I have been trading the financial markets for about ten years: US stocks and options, futures, forex and crypto. This blog is where I write down what I’ve learned along the way.
How it started
My first trades were the usual ones. I bought what was in the news, sold when it scared me, and called the lucky ones skill. A few quick losses were enough to show me I had no method at all, only opinions.
So I started reading. The book that set the direction was Dr. Alexander Elder’s Trading for a Living: it put the chart at the centre, and it treated risk and psychology as seriously as entries. I talked to people who had been doing this for decades, went to a workshop in New York to learn from them in person, and kept a trading journal. In 2018 that journal became this blog, written in public so I couldn’t lie to myself about it.
How I trade
I read markets mostly through the chart. I care much more about price than about company fundamentals: stock price and nothing else still sums it up.
No single tool makes a decision. I combine them into one read of the chart:
- Trend: moving averages, trend lines, and the structure of highs and lows.
- Momentum: MACD, RSI and the stochastic, mostly to spot when a move is tiring or diverging from price.
- Levels: support and resistance, Fibonacci retracements and extensions.
- Context: candlestick patterns, volume, and Elliott wave counts to see where in the bigger move we might be.
The chart also sets the exit before I enter: the stop goes behind the level that would prove the idea wrong, and the target goes at the next level that matters. The size of the position follows from the distance to the stop, never the other way around.
Ideas get tested before they get money. I backtest them and write down the rules, because the same risk on every trade and a plan written in advance beat any clever entry, and because a backtest is a map, not the territory. Placing trades should be boring. The thinking happens before.
What you’ll find here
Trading psychology, risk management, technical analysis explained one tool at a time and then in combination, market notes read through the chart, options, crypto, and brokers and platforms. There are also more than 60 book reviews of what I’ve read along the way. I write about what I’ve learned, mistakes included, because that’s where most of the learning is.
There’s a lot of fake information and hype about trading. If you only take one thing from this site, make it compounding, and the idea that cutting losses quickly is what keeps you in the game long enough to benefit from it.
Nothing here is financial advice. Trade your own plan, with money you can afford to lose.
You can contact me here: Contact