You hand a swing system fourteen years of daily bars, sweep eight parameter knobs, and the equity curve climbs at a 38 degree slope with a 1.92 Sharpe and a…
Most losing trades I review have nothing wrong with the entry pattern. The flag was clean, the volume looked decent, the stop was in a sensible place. The problem sits…
I look back at one of my own ledgers and the pattern is always the same. Eight months of small losses and tiny scratches, the equity curve flat enough to…
A trader buys near-the-money call options two days before an earnings report. The stock prints, moves 1.4% in the right direction, and the calls still close down 22%. The chart…
The bell rings at 9:30. A stock I have been watching gaps up 3.4% on a clean earnings beat, prints 86.20 in the first minute, fades to 84.10 by 9:45,…
A swing trader risks 2% of a $50,000 account on every trade. The rule has held since the first month of the journal. Then the VIX prints 38 on a…
You watched value lead for a quarter, then quality took over, then low-volatility ran for six weeks while everyone on your timeline argued about which single names to buy. The…
The sortino ratio is a risk-adjusted return measure calculated as a strategy's excess return over a minimum acceptable return, divided by its downside deviation. The formula in one line is…
A stock gaps up four percent at the open. Volume runs ten times normal for the first thirty minutes. Price stalls near the 478 figure and the trader has to…
A trader looks at a chart that has just topped, pulled back, then bounced from a higher low. The question that matters is whether the bounce is a small correction…