In today’s Daily Digest, we’ll review the following:
- No new positions today.
- Adjustment to XRT position.
- Exited XLK position.
- Current status of open campaigns.
Let’s dig in!
Expert technical analysis of financial markets by JC Parets
In today’s Daily Digest, we’ll review the following:
Let’s dig in!
We’ve all been there.
Think about the time you first got interested in trading. It was exciting thinking about all the potential money we could make.
But then we were quickly overwhelmed with the reality of all the things we didn’t know. Former aspiring traders never made it past this moment. The mountain they had to climb just looked too daunting.
When Jason Krutzky left the road after spending years touring with a rock band through North America and Europe, he decided he wanted to try his hand at full-time trading. “I was just throwing darts and hoping.”
He found inspiration and education on the internet, particularly through pumper discord chat rooms, and predictably he made all the mistakes that bedevil every new trader. It is hard enough learning how to trade, but also trying to wade through the cacophony of voices on the social interwebs to find those he could trust was equally time-consuming.
Sure, he was passionate about wanting to learn. But he also says he was delusional. I think we can all relate to that.
What Jason continues to learn about trading is, as he puts it, “trading is the practice of non-emotion.” This was a hard 180-degree turn for someone who spent his life as a musician pouring his heart and soul into finding and channeling his creative spirit. “Non-emotion” was a foreign concept to him.
But learning to gauge himself and put in hours and hours of screentime is how he finds his edge. “You have to be in it. You have to be living it, breathing it.” If you can’t put in the screen time, you’ll be a failure in no time.
An early adulthood spent on the road as a struggling, traveling musician prepared him to learn a skill such as trading. How? He learned the confidence to ask for help.
Jason relates some stories of hanging around music clubs in Atlanta, meeting successful musicians, and having the confidence to go up, introduce himself, put a tape in their hands, and ask to be given a listen. When he dipped his toes in the trading world, he utilized this same skill to reach out to other experienced traders, forge relationships and friendships, and find lessons and mentorship this way.
We can all learn to be better at this. Jason shows us how it’s done.
Please enjoy this conversation with a Trader who’s still cutting his teeth in this business. I promise there are nuggets in here that we can all both relate to and learn from:
The audio version of this podcast can also be found on Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you stream your favorite podcasts!
Sean McLaughlin
Chief Options Strategist
All Star Charts, Technical Analysis Research
As I mentioned in yesterday’s Options Jam Session, the stock market is currently sending mixed signals and it has me open to the idea of adding some short exposure to my portfolio to balance the risks to my open long positions.
So I’m on the hunt for weak stocks that are showing signs of losing significant support levels.
Today’s trade fits the bill. [Read more…]
In today’s Daily Digest, we’ll review the following:
Let’s dig in!
If there’s one thing Brian Lund learned about himself over the past 30 years in the markets, he must write. Without a doubt, without even thinking about it, he knows that to express himself and to complete his thoughts into productive trading, he needs to sit down and start writing.
And this makes sense. We hear this a lot from our smart friends.
Barry Ritholtz once wrote: “I write to find out what I’m thinking.”
In this conversation with Brian, we get into the importance of sleep hygiene and how it’s so important for us to be at our best. Not just in trading, but in living.
We dig into challenges Brian has overcome along the way, including an ADHD diagnosis, and morphing from an always-on entrepreneur who constants has problems to solve to a trader who must sit on his hands and wait for things to happen.
We also cover his hacks like therapy, meditation, and a CPAP machine to help him maintain his sharpness.
Like all of us, Brian has suffered from the market honing in on his biggest weaknesses. He’s got the battle scars to prove it. But learning from these mistakes and fighting the urge to revenge trade have been evolutions that took time. Brian discusses how many of the trading problems we experience are simply contrived. They aren’t real. We make them up in our heads. The market doesn’t care that we lost money in this stock the last time we traded it, and it doesn’t owe us any money on our next trade.
Brian is a former night owl who now has a hot take on spousal sleeping arrangements. You don’t want to miss this!
We hope you enjoy me and Steve Strazza’s wide-ranging chat with our friend Brian Lund. [Read more…]
In today’s Options Jam Session, I discussed the mixed signals that the broader indexes, semiconductors, and $VIX are sending.
If nothing else, the current market environment is offering up some small warning signals that perhaps we’re due for some “digestion.”
Regardless, the practice of raising stops following strength in our trades is a best practice I’ve engaged in more and more lately. And in environments like this, it could be the difference between being a net winner versus a net loser.
It’s a little tweak, but the importance of it cannot be overstated. I make a practice of reviewing and updating stops at least once per week in my swing trade portfolio. This subtle practice has definitely helped improve my results in 2024.
I discuss all this and more in today’s video. Enjoy!
Trade ’em Well,
Sean McLaughlin
Chief Options Strategist
All Star Charts, Technical Analysis Research
If the way Nvidia is trading is an indication that the semiconductors run is far from over, then we have to believe some additional names down the cap scale will attempt to play catchup.
One of those names is Advanced Micro Devices.
Check out the ground that $AMD has to cover to get back to all-time highs: [Read more…]
In today’s Daily Digest, we’ll review the following:
Let’s dig in!