Jon Najarian has been trading options since the early 80s when he first entered the Chicago pits. I’ve always had an appreciation for the way Jon looks at the behavior of market participants through the options market, particularly the largest institutional players. By monitoring the volume size of these trades, he pays close attention to what the biggest participants are doing, often times trading alongside the “smart money”. I think his perspective on this specific area of the market adds a ton of value to our conversations about Technical Analysis. In this episode, we discuss the new higher volatility regime in U.S. Stocks, what to expect moving forward and a few areas in the market where Jon is seeing unusual options activity. Since we’re lucky enough to have “Dr J” on the podcast, we had to ask him about the Chicago Bears, what the trading life in the city of Chicago was like, how things have changed through Technology and even a few words on Bitcoin and Crypto Currencies. I really enjoyed this conversation with someone whose work I have really admired for a long time.
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Andrew Thrasher is the perfect guest to have on the podcast this month. His expertise in Volatility made him the 2017 Charles Dow Award winner, ironically the year that the US Stock market saw the lowest volatility on record. Today, Andrew is an Indianapolis-based Portfolio Manager at The Financial Enhancement group and we’re thrilled to have him on. In this episode, Andrew walks us through the Volatility spike in early February, some of the things that accelerated the move and what we should expect moving forward. We discuss his thoughts on market breadth, internals and sector rotation. This is a timely conversation with one of the smart ones! [Read more…]

Louise Yamada has been an inspiration to me for my entire career. Bringing nearly 4 decades of experience as a technical analyst, Louise adds a unique perspective on markets that makes her the perfect compliment to some of the younger guests that we’ve had on the podcast. Louise, who for a number of years received Institutional Investor’s top ranking, was a special guest on “Louis Rukeyser’s Wall Street” and you can still find her regularly being featured on Bloomberg, CNBC and other financial media outlets. Today, Louise Yamada, CMT is the Managing Director of Louise Yamada Technical Research Advisors (LYA). In this conversation we talk about the long-term cycles of interest rates and precious metals going back almost 100 years. While we do dive into these longer time horizons, in this episode Louise also gives us her short-term take on U.S. Stocks, Gold, Bitcoin and even lays out her favorite strategy for the Bond Market right now. This is such a treat for us to have a legend share her time and be a guest on our show. She has been a huge influence on my work over many years, so I hope you enjoy this discussion as much as I did! [Read more…]

Mark Dow has been a favorite follow of mine on Twitter for a long time. His global macro perspective is directly in line with the way I view the world. We come from very different backgrounds, however. Mark worked for the U.S. Treasury Department in charge of Emerging Markets in the early 90s. After that he was a sovereign analyst at a Mutual Fund before running money for a Global Macro Hedge Fund in New York City. Today, Mark runs a Family Office from southern California and recently launched a Private Twitter Account that you can subscribe to called Behavioral Macro. In this conversation, Mark talks about the current environment for stocks, interest rates and the rotation into emerging markets and base metals. He brings a disciplined process and approach to the market that I’ve respected for many years. I really enjoyed this conversation with someone who I consider to be one of the smartest guys in the room. [Read more…]

Studying the behavior of market participants is something that we do on a daily basis, whether we recognize it or not. Especially as Technical Analysts who focus on changes in price at very specific levels, understanding the psychology behind why investors are behaving in certain ways is part of that process. Dr. Daniel Crosby is an excellent resource for investors looking to learn more about themselves and investor psychology. In this conversation we discuss the cognitive behavior traits seen on a daily basis from investors with elevated levels of stress due to active positions in the market. Recognizing these flaws is step 1 in our journey to learn more about ourselves so we can be in a position to make the best decisions possible in order to succeed. This is a podcast episode that I have wanted to record for a while now because I think it’s a good breakup from the more traditional market analysis and commentary. I hope this conversations inspires you to take a step back and become more aware of what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. I believe the more self-aware we are, the more efficiently and intelligently we can move forward as market participants.

Daniel Crosby, Ph.D. is the Author of The Laws of Wealth and The Behavioral Investor. I encourage you to check them both out!

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