Are certain personality types a better fit for navigating markets? You may be surprised. Everyone knows at least one “Type-A” personality, the hard-driven workaholic, perhaps a doctor, lawyer, or small-business owner. Then there are the logical, analytical left-brainers—engineers or computer programmers. And don’t forget the artists and creative types among us, folks driven by subjective […]

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“My wife was afraid of the dark…then she saw me naked and now she’s afraid of the light.”—Rodney Dangerfield The first step to overcoming any fear is understanding what you’re dealing with. With short-naked puts, that means understanding the strategy as well as its risks. To enter a short-naked put, you sell to open a […]

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A plan (and sticking to it) is the backbone of a solid trading approach. But what happens when your plan shows cracks? Consider 5 occasions that may demand course correction. Trading on a gut feeling can leave you with a stomachache. That’s right. Your wisest decisions should be devoid of fear and greed, sometimes to […]

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From tulip bulbs to dot-coms, history is littered with the wreckage of market bubbles. Current conditions aren’t raising red flags among most market experts. Nonetheless, investors should always be on the watch for irrational exuberance and look for ways to protect themselves if things turn sour. How do you know when a high-altitude market is […]

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Bring on the blindfolded monkeys. Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel Prize-winning Princeton University psychologist who is widely credited with creating the field of behavioral economics, has some advice for stockpickers: It’s all luck. What? That’s blasphemy to investment professionals who turn to all sorts of tricks and scientific methods to make decisions affecting millions, if not […]

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Editor’s note: This is the second of a two-part Perspectives series on the principles of “mindful” trading. Read the first. Professional athletes often expound during post-game media sessions about being “in the zone.” It’s a parallel universe where all goes quiet, time seems to stand still, and their ultimate triumphs are almost effortless. A similar […]

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In a recent study, Harvard University researchers determined that some 47% of people performing any given task found their minds drifting to other subjects. There’s a lesson here for traders. Specifically, the importance of maintaining laser-focused attention on the here and now. Given everything competing for our attention these days, that’s easier said than done. […]

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Grab a cup of coffee, find a comfortable chair, and settle in with some of the all-time trading greats courtesy of Jack Schwager, whose recently published The Little Book of Market Wizards: Lessons from the Greatest Traders offers a glimpse inside the minds of Warren Buffett, Paul Tudor Jones, and other noteworthies. Through some five […]

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Everyone makes mistakes. But there are two types of people: those who learn from their mistakes and those who don’t. The “value of mistakes” is the title of one chapter in Jack Schwager’s latest book The Little Book of Market Wizards: Lessons from the Greatest Traders. We spoke with him to dig a little deeper. […]

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