Today we sit down and chat with Professional Trader Kimmy Sokoloff.
I'm lucky to have known Kimmy for well over a decade, and we hit it off from the start.
Kimmy went through the CMT program in the 90s. And funny enough, volunteered later on with the CMT Association to grade Level 3 exams, which are mostly essays. We joke that she most likely graded mine in 2007-2008.
While I like to look out weeks and months for my timeframes, Kimmy focuses specifically on the hours and days. A 2 week trade for her is "Long-term".
We're both trained in similar ways, as CMT Charter holders. But our experiences are different.
Kimmy spent most of her career in Institutional Sales and Trading. She spent decades on the phones all day with huge funds.
So when Kimmy has something to say, we want to listen. I hope you enjoy this as much as I did.
You guys know that I use Fibonacci levels to help us identify targets and manage risk.
And you've all seen it work, with your own eyes, for many years. I have too, of course, as one of the gang here calculating these levels every day.
But I've never quite understood WHY it works. How come these numbers keep showing up all over Nature. Why do the prices of stocks and other assets keep respecting these levels?
When I get asked, I don't have an answer.
But if there's anyone I'm going to ask, it's gonna be Bart. So that's what I did.
On this week's episode of the podcast, I sit down with David Keller to talk about all things behavioral finance. David is one of my favorite guys to talk to about the subject, so I reached out to him and said, "Dave, come on the pod and let's talk about humans".
He happily agreed and so we hit the ground running talking about Anchoring Bias, Loss Aversion, Risk Management, Supply and Demand Dynamics and Market Sentiment.
This wasn't just an academic endeavor. We also discussed current markets, price trends, momentum, breadth and Dave's favorite trade for the rest of 2021.
I think you're really going to enjoy this one. I certainly did!
This week on the show, Howard and I talk about the value in finding people to synthesize information for you. Howard is one of the best people I know at doing this, and I've picked up a few tricks from him over the years.
We can't be experts in everything. But with new tools and technology, we now have the ability to rely on other subject matter experts to point us in the right direction and give us perspective on how they see the world. I've found this process to be incredibly valuable. I encourage you to try it!
This week on Happy Hour with Traders, I brought together some of the best minds when it comes to stock market breadth. You see all the breadth charts on twitter and you always hear debate about whether market breadth is weakening or improving. I think this round table discussion clears up a lot of misconceptions about the subject. I think it also gave each of us new ideas about how to approach the market from a weight-of-the-evidence perspective. I know I definitely got some new ideas that I want to start to do some more work on.
This is why we have these conversions. I'm fortunate to have really smart friends around the world that all view markets in their own unique ways. So I'm going to try my best to show them off so you can learn from them too!
Here's the latest Happy Hour with special guests Andrew Thrasher, Willie Delwiche, Mike Hurley and Steve Strazza. Enjoy!
I'm fortunate to have a lot of smart friends who are experts on the stock market. In some cases they're traders, or portfolio managers, analysts, financial advisors and best-selling authors. I get to have incredibly insightful conversations with my friends and colleagues every single day. But I understand that most people don't.
So today I'd like to share a video of a conversation I had yesterday with New York City Trader Kim Sokoloff, and about half way through my buddy Joe Fahmy also joined the chat. We discussed process, we talked about a few trade ideas we liked and just had an overall good time catching up.
These are the conversations I'm having regularly. I hope this gives you some insight as to how much I get to learn from my friends:
When it comes to "Continuation Patterns", Triangles are one of the more common ones you'll see. In this video we're discussing, more specifically, the Symmetrical Triangle, and how markets tend to consolidate between two converging trendlines. This series of higher lows and lower highs ultimately reaches its apex, which forces a resolution.
Throughout this course, we discuss all kinds of patterns, both continuation and reversals. In Triangle Land, we often see Symmetrical Triangles, Ascending Triangles, Descending Triangles and Wedges that appear like Triangles and have similar implications.
There are no called strikes on Wall Street. In other words, we're not penalized for not swinging, like you are in baseball. We have the ability to be patient, to a certain extent at least, depending on your mandate. But most of us don't have mandates! Even one of the best hitters of all time struggled when he swung at bad pitches. In this video we compare Ted Williams' batting average when he swung at good pitches, vs when he swung at bad ones.
This is my favorite reminder that in trading & investing, we want to wait for OUR perfect pitch, and then swing, vs just swinging at anything.