The Pleasures of Not Being Spontaneous

There seem to be so many similarities between trading and fighting that it comes as no surprise that traders often resort to martial metaphors. The greatest theoretician of war was the Chinese sage Sun Tzu; and none of his insights from his famous treatise "The Art of War" is better known than his saying that "every battle is won before it is fought". Of course few traders have actually read Sun Tzu; but all of us have heard Gordon Gekko a.k.a. Michael Douglas quote this rule in Wall Street.

What Sun Tzu meant was that several conditions have to be in place before you engage the enemy: make sure that you choose the battleground; arrive before the enemy does; occupy the high ground; do not reveal the strength of your forces; have the right troops at your disposal; do everything to boost your army’s moral and undermine that of your enemy; and choose when and where to attack. All conditions that have to be fulfilled before the battle has begun. (read our Just Trade the Setups Dammit , The sitting
on conditions that have to be met before you enter a position).

All this requires meticulous preparation. Even our emphasis on knowing your stock's behavior fits within this philosophy. If you have worked out everything in advance, victory is more likely. Never trust a general who is surprised by his victory; never trust a trader who is lucky enough to pocket a gain without knowing why.

Like officers who start to improvise on the battlefield, many traders run constant scans during the trading day in order to find trading opportunities, while others hover around in chat rooms waiting/hoping for someone to find a stock with potential. We prefer to prepare our lists the night before and ONLY trade from those particular stocks in our list (the same list that is given to our subscribers every night). Unlike Sun Tzu, however, we do not believe that our method is superior; on-the-spot methods are successfully used by many traders.

However, our method fits very well with our personality. We feel that stress is considerably reduced as we are staring at a limited number of stocks (categorized by how close they are to our possible entry prices) and are not in a need to constantly run scans. We try to avoid a position which forces you to rapidly bring up the daily chart, the 60 minute chart, and try to figure out whether a trade is worth a shot or not, all the while hoping that it does not run away as you are in the decision-making process. Stress-reduction, we feel, is a factor that is critical to a trader's career. At the age of retirement we do not want to feel like we have won a Pyrrhic victory, i.e. having made a good salary at the cost of our health and relationships.

We like to be relaxed during the trading day (think the anti-Cramer: no keyboard throwing, no bruised knuckles, no crashed monitors), if the market acts lackluster and as such our picks are far away from triggering, we can let our guard down, grab a drink, and relax. Well you argue, don’t you miss the big opportunities? Possibly. However, for us, trading is a numbers game. We are not looking for the occasional home-run but rather consistency. We have been traders for 7 years; and fate willing, we shall be doing it for many more years to come. We are not seeking the exhilaration of a Vegas-like environment. Or, to stick to the military domain, we're not trying to come up with sudden ingenious battlefield moves; but rather, to be more like Eisenhower: organize, organize, and organize before you move.




We are seeking the quotidian: Day in, day out, being true to one’s rules of engagement, putting aside our opinions, and trusting our set-ups. In the long run, everything else will fall into place.

Getting to know your Friends

Without a doubt one activity that many professional traders share is that they get to know their friends. Stock friends, that is. One of the most valuable things that we have learned over the years is how important it is to become familiar with the behaviour of your stocks. For example, you have been watching stock HCPG for a break of 50 for over a week, 50 representing new highs. For days you have followed the stock approach 50 from different angles, with different volumes, at different times of the day, only for it to be rejected near the buy point. The next day HCPG is sitting at 49.5 in a flattish market. Then, however, you notice the way she starts to climb up towards 50 this time is somehow different -- this time you know that most likely it will successful. How do you know? Because you have become familiar with your friend and you note a behavior change. At some levels it has to be sub-conscious; if a buddy sitting beside you asks what exactly was different, often it's difficult to pin down. But from our own experience, we have no doubt how well it works.

This is the reason that we also place stocks whose patterns are not completely formed or are too far away, in the "secondary list" of our newsletter; so that subscribers can start watching them days before and familiarize themselves with the stock's behavior. It is also the reason we like to stick to a core group of stocks, around 200 of them, instead of scanning each night through a 1500 stocks looking for patterns. As a rule we never trade a stock that we are not familiar with. If there is a new stock that is gaining attention from momentum traders, we immediately add it to our core group of stocks so that it too can become our friend.

Loyalty and Stocks

We have often spoken about BIDU to our subscribers in our newsletter. It has held remarkably well for this market. Let's take a look at the Nasdaq and BIDU over the last 3 months to illustrate this point.





This is the reason why we say that BIDU should be on your lists every day. Every year there are a new crop of winners --for example in the last two years there was great action in stocks such as TASR TZOO GOOG AAPL SNDK. All these stocks, with possibly the exception of GOOG, are completely broken now (even though TZOO has found some renewed momentum these last few weeks). Often great winners of last year who could do no wrong, like AAPL SNDK, now could not possibly act any worse. The torch has been passed this year to the new crop of momentum winners, stocks like BIDU GRMN HANS; even though we cannot forget this is bear market action in which we find ourselves, and thus upside momentum has been somewhat absent recently.

Always watch the winners and have a place for them on your list every day. Watch how they act relative to the market. And never get married to previous winners. We are great believers in loyalty -- loyalty to our families, friends, and to our nations; but this great quality in life has absolutely no place in trading. By next year we will have new winner stocks to watch every day and most likely have short positions on this year's winners. The only loyalty we have in trading are to chart patterns and to our own rules of engagement. Everything else is just a ticker -- 4 letters that can represent a profit or a loss.

The importance of Volume

We cannot emphasize enough the importance of volume in trading stocks based on chart patterns. Most trading programs have a volume percentage tool which tells you at any given moment what percentage of volume a stock is trading in relation to its average volume (usually based on 30 day and 90 day averages). For example, let's say stock HCPG has been trading 1 million shares on average for the last 3 months. That means by the end of the day, the volume % indicator will most likely be near 100%. Now imagine HCPG is forming a very nice base under her trendline that triggers through a break of 50. The market opens and you notice that your stock is getting very close to 50 and that the volume indicator is reading 25% at 9:45 AM. That means that she has traded 25% of her entire day's volume already in the first 15 minutes of trading. Be interested. Be very interested.

If you do not have a volume percent tool you might want to check out some of the more popular trading programs. We recommend
QuoteTracker as it is will give you a very good idea of how to use this tool, and to top it off, it's free.

Why did we create the Highchartpatterns Group?

There are many reasons but all belong to the categories of self-interested and altruistic. Let's start with self-interest. First, the act of writing lends clarity and coherence to one's thoughts as it forces you to think over what you are doing. This is something we have come to realize even more strongly since we started this service. We have consistently strived to trade in an orderly, clear and disciplined manner. Articulating and putting down our rules, printing out charts, and commenting on patterns for the next day has made us into more focussed traders. In a way, parts of it are like an enhanced trading journal (which, by the way, we recommend to all).

We decided to charge just so much as to be motivated to keep doing such a service (if it were for free we are sure we would not feel pressured enough to update it on a daily basis) but not so much that it becomes too expensive for traders who are starting out, or for people who subscribe to multiple services who do not want to add another $150 a month to their bills. $30 a pop sounded just right. Having it so inexpensive also means that trading will always be the main source of income for us, since as soon as you stop trading and become an observer, you lose the trader's edge: that instinct of looking at a stock's price action and seeing it set up even before the pattern has emerged on the daily chart.

As for the altruistic reasons there is only one -- we were helped by others when we started; now it's our turn to give back.

Trust Yourself

One of the most important and difficult things to learn as a trader is simply to trust yourself. By this we do not mean that you should be stubborn when a position goes against you, or heaven forbid, average down, Once you enter a trade then all opinions, feelings, instincts, et cetera, must defer to simple risk management and profit-taking rules. What we mean by "trust yourself" is something that is critical BEFORE you enter a trade.


Last night, we went through the charts of our favorite momentum stocks and saw absolutely nothing we liked, thus we did not post a single stock in our Main list. Now this happens only 1-2 times a month, hence it is not a common occurrence. Today the market hurt a lot of bulls and a lot of bears and most likely it would have resulted in losses for any positions that we would have entered with our particular system. So was it a coincidence? We doubt it, since we have seen it happen too often. When you are doing your preparation work for the next day and nothing jumps out – be it longs or shorts– know that most likely the next day will be a very difficult one.


Let's look at another example: Every day, we have a main list of stocks with specific entry prices that we watch. Sometimes we find ourselves in a situation where none of these stocks on our list are close the triggering but the market suddenly spikes and looks like it’s going to rally 50 points. We get nervous and think – what shall we do – the market is going to rally and we have nothing in our list to trade (we only trade stocks from our list prepared the night before, and shared with our subscribers). More often than not, that initial move is nothing but a bull trap and the market reverses. In our experience, we have found that if a market move is for real, i.e. lasting, then you will already have setups prepared from the night before that will trigger once the market makes a move. Chart patterns are nothing but footprints of the greenbacks, and they will rarely let you down. Trust the set ups, trust yourself, obey your rules of risk management and profit taking, and in the long run everything else will fall into place.

Just trade the setups, Dammit!

Caution: This advice only pertains to short-term trading and not longer-term investing, swing trading, position trading, etc.

We do not open our newsletters with charts of the Nasdaq, S&P, VIX, discussion of Stochastics, etc., not because we are too lazy but rather because we think it is counterproductive to analyze such matters for the type of trading that we practice.* The more you study the indices and attempt to interpret the stream of information that the plethora of indicators offer, the more you will form an opinion before the market even opens. We follow the leaders of the market and the leaders of the market are usually on the avante-garde of market moves. The leaders will signal when a bottom has formed or when a correction is due. In addition to the leader stocks we watch a host of momentum stocks which are often also great early tells for market moves.

There is a very important reason that we have told our clients in our newsletters-- leave your opinions and emotions at the door before entering your office in the morning. Emotions are the enemy of the trader. Most traders will have heard of the story that if a man sits in front of a great trader and watches him all day, he will not know at the end of the day whether the man made a million dollars or lost a million dollars.

The best traders just simply react to the circumstances. For example -- stock HCPG is approaching the price at which you would like to buy it based on a break of a 2 month consolidation.

Above Average Volume? Check

Is the Trend with you? Check

Is the stock showing greater relative strength than the market? Check

Is the intraday nice and tight without big volatile spikes up and down? Check

Is the breakout coming off of an intraday base instead of a chase of a vertical move which is to be avoided? Check


Trade entered. After that you obey your risk management and profit taking rules for the remainder of the trade. Many traders miss out on great opportunities because they think that the market is too overbought or oversold. Just trade the setups. That's it. When the market finally does decide to turn there will be ample signs and new setups will emerge in the correct direction.


* Usually we aim for 1-3% profits on daytrades and occasionally hold positions 1-2 days. We trade on average probably 1-3x a day, all depending on available setups.

The sitting

Jesse Livermore said it well in the now much-quoted, “It never was my thinking that made the big money for me. It always was my sitting.” He was referring to entering a position, and then sitting on it for possibly months at a time. We as short term traders like to decontextualize the quote and place it within our own reality : It’s the sitting, the waiting for that perfect setup, that makes us the consistent money. Waiting for a setup that meets all your conditions is the most important and the most difficult thing we have learnt from our years of trading.

Chart Patterns and Indicators

There are hundreds of indicators that one can use to interpret stock behavior. We stick to price, volume, and action. We also like to know where the 9, 20,50, 100, and 200DMA are within a chart pattern, as they often are useful as levels of support and resistance.

Everything else we believe is secondary.

Finding a System

It takes approximately five minutes of perusing trading forums and doing simple searches in Google to realize that there are literally thousands of ways that traders make money in the market. Many systems appear to work as there are many traders who make a good living.

What we would recommend for a person who is just beginning to enter the trading world is to read and research these systems and see what approach they feel most drawn to. The next step unfortunately is the most painful one, and that is the trial and error stage. To form a system for oneself can only come from some hardship. However as time progresses, and if the individual is sufficiently self-reflexive, then a manangable system emerges that not only functions well as a career but that fits the personality of the trader.

As for the thousands of ways to make a living in this business -- they all seem to have several things in common. One has to be self-critical and to constantly try to learn from one's trades -- the winners and the losers. We would recommend a trading journal to aid in this effort. Second, one has to control one's emotions and never ever lose one's discipline. Discipline is the thin blue line between becoming a great trader or washing out, as do the overwhelming majority of people who enter this career.

Trading is like any other job -- you need to work hard, do your homework, and at all times, act like a disciplined professional.

The Psychology of Trading: Rules which we live by

1. When you feel most frustrated at missing moves, you are most vulnerable to losing money and trading in a self-destructive manner (hereon called "trading on tilt" to quote Charles Kirk from The Kirk Report). Do not let it play with your head. Every trade is fresh.

2. Do not overthink or get spooked – stay as close to neutral as possible. Don’t predecide anything, just look for your conditions to be met. Calmness is everything in this profession – in the technical setup system itself and in your own emotions.

3.Remember many big losses have come after innocent small initial losses, and then from attempts to make up that loss and frustration – that is when one forces trades -- lousy setups with no volume, chasing spikes or even worse, following other people’s trades.

4. If you get stopped out and are feeling frustrated then market most likely is in a no win mode – step aside and start fresh next day. Emotion is key. There are some days where it is very difficult to make money.

5. Remind yourself how difficult it is to make money and how incredibly easy it is to lose money. There has to be a reason for every trade.

6. Have Vision -- many times stocks sit there for HOURS ABOVE the entry point– remain in the trade as long as the breakout point is held and then hold for the angle change (as buyers pile in) into real profits.

7. Be on your toes with opens in which you miss several quick trades. Do not go tilt. Many tilt days come from opens that one has missed. Just regroup and try again. If stocks are going up or down in a hyberpolic fashion, there is high chance of reversal. If the move indeed is for real then there will be plenty of opportunities later in the day. Remember that. Just wait for the pitch.

8. On a deeper note -- be at peace with yourself. If you feel like you do not deserve to do well, then most likely you will not do well. Do good, treat your body well, work hard, and everything else will fall into place

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