There’s a profound mental shift that happens when you flip from being in positions where bad luck could damage or ruin your trading account, to being in a position where the unexpected might actually make you a ton of money!

For options...

“Why do you rob banks?” authorities asked notorious bank thief Willie Sutton.

His response: “Because that’s where the money is.”

We're not planning on robbing anybody, but if today's trade plays out like we think it can, it might feel...

Am I being creative with my trading?

Am I tinkering with new ideas, new money management algorithms, new mindsets, new products, new timeframes, or new workflows?

We don’t need to be trying all new things all the time. But spending...

The concept of “Tilt” is often discussed when things have gone awry. It’s usually associated with poor risk management and sloppy trading that has led to larger-than-expected losses.

You can no doubt find endless stories of traders in every...

Well, that was fun!

Yesterday we were treated to the latest interest rate hike from the Federal Reserve and a speech and Q&A with Fed Chairman Powell that apparently wasn't well received by the market as stocks slid furiously into the...

How do I measure performance?

In a nutshell, this is a question I received from a member of the All Star Charts community today.

Well, it depends. 

The short and obvious answer: I trade to make money. 

If...

We continue to be handcuffed by earnings season. Some of the best setups we like right now are in stocks slated to announce earnings over the next week or two. As an options trader, I don't like to position ahead of imminent earnings announcements....

I was talking with a relatively new day trader last night at my twice-monthly trader meetups here in Colorado. We were chatting about stop losses. Or more specifically, his inability to stick to his “mental stop loss levels.”

As you can...

It's that time of the quarter where we options swing traders need to be extra mindful of pending earnings releases. The last thing we want to do is place a directional bet in a stock or it's options heading into a binary event that could decapitate us...

Look, we're not going to sugarcoat it: it's hard out there right now.

Regardless of your timeframe, if you're trying to make aggressive long or short bets in this tape, you're getting chopped up. So are we.

These types of markets grind...

The best trade I ever executed was a loss.

That is not a typo. I lost money on this trade. Actually, it was a series of trades. But it was executed with one decision and one combination of keystrokes.

It was the summer of 1998, and it...

According to the Wall Street Journal, options volume continues to explode – driven primarily by the growing popularity of...

Even though stocks have broadly advanced on the first two trading days of October and Q4, today's market action reminds players that stocks are still risky here and the options market continues to price in this fear in the form of higher than normal...