Trading insights in five minutes. Everyday.
We love communicating with our students and Tackle Daily is our daily email we send out Monday through Saturday. This five-minute read is designed to kick off your day the right way. You’ll find out what is happening at Tackle Trading on that day along with our market thoughts, a chart of the day and other inspirational items. If you missed any of our previous emails, you can find them here.
August 2, 2021
A bear is a trader who bets on lower prices. Given all the terrible things that happen globally, you might think they have a decent chance of making money wagering on declining markets. When I first started, I thought their probability of success was at least decent.
July 30, 2021
Mega-cap tech had been leading. The likes of Facebook, Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft ramped into this month’s earnings reports. But this week, they cooled. Only slightly, yes, but cool nonetheless. But did that kill the market? No.
July 29, 2021
In last night’s Trade Masters, I took spectators on a brief tour of the metals & mining space while showing them how to perform top-down analysis properly.
July 28, 2021
Two days ago, we featured bitcoin (/BTC) as our chart of the day. However, it deserves some further commentary because there are fascinating takeaways from its sudden reversal.
July 27, 2021
China is the largest component of what investors call “emerging markets.” And it’s been getting smashed over the past few months. The selling accelerated on Monday, with the iShares China Large-Cap ETF (FXI) falling over 5%. Volume exploded throughout the session, rising to nearly 55 million shares by the closing bell. This is what widespread liquidation looks like.
July 26, 2021
The naked put strategy is a favorite for many traders. It carries a high probability of profit and adds positive theta to your portfolio. Check out the video on it in the Tackle Trading Playbook if you’re in need of a refresher.
If there’s a drawback, it’s the cost. If you’re using a margin account, it may not matter much, but the margin required for those wielding retirement accounts is equal to the max loss. And that can be a lot. As a result, your return on investment is tiny.
July 23, 2021
We are a consumer-driven economy. When mom and pop are flush with cash, they spend. The spending drives corporate profits and, ultimately, stock prices higher. There are countless methods for measuring how healthy consumers’ balance sheets are. How they’re doing paying bills and other debts is a great one.
July 22, 2021
On July 19th, 2021, NBER released a statement declaring that a trough in economic activity occurred in April 2020. The previous peak was February 2020, which means we had a two-month recession. It was the shortest recession in history.
July 21, 2021
Volatility tends to cluster. Big down days (like Monday) don’t lead to peace and calm. Instead, the violence of the plunge is usually echoed by the speed of the recovery. Tuesday saw stocks come roaring back, especially in the beaten-down Russell 2000. The small-cap-laden index surged as much as 3% intraday.
July 20, 2021
Monday saw the Dow Jones Industrial Average suffer its largest down day since before the Presidential Election. CNBC highlighted the 700 point drop because doing so sounds far scarier than saying the popular benchmark fell nearly 2%. They weren’t wrong, though. It was a far bigger down day than what recent market movement has trained traders to expect.
July 19, 2021
Equities limped into the weekend and based on Sunday night’s movement in the futures market, the weakness will continue into Monday morning. Bearish evidence is beginning to mount. To help keep your wits about you, let’s review a few critical points regarding corrections.
July 16, 2021
Many traders focus on U.S. equities to the exclusion of all else. America boasts the biggest companies, the most well-capitalized, and arguably the most regulated. Over the past 13 years, U.S. stocks have been trouncing the rest of the world in their performance.
July 14, 2021
Remember this article next time some nervous nelly points out a spooky divergence. They don’t all resolve themselves with asset prices falling.
July 13, 2021
Earnings season is upon us, and, as usual, banks are leading the charge. JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs are unveiling their numbers this morning. Many other heavy hitters will follow. So here’s the question circling investors’ minds: Will the financial sector get the party started with results worth celebrating?
July 9, 2021
Pullbacks are inevitable – especially when prices have risen too far too fast (I’m looking at you, QQQ). If we don’t retreat and prices get even more overbought, it simply means we’ll have a worse (read: steeper, quicker) selloff down the road.
July 8, 2021
The S&P 500 reached a new record high intraday on Wednesday. So did the Nasdaq 100. With both indexes basking at the top of their trends, you would think everything is sunshine and lollipops in stock land. Any you would be wrong.
July 7, 2021
Crude oil is taking it on the chin this week, suffering its first break of the 20-day moving average since mid-May. The correction is causing no shortage of register ringing across the energy sector, which isn’t helping the Russell 2000.
July 2, 2021
Here’s a helpful exercise. Look at the ten-year history of whatever stock/ETF you’re going to buy. Count how many times it corrected more than 10% along the way. My bet is you had multiple drawdowns exceeding 30%. Some may have even fallen 50% at some point. Each one of those episodes knocked out all the trades who had stop losses.
July 1, 2021
Suppose you have a portfolio of long-term stock/ETF positions. Your time horizon is decades, and you have the utmost confidence that the advance is permanent and the declines temporary. Furthermore, you’re willing to sit tight through any drawdowns without selling. In a situation like this, why worry about portfolio protection?
June 30, 2021
Over the next few Tackle Today messages, we’re going to discuss best practices for portfolio protection. In this case (and in almost all cases), when I say “portfolio protection,” I mean buying put options or put spreads as insurance for your portfolio.
