10/3/2025 - Perhaps the most powerful way of ensuring that trading for a living does not become living for trading is maximizing the quality of our time and experience outside of markets. Research in psychology is very clear that experiences of happiness/joy and meaning/fulfillment are associated with more energy, better health, and greater productivity. The connection that is particularly relevant to trading is that, when we live lives of joy and fulfillment, our perception is literally expanded. We become more creative and more perceptive. Conversely, when we are more stressed, we lose the capacity to clearly perceive what is happening around us.
What are we doing each day to bring happiness to our lives? To do things that are meaningful? To connect with people who matter to us? To engage in activities that energize us? If our trading impoverishes our lives and takes away from these four priorities, we unwittingly cultivate a mindset that removes us from opportunity. How well we live is intimately connected with how well we trade.
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10/1/2025 - How can you trade for a living without living for trading if you're a short-term/intraday trader? Don't you have to be glued to screens to find and exploit opportunity?
As noted below, breadth patterns can be found on all time frames, including very short-term. For those whose greatest talents involve pattern recognition, opportunities with the NYSE TICK and related TICK measures set up frequently--particularly when upticks and downticks across stocks can no longer move price meaningfully higher/lower. Conversely, we can monitor advances/declines for a given index in real time and see when upticks/downticks are moving the broad market.
What I'm finding particularly promising is using the longer-term breadth information to identify historical trading edges over periods of days and then using the intraday breadth patterns to identify when those edges are playing out here and now. That means trading short-term, while being informed regarding the market's bigger picture. While waiting for the opportunity set to line up across time frames, the market gives us time to engage in other activities, whether they be market research or getting other things done. We don't have to be glued to screens to keep an eye on the setting up of intraday swings. Alternatively, I've known traders who limit their trading to patterns that set up in the morning hours and who size those aggressively. They make their money and then the rest of the day is theirs.
When we own opportunity, markets no longer own us.
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9/30/2025 - The greatest market opportunities occur on multiple time scales: they set up on the short-term and also on the longer-term. When breadth patterns show up in the smaller and bigger pictures, it becomes possible to ride the activity of the market's largest participants.
First off, breadth means that multiple stocks/subsectors/sectors are participating in a move. That can only happen when institutions are allocating capital to the asset class or to one or more themes within that asset class. When we break breadth down sector by sector, subsector by subsector, and when we break breadth down by factor/themes (growth/value; small cap/large cap; interest rate sensitivity), we can see how funds are flowing and join in that movement.
Second, breadth occurs on multiple time scales. We can look at the number of stocks giving longer- and shorter-term buy/sell signals on technical indicators such as moving average crossovers. We can also look at new highs/lows over different time periods. Breadth can even be tracked effectively intraday through measures such as TICK. My platform (Sierra Chart) follows real time upticks vs. downticks for the overall NYSE market, but also for small cap stocks, for SPX stocks, and for Dow stocks. This makes it possible to identify in real time whether a given move is broadly based or limited to a particular group of stocks.
When we require patterns to show up on longer time frames as well as medium and shorter ones, we trade much more selectively, but participate in the most promising opportunities. This enables us to trade for a living without having to live to trade. Instead of chasing moving markets, we patiently wait for markets to give us their best setups. We can also pursue different opportunities on different time frames and in different parts of the market, giving us many ways to win.
This is an important reason why very talented, successful hedge fund portfolio managers almost never come to me with problems of emotional trading/tilt/frustration. They are not trying to catch each move. They are waiting for opportunities to come to them. I have found the Barchart, Market Charts, Stock Charts, and Sierra Chart resources to be invaluable in collating my own database to track breadth-related themes.
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9/29/2025 - Here is the project I'm working on:I have been creating a very large database of breadth-related information for U.S. stocks. The database goes back more than 20 years and includes daily breadth information for the overall market (NYSE, SPX) as well as breadth information for individual market sectors. It also includes the number of stocks giving daily buy and sell signals across multiple technical indicator systems, as well as breadth data broken down by factor (growth vs value stocks; small vs. large cap stocks; etc.). The database, when it is completed, will provide a look at forward returns from 3 to 50 days out and identify when returns are statistically significant relative to average returns.
What that means is that I have all the previous days' signals that cover the current trading day, and I have new trading signals created by yesterday's action. That allows me to identify when forward returns are most promising due to the lining up of different signals and the lining up of signals across different time frames.
Intraday overbought/oversold criteria are used to time entries in the larger breadth patterns. There is no intraday trading, however; the breadth patterns are meant to capture short-term swings and longer-term moves in the indexes and stock sectors. That provides diversification by time frame as well as by market.
Rules define stop and take-profit levels, as well as money management criteria for adding and lowering position sizes based upon the shifting of odds as markets move. This requires checking in on the market in the morning and afternoon, but does not require ongoing tracking of minute-by-minute action.
It's early in the game, but so far the project is profitable and is showing promise in terms of identifying the parts of the market with the greatest odds of success. The inclusion of sectors creates multiple ways to win (for example, being long one sector with good historical odds and short another with poor odds and volatility adjusting the pair to be completely market neutral). The balance of positions--across markets and across time frames--helps smooth the P/L curve.
The most important finding so far, however, is that this approach has taken all of the drama out of trading. It has freed me up for my many other life priorities and yet is every bit as challenging and fulfilling as short-term trading in terms of problem-solving and the search for opportunity. It is possible to trade for a living without living for trading. So many of the problems identified by trading coaches are a function of the drama created by becoming attached to short-term market behavior. For me, the best way to work on my psychology is to trade within a framework that draws upon my greatest interests and strengths.
Life is too short for drama.