we might call their A+ trades--and making the most of these.  In his book One Good Trade, Mike Bellafiore of SMB Capital stresses that, "Consistently profitable traders obsess about making One Good Trade and not money.  Your job is to make One Good Trade and then One Good Trade and then One Good Trade" (p. 31).

From this perspective, One Good Trade includes losing trades that one manages well.  One Good Trade also refers to profitable trades that follow one's trading rules.  If my above observation is correct, however, trading success also requires awareness of One Great Trade:  one's A+ opportunity.  It's the relatively few big winning trades that account for the difference between most good traders and the great ones.  It's the (all too rare) combination of disciplined risk management and aggressive pursuit of special opportunities that define the great trader.

Having met with many traders over the years, I can confidently say that the great majority don't know--in detail--what goes into One Great Trade.  They might have a sense for good opportunities, which they might call A trades, but they haven't truly studied their A+ trades:  those few trades in a month or year that account for a large share of total profitability.  What goes into an A+ trading opportunity?  If you don't study those One Great Trade occasions in detail, replaying them and analyzing them intensively, how can you find the conviction to pursue them with aggressiveness?

I've been studying my own A+ trades and opportunities and will share them in an update to this post.  But my unique opportunities are unlikely to be yours.  Anything great cannot be copied from someone else, whether it's a painting, musical work, or writing.  The odds are good that your A+ opportunities are hiding in plain sight.  They are among your standout winners, even though you may not have fully exploited their potential.  Much of the time, we become so immersed in solving trading problems and controlling trading emotions that we never fully study our trading strengths.

One Good Trade keeps you in the game and can make you consistently profitable.  If you can identify One Great Trade, you'll have a template for success that you can build upon.

More to come.

Further Reading:

Finding Our Greatness

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Trading as Warfare

 

1/29/2025 - How can we do a better job of integrating our trading tactics into a broader trading strategy?  In the book that will be coming out later this year, Positive Trading Psychology, I collaborate with Jeff Holden at SMB Capital to identify best mentoring practices used in the SMB teams.  As research for the book, I sat in on Jeff's mentoring sessions with developing traders and saw first hand how he integrated strategy and tactics.  The sessions began with looking at the broad market indexes and by focusing on longer (multi-week and multiday) perspectives.  This view included overseas equity indexes as well as the U.S. stock market.  This provided a big picture of whether money was flowing into or out of stocks globally and whether money was rotating to some countries from others.  The chart review then proceeded to sectors within the U.S. stock market on different time frames again to see if money was flowing in or out of the market or whether funds were rotating capital to some sectors and out of others.  Finally, the review focused on the individual stocks "in play" within these strongest and weakest sectors and the tactics for participating in their moves.  By the end of the review session, traders had a good sense for what they were trading, why they were trading it, and how they would trade it.

A number of these traders came up with questions during the session and many posed their questions to me in the chat area of the Zoom and later in emails.  Almost all of these questions pertained to how they could improve what they traded and how they traded it.  Very, very, very few questions were about emotional overreactions to the day's trade and destructive patterns of trading.  The reason for this was that the time spent in systematic preparation--understanding what the market, sectors, and stocks were doing; formulating a strategy for what to trade; and elaborating tactics for implementing the strategy--kept them grounded and focused.  Solid preparation reduced uncertainty and nurtured a sense of understanding and mastery.

Trading is like warfare.  If you stick troops into the field without a clear mission and tactics, they will panic at the first skirmish.  The best trading psychology emerges from the best preparation:  clearly elaborated strategies and tactics and ongoing practice and review.  

1/27/2025 - In the overnight weakness in the US stock market, we can see a reversal of recent strength.  This highlights yet another aspect of strategy and tactics in trading:  the need to be flexible.  Intelligence is not infallible in warfare and in trading and often it can be murky or incomplete.  Notice that, in the days leading up to this decline, the SP 500 made a new high, but many averages--and many sector indexes within the SPX--stayed well below their highs.  When we see the vast majority of stocks and sectors moving higher or lower, we can anticipate a degree of momentum/trend.  When we see breadth waning on an upmove or downmove, that is when we're particularly at risk of reversal.  That means that we must have the flexibility to assess new market information, determine whether it's a game-changer, and respond with fresh tactics and perhaps with a revised strategy.  We put effort into generating our ideas; equal effort is needed to update those ideas as fresh data come into view--  

In warfare, you assess the enemy's strengths and weaknesses and you develop a strategy for exploiting the vulnerabilities and avoiding the strengths.  That strategy is implemented with a variety of tactics, from ground assault to air and sea attacks; from spycraft to guerilla warfare to coordinated amphibious actions.  Similarly, a football team will assess their own strengths and weaknesses and the strengths and weaknesses of the opponent and will develop a game plan--a strategy for victory.  That strategy will be carried out tactically through specific plays and defenses designed to maximize the team's strengths and exploit the opponent's vulnerabilities.  Tactics are what put strategy into action.  Strategies without carefully designed tactics are at best good intentions.  Tactics without underlying strategy are uncoordinated--and often incoherent--action.

In trading markets, strategy defines bigger picture opportunity.  Tactics implement the strategy on a here-and-now basis.  Many of the psychological challenges of short-term traders occur because they operate tactically, without an underlying strategy.

Here's a simple example.  I have created a daily database of the percentage of NYSE stocks trading above their various moving averages, from 3-day MA all the way up to 200-day MA.  Each day, this produces a momentum curve, a measure of how breadth has behaved over short, medium, and longer terms. The database goes back to 2006, so I can see how breadth behaves in various market conditions.  (These data can be found on the Market Charts site).  

This is another way in which trading is like warfare.  Superior intelligence--more and better information--fuels superior strategies and tactics.

Across the entire database, if we divide the percentage of stocks trading above their 3-day MAs into quartiles (roughly 1150 days for each of the four groups), we find something interesting.  Over the next few days, average returns following the strongest breadth quartiles have been significantly weaker than after the weakest breadth quartiles.  In other words, on average, three-day periods of broad strength lead to short-term underperformance; three-day periods of broad weakness lead to short-term outperformance.  We see mean reversion tendencies over the short term.  The exception to this rule occurs when there is a breadth thrust:  very high levels of breadth momentum.  Then we see strength leading to more strength; weakness yielding further weakness.

The day trader who is unaware of such patterns may see a bullish or bearish setup, but can easily be run over by the mean reversion and momentum tendencies playing out over a multiday period.  That leads to frustration, which can further impair trading.  The cause of the frustration, however, is not a psychological conflict or weakness; the cause is due to pursuing tactics in the absence of strategy.  The same problems affect investors, who trade "catalysts", only to lose sight of multi-week patterns playing out in market breadth.  

Trading is like warfare.  The difference is that the trader is both a general and a soldier:  one who frames strategy and one who implements it.  There is always a bigger picture that defines edge and a more immediate picture that guides the execution of the tactics that exploit that edge.  Confidence comes from well-grounded strategies, implemented skillfully.    . 

What If You Could Only Trade Once Per Day?

 

1/23/2025 - On Monday, January 27th at 4:30 PM ET, Agnieszka Wood and I will conduct a free hour long "ask me anything" (AMA) session.  One thing that will make the session unique is that Agnieszka and I will approach questions from different, complementary angles:  how our mindset can improve our trading and how improved trading practices can fuel our mindset.  Should be a great opportunity to pick up best practices all the way around!  One thing I'll discuss is how bigger picture thinking can improve our short term trading and how honing short term trading skills can help us get the most out of our higher time frame views.  Registration will be limited; hope to see you soon!

1/22/2025 - We can approach trading from a bottom-up perspective (watching for real time shifts in buying/selling pressure) as a scalper or from a top-down perspective (watching for backtested patterns and catalysts over longer time horizons) as a swing trader or active investor.  One approach is grounded in the talent of fast thinking and acting and pattern recognition.  The other approach is grounded in the talent of analysis and bigger picture thinking.  Success comes from knowing where your greatest talent lies and then developing the skills to apply that talent consistently.  Many seeming psychological challenges of trading stem from the fact that we're not utilizing our greatest talents--

Suppose you could only trade once per day, but at any time of the day?

With only one bullet to fire, you would have to make sure the opportunity was outstanding.  

What information would you gather to identify the one good daily trade?  Knowing this constraint, you'd have to study, study, study the best trades that could have been placed each day and generate a creative plan for exploiting the single best opportunity. 

How would you size the daily trade?  What would you need to see to add to your position?  What would you need to see to take profits?  What would stop you out of the daily trade?

If you only traded once per day, what do you think your win percentage would be?  How do you think your profitability trading once per day would compare to your current profitability?

What would be your greatest psychological challenge if you only traded once per day?  Knowing that you're limited to one trade, what constructive activities would you engage in while the one good trade was setting up?

What if anything more than one best trade per day makes minimal money on average?  What if all your time and effort watching screens and trading in and out of the market does not add significant value to your trading?  To your life?

This will be an experiment I pursue in 2025.  Discoveries come from asking new, different, and difficult questions.

Further Reading:

Expanding Our Trading By Imposing Constraints

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How to Achieve Quiet Confidence in Our Trading

 

1/15/25 - Understanding markets is not just about the big picture macroeconomic trends impacting price action.  It's also about identifying the kind of markets we're in:  trending/momentum; cycling/mean reverting; or a combination of the two, where cyclical moves occur within trends.  The kind of market we're in determines the kinds of trading strategies we employ.  Much frustration and loss in trading occur when we impose our strategies on the market, rather than trade the conditions we see.  I find that I'm best able to trade market cycles by constructing charts based on volume, not time, and by tracking crosses of adaptive moving averages (moving averages that automatically adjust their parameters based upon identified cyclicality).  Very promising trades occur when moving averages are behaving similarly on shorter, medium, and longer time scales.  When cycles line up, the result is a sense of understanding that fuels our confidence in trading.      

1/14/25 - The below post suggests that our optimal frame of mind when trading is not positive or negative, but focused and open-minded.  As a psychologist, when I meet a new person in counseling, my first step is to connect with them and listen, listen, listen.  If I stay open-minded and keep listening, the themes in what they are telling me will jump out at me.  I don't try to intervene in the person's life until I have a clear thematic understanding of what they are going through.  Similarly, I want to connect with the market I'm trading and listen, listen, listen to all going on within and around my market.  That requires a focused, quiet mind--and most of all a curious, interested mind.  We achieve quiet confidence when we achieve understanding and we achieve understanding by listening and listening for the themes connecting markets and time frames.  Our optimal mindset is curious, interested, and focused.  If we spend too much time looking for trades, we stop listening to markets and that leads to frustration.  How we approach markets shapes our trading psychology, not just the reverse.  

By transforming our trading, we can transform our trading psychology.

So much effort goes into trying to predict what markets will do next.  Confidence, however, comes from understanding.  When we understand what is going on in markets, the right trades come to us.

In a recent video for SMB Capital, I explained how the perspectives of active investors--such as those managing capital at hedge funds--can benefit short-term traders.  This is because portfolio managers don't just look for trades:  they identify themes that connect a variety of markets.  A good example of this can be found in my recent post, which tracks recent moves in the U.S. dollar, U.S. interest rates, the U.S. and overseas stock markets, and commodities.  There are themes underlying these moves (such as the potential impact of tariffs), which show up as relative strength in certain stock market sectors (such as the growth areas of technology) and relative weakness in other sectors (such as interest-rate sensitive shares).  When we can step back and see the themes connecting movements among markets, it becomes easier to participate in significant market developments, such as the weakness in stock and bond prices on Friday.

Much of what we call "overtrading" occurs when we don't step back and achieve understanding and instead react to every market move that catches our eye.  There can be no quiet confidence when we overtrade and when we are more interested in finding trades than in understanding market behavior.  An experienced psychologist knows that people don't have dozens of problems; they typically have just one or two issues that show up in dozens of areas of life.  Once we can step back and see the themes connecting our life challenges, we open the door to responding to old challenges in new, constructive ways.  So it is in trading.  When we stand back from the moment-to-moment ups and downs of markets and perceive the themes driving the trading from large institutional participants, we place ourselves in a fresh position to ride those waves.

Success in markets comes from turning themes into solid risk/reward trades.  Confidence comes from seeing a bigger picture and knowing how to turn that into short-term opportunity.

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What in the World is Going On

 

1/7/25 - Just a quick addition to the below post:  If you take a look at the popular equity ETFs in U.S. industries on the Barchart site, you can quickly see strength and weakness among sectors of the market.  Notice that yesterday was generally seen as a strong day in the market, but strength was focused on technology and communications stocks--two important areas of growth.  The value areas, such as consumer staples, were actually down on the day, as were the interest rate sensitive areas, such as utilities and real estate (see below).  Trading success hinges on quickly identifying whether we are in trending or rotational markets.  Is money flowing in or out of stocks, or is money flowing from certain areas of the market and into others?  In the rotational markets especially, what we trade is just as important as when and how we trade.  We can work on timing all we want, but if we're trading the wrong things, our returns will be suboptimal at best--

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This post will summarize what is happening across financial markets and economies--what is sometimes called the "macro" picture--and explain how that understanding can help our short-term trading. 

I've begun work with new portfolio management (PM) teams at hedge funds, and I have been impressed by the unique research undertaken by each team.  One thing that makes these teams distinctive is that they first seek to understand what in the world is going on and only then do they explore trades that might provide them with good reward relative to risk to exploit this understanding.  Because they are driven by intellectual curiosity and the desire to understand, they are not following every tick in the market and they are not going on tilt, trading on FOMO, and experiencing all the common problems we hear about.  When PM teams meet with someone like me, it's to expand their understanding, improve their teamwork, and translate conviction about what's happening in the world into portfolios of trades that best leverage their distinctive strengths.

In my upcoming book, Positive Trading Psychology, I explain how a knowledge of short-term trading can help active investors achieve better reward relative to risk for their trades.  I also explain how an understanding of macroeconomic fundamentals can help short-term traders identify unique areas of opportunity and align their trades with bigger picture trends.  It is when we blend the tactical identification of opportunity (our fast-thinking, pattern recognition skills) with the deeper, strategic thinking that provides us with an understanding of market trends and patterns that we achieve the positive mindset that accompanies a sense of mastery.  Optimal trading psychology comes from understanding, and understanding comes from preparation.  Notice how the relationship among preparation, mastery, and mindset occurs in every performance field, from sports to chess to professional dance.

OK, so what is going on in the world?  Here are a few observations from macro markets, with a shoutout to Barchart.com, which provides a wealth of data (found in the following links) regarding performance across asset classes and regions of the world:

1)  The US Dollar is outperforming other currencies:  Note the uptrend in DXY since early October.  During that same period, note the relative weakness of the Japanese Yen, the Canadian Dollar, and the Australian Dollar, and the relative strength of the US Dollar to the Chinese Yuan.

2)  The yield curve has been steepening:  Remember how, not so long ago, we were talking about inverted yield curves and forecasts of recession?  No longer.  Since September, long-term fixed income prices have fallen more than medium-term fixed income prices and both have fallen more than short-term fixed income prices.  That means that interest rates are rising as we go out on the curve.  Note that high-yield bonds have performed relatively well.  We don't seem to be anticipating defaults in the fixed income world.

3)  Many commodities have weakened:  The commodity index is down since early October, with notable weakness in metals and mining, agribusiness, and the shares of raw materials companies.   

4)  US stocks have outperformed overseas averages: Note the relative underperformance of European shares since late September and, indeed, in the relative underperformance of non-US stocks in general.  Shares in China have held up better than shares in Australia, South Korea, and Brazil. 

5)  Performance among US stock sectors has been very mixed:  We've seen relative strength in NASDAQ shares and Consumer Discretionary stocks.  Growth shares have outperformed value stocks lately and small cap shares have recently underperformed the overall market.  Note the particular weakness in interest-rate sensitive sectors, such as real estate and utilities, as well as raw materials and healthcare.  We hit a peak in stocks making fresh new annual highs on November 6th and, since December 10th, the number of stocks making fresh one month lows have exceeded the number of monthly highs every single day and the number of shares registering three month lows have exceeded the number of three month highs almost every day.  Only 6.45% of real estate stocks are trading above their 20-day moving averages as of this past Friday and only 7.14% of raw materials shares.  By comparison, despite the recent correction, over 30% of technology stocks are above their 20-day averages.  

Conclusion:  The bottom line is that performance in financial markets has become narrower and narrower.  Rising long-term rates in the US, falling commodities, and weak overseas equity markets speak to the potential impacts of economic policies that seek to place America first.  The prospect of broader trade wars and diminished trade due to possible retaliatory tariffs weigh on many segments of equity markets.  Trading success has hinged on identifying the relative winners and losers in the emerging financial landscape.  Short-term traders should be alert to the patterns of relative strength and weakness.  

So far, in the big picture, strength is relatively concentrated in the US (US dollar; US stocks) and, within the US, strength is relatively concentrated in growth segments of the market.  A Goldman Sachs report observes that concentration of value among US stocks is at historic highs.  They observe that we have only seen similar levels of concentration prior to the Great Depression, at the peak of the dot-com bubble, and during the early 1970s.  Right now, themes of relative strength and weakness dominate the macro investing landscape.  It will be important to watch the segments of greatest strength to see if this period also turns out to be a bubble that bursts, perhaps as the  stagflationary result of tariff wars fueling inflation and restraining growth.

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Wrapping Up 2024 and Preparing for the New Year

 

1/3/2025 - A wise friend once said to me, "Love never dies; it has to be killed".  We don't lose our love for markets and trading; we have to kill that love by attempting to trade in ways that don't genuinely draw upon our greatest strengths, talents, and skills.  One strength that brought me to psychology is the ability to listen to people over time, relate to them, identify what they're going through, and help them craft strategies for change.  If I had to conduct an entire therapy in 30 minutes, I would quickly lose my love for psychology.  It would be a frantic process, devoid of the fulfillment of truly getting to know someone and make a positive difference in their life.  Similarly, I've found that my talent in trading is listening to markets over time, discerning themes, and participating in those once I have a solid understanding of what is going on.  If I attempt to conduct trading on a scalping basis, coming up with trades every few minutes, trading no longer becomes an expression of who I am.  My love for trading doesn't die; by attempting to be someone I'm not, I've managed to kill that love.  Lots of gurus out there; it's great to learn from them.  Ultimately, however, we have to synthesize what we learn from mentors with who we truly are.  The challenge is to figure out how to be the best version of you.  Whatever is going to make you very successful in trading will draw upon what has made you successful in other areas of life.  That's an important lesson for development in the new year--

12/31/2024 - To stay fresh and opportunity-focused in markets, it's important to always learn and do new things that sharpen your craft.  When we continually grow in our trading, there's an ever-present learning P/L, fueled by the excitement of discovery.

In coming posts, I'll elaborate on an approach to trading that I'll be refining in 2025.  The approach makes use of charts, where each bar represents a given amount of volume.  I typically look at four "time frames" simultaneously:  high frequency, short-term, medium-term, and longer-term.  The high frequency chart might draw bars every few hundred shares or contracts traded; the longer-term chart might capture bars of tens of thousands of shares.

Once you have displays of volume bars, interesting questions emerge:  What does it mean when the range of the bars expands or contracts?  What does it mean when bars open at their high or low and close at their opposite extreme?  What does it mean when the volume bars form a tight/narrow range?  My observation is that, when we view markets with volume-based bars on multiple scales, we can capture the real-time unfolding of supply and demand.  Instead of simply trading chart patterns, we can look within and across patterns to identify when bulls and bears are in control and when they are in balance.

The goal of such an approach is understanding: flowing with evolving market activity, not locking ourselves into fixed views.  Over time, it becomes clear that volume bars behave a certain way when the market is topping or bottoming, when it is trending, etc.  The patterns derive their significance across the multiple time horizons.  

In the new year, may you always innovate, always expand your understanding!

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How will you make 2025 a new beginning?

How will you track your performance in 2025 to ensure that the new beginning is truly powerful?

What will challenge and excite you in the new year to bring out your best efforts?

Too many New Years begin with lofty resolutions that quickly fade away as the days pass.  How will you keep your vision alive so that each day, each week, each month is a new beginning?

There is much more to change than setting goals.  

We become what we consistently do.

What we focus upon grows.

What will you do consistently in 2025?  What will be your focus?

Happy New Year--

Brett

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The Most Important Lesson in Trading Psychology

 

12/26/24 - To change a behavior, anchor that behavior to a distinctive state of mind and body.  For example, let's say I want to work on sizing up my positions by a fixed percentage.  During my workout before trading, while I'm lifting weights and jogging, I mentally rehearse the mindset of getting bigger.  I focus on the feeling of fitness and how I'm making my trading more fit.  When the market opens, I immerse myself in the thoughts and feelings of fitness and mentally lift the weights of my trading size.  Over time, the link between my physically fit mindset and my trading mindset grows stronger, creating new pathways in my mind and in my behavior.  This is but one example of how we can catalyze change by shifting our state of mind.  

12/24/24 - Albert Einstein famously observed that "We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them".  In other words, to solve a problem, we have to remove ourselves from the box that created the problem in the first place.  "Thinking outside the box" is the hallmark of creativity.  A parallel psychological principle is that we cannot solve our personal problems in the same state of consciousness that gave rise to the problems in the first place.  Our states of mind and body constrain what we perceive and how we process what we perceive.  All lasting psychological change occurs in unique, enhanced states of mind and body.  This is creativity of consciousness.  A major limitation of our trading psychology is that we try to change what we do but never escape the mindset that gave rise to our problems.  My next post will describe how we can reprogram mind and body to create new ways of thinking, feeling, and acting.       

We all know about the old joke where we tell someone to try as hard as they can to not think about a pink elephant.  Of course, the harder they try, the more the image of the pink elephant intrudes in their consciousness.  What we focus on grows.  What we think about expands.  What we dwell upon shapes our destiny.  That's the lesson from Robin Sharma.

So why, then, do we focus our attention on our trading problems, our trading mistakes, and our most negative trading patterns?  Much of trading psychology is telling traders to not think about pink elephants.

Each of us has unique strengths.  Each of us finds our greatest potential as traders by leveraging our talents and building skills around those.  What if we simply focused on what we understand, what we do well, what makes sense to us?  What if we're meant to break down, in exquisite detail, what we do during our best trades?  

What we focus on grows.  When we focus on our successes, our successes can expand and shape our destiny.  Without that positive focus, can we truly hope to grow as risk-takers?

Further Reading:

Mastering the Positive Psychology of Trading

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