The Traders JournalStockCharts.comExpert market commentary from StockCharts.comtag:stockcharts.com,2019-04-18:blog-112024-03-01T20:02:35ZYour Selling Methodology is Your Paramedic to ProfitsGatis Rozetag:stockcharts.com,2024-03-01:post-272872024-03-01T20:02:34Z2024-03-01T20:01:52Z<blockquote><em>"When you feel like bragging, it's probably time to sell." — John Neff</em></blockquote><p><img src="https://d.stockcharts.com/img/articles/2024/03/01/c09602d6-544f-4d8f-9edf-954b3a0f724e.jpg" style="display: inline; margin: 0px 15px; float: left; width: 300px;">Stock market investing is simple, really. You only need to make two choices: when to buy and when to sell. The unfortunate reality is that 75% of casual investors really only want to hear about the buy side. So, for those folks, you can stop reading now. This blog is addressed to the other 25%.</p><p>First, let me say that relying on your gut feeling that something is not right is a doomed selling methodology. You must always be ready to pull the sell trigger, but you also must know exactly what and why the catalysts are for that sell action to occur.</p><p>As I write this blog, the S&P 500 is up 45% over the past 16 months. Re-read John Neff's quote above. The human nature of investors being what it is, we all want to focus on the buy side presently. But precisely for that reason, I believe now is the time to revisit your selling methodology. So for the next couple blogs, think of them as a refresher course on the sell side — this is my invitation for you to revisit your personal selling disciplines.</p><p>For the 75% of you that find this topic uninteresting or unnecessary, please re-read my <em>Traders Journal</em> about investing ‘face-plants.' Over decades of teaching investors, the one tool I've used consistently in the classroom that always gets very high accolades from my students is the Action Sequence. I learned it from Dr. Hank Pruden at Golden Gate University, and I've taught the technique ever since in my seminars. The approach is straightforward. I give investors charts and they put pencil to paper — analyzing what's in front of them, and then we analyze them as a group. Within the parameters of this <em>Traders Journal</em> blog, some adjustments obviously need to be made.</p><p><img src="https://stockcharts.com/img/articles/2024/03/01/cd1842dc-061e-401f-8067-acc094a983e3.jpg" style="display: inline; float: right; margin: 0px 15px; width: 200px;" onclick="window.open('https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/top-ten-best-sellers/products/tensile-trading-1')">But before tossing charts at you (which I'll do next time), I want you to get up-to-speed on selling. The easiest and fastest way to do that is to give you some homework. Here it is. In our book <a href="https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/top-ten-best-sellers/products/tensile-trading-1" target="_blank"><em>Tensile Trading: The 10 Stages of Stock Market Mastery</em></a><a href="https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/top-ten-best-sellers/products/tensile-trading-1" target="_blank">,</a> the ninth stage is Selling. Re-reading Chapter 9 will better prepare you for our Action Sequences. Selling exercises to come!</p><p>This reading assignment will be a good review of the personal investor issues associated with selling your positions, the technical tools we'll use, and the various components you might consider including when assembling your own personal selling methodology. I can help you build it, but it has to be YOUR personal methodology. Otherwise, you won't trust it 100% and you'll be less likely to pull the sell trigger when the best time comes.</p><p>Remember that investing is like sports. You can have a tremendous winning streak, but a brief lapse of your attention or discipline can quickly result in losses or giving back a percentage of your profits. Consistency matters. A game plan matters. You'll see how Action Sequence exercises also matter!</p><p><br></p><p><em>Trade well; trade with discipline!</em></p><p>-- Gatis Roze</p>"When you feel like bragging, it's probably time to sell." — John NeffStock market investing is simple, really. You only need to make two choices: when to buy and when to sell. The unfortunate reality is that 75% of casual investors really only want to hear about the buy side. So, for those folks, you can stop reading now. This blog is addressed to the other 25%.First, let me say that relying on your gut feeling that something is not right is a doomed selling methodology. You must always be ready to pull the sell trigger, but you also must know exactly what and why the catalysts are...Common Lessons Amongst Corporate, Sports & Investment Portfolio Turnarounds!Gatis Rozetag:stockcharts.com,2024-01-12:post-270322024-01-12T14:00:00Z2024-01-12T14:00:00Z<p><img src="https://d.stockcharts.com/img/articles/2024/01/11/9fd1aff8-3073-4e86-b72d-a9cc7296045f.jpg" style="display: inline; margin: 0px 15px; width: 300px; float: left;"></p><p>My many decades of business, investing, and sports experience has shown me time and time again that parallel lessons in all three arenas are remarkably worthy teachers. One essential lesson today (January 2024) is to not allow yourself to become a "legend in your own mind." Yes, you likely achieved spectacular investing results in 2023. But before you embrace the mantle of the next Warren Buffett, please remember that the S&P 500 was up over 24%. Whichever popular cliche you care to embrace, ("a rising tide lifts all boats", perhaps?), you need to stay humble. If you don't, the market will inevitably oblige and remind you that indeed you are not Warren Buffett.</p><p>I am prompted by these observations as I read the <em>Wall Street Journal</em> article (Jan 6, 2024) about football turnaround coach, Jim Harbaugh at the University of Michigan. Even business schools are studying his methods. Because successful turnarounds in different arenas have strikingly similar attributes.</p><p>Coach Harbaugh makes it sound straightforward (which of course it is not). He claims it simply takes the following:</p><ol><li>Hard work.</li><li>Make sure you improve and get better everyday.</li><li>Acknowledge the improvements as they compound and reinforce winning results.</li></ol><p>Sure, there are many obvious differences between distressed companies, discouraged sports teams and anguished investors. But my point is that regardless of your 12-0 investment season in 2023, when it comes to money management, Harbaugh's 3 simple rules should guide and motivate you into the new year.</p><p>I've written pretty much the same lines to myself in my own trading journal. I had many of my biggest positions — such as ADBE, AMZN, MSFT and COST — nicely outperform the market, but I had to remember what Marty Zweig used to preach. "The trend is your friend." In 2023, it was my best friend! I assure you that the script will be different in 2024. Don't start to coast.</p><p>Therefore, I implore you to embrace Harbaugh's 3 rules and rededicate yourself to our craft.</p><p>I write this to myself as much as to all of you — my investor friends. As Coach reminds us, always get back to the fundamentals. Fundamentals matter. With that in mind, I'd like to suggest you revisit the investor roadmap to success being the 10 essential stages of stock market mastery (from our book <a href="https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/top-ten-best-sellers/products/tensile-trading-1" target="_blank"><em>Tensile Trading</em></a>). It provides the foundation for consistently profitable investing.</p><p><img src="https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fstockmarketmastery.com%2fimg%2ftt-roadmap.png&c=E,1,KVOYcS_9AvkFg9VQK5qDqsoT3jtVEhxdqXTvvo9Fivhha3ExyU1oykwWvLp0nr8KTpzOecCFyL-zp29jNXjzL8YapauV7HutmotGBGv5OM7JaqxHRAB-&typo=1"></p><p>Here's why these 10 stages are essential. Without an orderly roadmap to regiment and organize one's analysis, our investment decisions can be easily tainted by the excitement and influences of the moment. Impulsive investing is poisonous. The 10 stages provide you with an understanding and justification for buying an equity, or help you decide if you should buy it at all.</p><p>The bottom line is that when you adopt the 10 stages and develop the appropriate discipline and skill set, your experience will compound. Each stage contributes to increasing the probability of achieving a profitable trade. The result being not only improvement and "a higher batting average", but a consistency and understanding of your methodology which you can replicate over and over again.</p><p>Yes — you can achieve consistent profits and understand how you did it. 2024 here we come!</p><p><br></p><p><em>Trade well; trade with discipline!</em></p><p>-- Gatis Roze</p>My many decades of business, investing, and sports experience has shown me time and time again that parallel lessons in all three arenas are remarkably worthy teachers. One essential lesson today (January 2024) is to not allow yourself to become a "legend in your own mind." Yes, you likely achieved spectacular investing results in 2023. But before you embrace the mantle of the next Warren Buffett, please remember that the S&P 500 was up over 24%. Whichever popular cliche you care to embrace, ("a rising tide lifts all boats", perhaps?), you need to stay humble. If you don't, the market...The 2 Best Holiday Gifts You Can Give Your Kids!Gatis Rozetag:stockcharts.com,2023-12-16:post-268992023-12-16T00:50:56Z2023-12-16T00:50:56Z<p><img src="https://d.stockcharts.com/img/articles/2023/12/15/ebb6b8d7-cae3-4c86-9b05-68a87189355f.jpg" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto; width: 75%;"></p><p>Let's begin with the bottom line.</p><p>As parents, our reason for being here on planet Earth is to pass on to our children the life skills they'll need to succeed. Everyone talks about leaving a better planet for our children; why don't we try to leave better children for our planet? I submit to you that two of the most important gifts you can offer them are:</p><ul><li>Giving them the gift of your time — one-on-one.</li><li>Helping them cultivate a financial mindset and money-wise toolkit to ensure their long-term success.</li></ul><p>As children, money management may not seem to be an interesting subject for them, unless you make it so. Someday — sooner or later — these financial skills will become a necessity in their lives. Success means a plethora of different things to different people, but 99% of those definitions must be built on a solid financial foundation. Money literacy leads to future financial freedom, which in turn leads to success in life. What follows are a few thoughts, suggestions, and routines that I encourage you to embrace this Holiday Season — indeed all year-round.</p><ol><li>It's stating the obvious, but parents are critical role models. It's realistic to assume that children will mimic their parents' money habits. Act accordingly.</li><li>Make conversations about money and finances a part of regular routines with your family — be it on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.</li><li>Openly discuss your own money mistakes — past or present. There's a bonding effect that results from those kinds of upfront discussions, not to mention the learning that goes on. Be honest about the consequences of that cryptocurrency trade that didn't go so well!</li><li>Fact: children are fast learners — much more so than adults. The time you spend with them has immense leverage.</li><li>Keep it simple. You don't have to jump into explaining Index Funds, ETFs or equities. Start with the basic financial issues such as discussing saving their allowance, explaining credit cards, interest rates and the dangers of debt. My favorite: give them some examples that illustrate the magic of compounding. Then, just for fun, toss in a chat about taxes and our beloved IRS.</li><li>Actions speak louder than words. Help your children open a bank account, or brokerage account depending on their age. Give them a sense of ownership when their monthly account statement arrives in the mail.</li><li>Teach them to listen to money matters, financial topics, and investing ideas. Simple awareness of such topics will have a lasting and positive effect.</li><li><img src="https://stockcharts.com/img/articles/2023/12/15/9ef52200-e5d8-4389-a31d-735e270df277.jpg" style="display: inline; float: right; margin: 0px 15px; width: 150px;" onclick="window.open('https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/top-ten-best-sellers/products/tensile-trading-1')">Discuss and explore their saving and spending habits. Talk about how these relate to their "wants" versus their "needs." Be creative. Make it fun. Be sensitive that it's different for every person. Most importantly, don't make it a chore or let it become a stressful issue.</li><li>Finally, you can do what I did — <a href="https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/top-ten-best-sellers/products/tensile-trading-1" target="_blank">write an investment book with your kid</a>! It's a stupendous learning experience. I'm being facetious, of course, but books, <a href="https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/dvds/products/how-to-master-your-asset-allocation-profile" target="_blank">videos</a> and websites such as StockCharts.com provide an astounding array of interesting topics to share and discuss.</li></ol><p>So, I return to the bottom line. Regular one-on-one conversations with your children about money and investing will empower them with essential financial skills and tools and thereby have a positive effect on their future lives.</p><p>In closing, I have to say this: don't expect your children's teachers or professors to take on this responsibility. It's all up to you, Mom and Dad!</p><p><br></p><p><em>Trade well; trade with discipline!</em></p><p>-- Gatis Roze</p><hr><p><strong><em>BONUS</em></strong>: A gift to you this Holiday Season. Being immersed in Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales, I thought it only reasonable to extend to you my own December Deals.</p><p><img src="https://d.stockcharts.com/img/articles/2023/12/01/cf88c635-869f-4720-9c03-f1f963418b94.jpg" style="display: inline; margin: 0px 15px; float: left; width: 100px;" onclick="window.open('https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/dvds/products/tensile-trading')"><img src="https://d.stockcharts.com/img/articles/2023/12/01/9151f8c7-c94f-42f8-804b-dc01108a0658.jpg" style="display: inline; margin: 0px 15px; float: right; width: 150px;" onclick="window.open('https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/dvds/products/how-to-master-your-asset-allocation-profile')">Our Blu-Ray had been steeply discounted for those of you who might prefer to watch DVDs versus reading our book — <a href="https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/dvds/products/tensile-trading" target="_blank"><em>The 10 Essential Stages of Stock Market Mastery</em></a>.</p><p>The <a href="https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/dvds/products/how-to-master-your-asset-allocation-profile" target="_blank">Asset Allocation DVD that Grayson and I produced</a> is also steeply discounted. This is another great stocking stuffer for parents endeavoring to boost the financial IQ of the younger generation.</p><p>Wishing you great investing success in 2024!</p>Let's begin with the bottom line.As parents, our reason for being here on planet Earth is to pass on to our children the life skills they'll need to succeed. Everyone talks about leaving a better planet for our children; why don't we try to leave better children for our planet? I submit to you that two of the most important gifts you can offer them are:Giving them the gift of your time — one-on-one.Helping them cultivate a financial mindset and money-wise toolkit to ensure their long-term success.As children, money management may not seem to be an interesting subject for them, unless...Don't Even Think About Investing Without Addressing These 10 Essentials (Part 2: Essentials #6 - #10)Gatis Rozetag:stockcharts.com,2023-12-01:post-268172023-12-01T23:42:15Z2023-12-01T23:40:56Z<p><img src="https://d.stockcharts.com/img/articles/2023/12/01/605d659c-79ed-495b-b51f-36351910dc77.jpg" style="display: inline; margin: 0px 15px; float: left; width: 300px;" onclick="window.open('https://stockcharts.com/articles/journal/2023/09/dont-even-think-about-investin-274.html')">I'm not an investment arsonist! I won't try to convince you that stock market perfection is achievable. I will, however, guarantee (strong word) that if you put in the effort, the results will be as Vince Lombardi often claimed: "Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence." The 10 investing essentials I've presented in <a href="https://stockcharts.com/articles/journal/2023/09/dont-even-think-about-investin-274.html" target="_blank">these two blogs</a> were culled from my own list of 30 essentials. I believe you'll find them to be helpful.</p><p>Two points to make. First, there are no shortcuts to becoming a successful investor. Your learning never stops. Yes, there are, at a minimum 20 more foundational essentials to learn. Second point: be willing to invest the time. Even Warren Buffett's vast net worth was predominantly accumulated after his 50th birthday. I share with you a quote from William Henley's poem "Invictus", whose final lines read "I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul." Embrace this reality, and you'll achieve remarkable success in the stock market. Onward!</p><h3>6. HERE'S YOUR CHALLENGE</h3><p>You either embrace "PAC", or you PACK IT IN and give your money to some money manager. PAC stands for PIVOT, ADAPT and CHANGE. This is a reality of investing and a truism of the stock markets. Expect and accept change. William O'Neil preached that following new products and new companies leads to growth, profits, and rising earnings. These disruptors or change-makers are the future darlings of the equities markets.</p><p>Even something as seemingly mundane as grocery store inventory can reflect the impact of regular changes. Few realize that 80% of what's on the shelves today are new or improved products that have been there for five years or less. Think food trends and fads. The days of Campbell soup gave way to healthy organic and sustainable foods lower in salt and preservatives. The stock market reflects these types of changes in our society. Your portfolio must change with the times, too. As Nicolas Darvas wrote in his seminal 1960's book, "There are no good or bad stocks — only rising and falling stocks." Accept this fact, embrace the challenge, pivot, and adapt. PAC!</p><h3>7. INVESTING DEMENTIA</h3><p>There's the good kind of investing dementia and the bad kind. Understand both!</p><p>Exceptional professional athletes become adept at the good kind. Sports require a short memory. What happened with the last play, last goal, or last period mustn't negatively impact the next play, next goal, or next period. The bad kind applies to everyone — be it in the sports arena, business world, investing theater or life. When you don't acknowledge mistakes you've made, and thereby make them again, that's pure stupidity. Or you simply forget the lessons you've learned, thereby losing sight of the past and not remembering what you had once known. You get lazy, and allow your ego to tell you something different. Yes, it takes focus, concentration and discipline to learn from your mistakes and remember not to step into the same cow dung twice. Stan Druckenmiller — the ‘Market Wizard' — once said, "Every great money manager I've ever met, all they want to talk about is their mistakes. There's a great humility there." A big ego and a selective memory is a toxic mix in the investment coliseum.</p><p>Investing attracts many successful people with high IQs. All too often, these folks bring their oversized egos to the table, accompanied by a fair amount of psychological baggage that they didn't realize they had or didn't think mattered. The markets have a way to ensure that these folks do a belly-flop and lose their bathing suits. Intuition and IQ have little relevance in the stock market until they're backed up by the prerequisites of competence and expertise. That takes a committed effort over time.</p><p>An immense part of that is what we address in Stage 3 of <a href="https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/top-ten-best-sellers/products/tensile-trading-1" target="_blank"><em>Stock Market Mastery</em></a>: The Investor Self. If you truly embrace the fact that the majority — yes, I said majority — of your consistent long-term success in the markets depends upon your mental skills and self control, then you'll be a winner. You will steadily and predictably progress through the five levels of investor growth. Just remember, egos are toxic in investing.</p><h3>8. THE IMPORTANCE OF A METHODOLOGY</h3><p>If you can't explicitly describe your investment methodology, you probably don't have one! Start by putting it down in writing. Once you've outlined your investing approach, I submit to you a number of good things will happen.</p><ol><li>You'll feel less stressed.</li><li>You'll stay more organized.</li><li>The market will reward you for your efforts.</li></ol><p><img src="https://stockcharts.com/img/articles/2023/12/01/4a769053-4504-4480-8f36-eeb9b802a9ff.jpg" style="display: inline; float: left; margin: 0px 15px; width: 150px;" onclick="window.open('https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/top-ten-best-sellers/products/tensile-trading-1')">I humbly suggest you use our book <a href="https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/top-ten-best-sellers/products/tensile-trading-1" target="_blank"><em>Tensile Trading: The 10 Essential Stages of Stock Market Mastery</em></a> as a foundation, and then personalize it over time as you deem fit. Think of it as a roadmap to help peel back the 10 layers of the stock market. You'll clearly recognize there's DNA from many Market Wizards incorporated in each of the 10 Stages. This approach is the antithesis of reading newsletters and accepting stock tips. Instead, this is all about learning a skill set you can replicate. I think this ancient and timeless wisdom remains so very apropos for modern investors. "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." A profound truth we should all embrace as investors.</p><h3>9. DISCIPLINE</h3><p>Having the discipline to follow your routines is what separates the winners from the losers. Successful investing is not dissimilar to professional sports. For a championship result, it's all about doing a myriad of little things that add up to achieving a significant result; small routines which reinforce each other. Not dissimilar to the elements that make up your investment methodology and stack atop one another to create a basket of probability enhancers. The stock market is all about probabilities. You must endeavor to find each and every element that will contribute to increasing positive probabilities and adding these to your investing methodology.</p><p>In fact, this is not the biggest challenge. Our book is chock-full of these probability enhancers. We can teach that. But the Achilles heel for most investors is not having the discipline to consistently deploy their routines. If you waver or allow yourself to become lackadaisical, you will ignore something or miss something altogether. The market will catch your blindness and extract the requisite tuition.</p><p>Market Wizard Richard Dennis claimed he could publish his trading methodology and rules in the newspaper and very few investors would follow them . Why? He knew so few would ever have the discipline, drive, and commitment to put in the effort. Discipline is your shield to the dark side. The golden road to the rainbow is paved with discipline.</p><h3>10. FACTS, JUST THE FACTS</h3><p>Truth holds power. These days, however, the Investment Salad is composed of information, disinformation and artificial intelligence, which I refer to as synthetic truth. Discerning the truth is an ongoing battle. Social media has created a dense stock market fog with a medley of distortions, bias, lies, propaganda, and misinformation, as well as deliberate disinformation.</p><p>The first truth to embrace is that truth itself is not always easily available. The second truth is that there exists a lot of disinformation haze. Seldom will you have clear sight lines. Having acknowledged these truths, I follow eight simple caveats that have served me very well over time. I'd like to share these with you.</p><p style="margin: 0in;"> a. Fact-check what you can.</p><p style="margin: 0in;"> b. Do not put much faith in the so-called experts.</p><p style="margin: 0in;"> c. You'll never know everything you'd like to know. Get used to it.</p><p style="margin: 0in;"> d. Don't focus too much on short-term sensational news.</p><p style="margin: 0in;"> e. Don't believe it when the pundits claim "it's different this time."</p><p style="margin: 0in;"> f. You must be willing to adapt and change when reality presents itself.</p><p style="margin: 0in;"> g. An historical truism of stock equity prices — the cheap get cheaper. The dear get dearer. Don't fight it.</p><p> h. My favorite caveat: Price charts don't lie. I trust them. I believe in their message. They are the final arbitrator.</p><p><strong><em>BONUS</em></strong>: A gift to you this Holiday Season. Being immersed in Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales, I thought it only reasonable to extend to you my own December Deals.</p><p><img src="https://d.stockcharts.com/img/articles/2023/12/01/cf88c635-869f-4720-9c03-f1f963418b94.jpg" style="display: inline; margin: 0px 15px; float: left; width: 100px;" onclick="window.open('https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/dvds/products/tensile-trading')"><img src="https://d.stockcharts.com/img/articles/2023/12/01/9151f8c7-c94f-42f8-804b-dc01108a0658.jpg" style="display: inline; margin: 0px 15px; float: right; width: 150px;" onclick="window.open('https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/dvds/products/how-to-master-your-asset-allocation-profile')">Our Blu-Ray had been steeply discounted for those of you who might prefer to watch DVDs versus reading our book — <a href="https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/dvds/products/tensile-trading" target="_blank"><em>The 10 Essential Stages of Stock Market Mastery</em></a>.</p><p>The <a href="https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/dvds/products/how-to-master-your-asset-allocation-profile" target="_blank">Asset Allocation DVD that Grayson and I produced</a> is also steeply discounted. This is another great stocking stuffer for parents endeavoring to boost the financial IQ of the younger generation.</p><p>Wishing you great investing success in 2024!</p><p><br></p>I'm not an investment arsonist! I won't try to convince you that stock market perfection is achievable. I will, however, guarantee (strong word) that if you put in the effort, the results will be as Vince Lombardi often claimed: "Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence." The 10 investing essentials I've presented in these two blogs were culled from my own list of 30 essentials. I believe you'll find them to be helpful.Two points to make. First, there are no shortcuts to becoming a successful investor. Your learning never stops. Yes, there are...Don't Even Think About Investing Without Addressing These 10 Essentials (Part 1: Essentials #1 - #5)Gatis Rozetag:stockcharts.com,2023-09-12:post-263652023-09-12T22:17:33Z2023-09-12T22:17:33Z<p><img src="https://d.stockcharts.com/img/articles/2023/09/12/433aba92-3b70-4608-9bc2-bec9feaefb31.jpg" style="display: inline; margin: 0px 15px; float: left; width: 300px;">We investors are frequently guilty of hearing only what we want to hear. The justification often being "that doesn't apply to me." Or my other favorite line, "Oh, I don't do that." In <a href="https://stockcharts.com/articles/journal/2023/08/how-william-oneil-the-legendar-448.html" target="_blank">my previous blog</a> — a tribute to William J. O'Neil, — I said that in the near future I'd share my specific takeaways from all his seminars I attended and his books I read. I absorbed this material from O'Neil over many decades, and in reviewing my extensive notes, I freely admit to paraphrasing his insights.</p><p>As with so many instances in life, O'Neil may have implied one lesson and I inferred something slightly different. Nevertheless, this is my collection of useful investing essentials that all of us need to remember and that all novices must adopt sooner rather than later. Not just for the betterment of our own portfolios, but for the crucial responsibility of passing the investment management baton to the next generation. Without this baton pass, your legacy dies. That may sound brutal, but it's entirely truthful.</p><h3>1. SUCCESSFUL INVESTING CAN BE LEARNED</h3><p>This is a fact, and I'll offer you proof. The Market Wizard, Richard Dennis, set out to prove this point by making a wager with his business partner. He won! He proved it could be done to the tune of $175 million. You should read Wikipedia's biography of Dennis. He turned $1,600 into $350 million and then famously taught his system to a small group of investing recruits who he labeled "the Turtles." In five years, his novice Turtle investors produced an aggregate profit of $175 million. The conclusion? Yes, you can learn to be a consistently profitable investor, too. </p><h3>2. START EARLY — DON'T PUT OFF INVESTING</h3><p>In my over 25 years teaching investors, I consistently heard the same regret over and over again, "gosh, if only I had started investing sooner." Be it Buffett, O'Neil or Bogle, they all applaud the magic of compounding and preach the gospel of starting early. You've all seen the seemingly unbelievable numbers. Young people who start investing almost certainly will be able to retire in their fifties. And even for those of you already 50, investing $15,000 annually and letting it grow at a reasonable market rate of 8% will reap a nest egg of $440,000 by the time you're 65. But my God — do the math if you start at 25 years old! I'd present you with the number, but you probably wouldn't believe me. Remember the importance of the baton pass. Teach young people to start investing early. Don't be like 64 year-old Ned, a former student of mine who said he'd just begun doing some financial planning and discovered he could retire by 65 — but only for 45 minutes. Make it happen before you end up like him! Stop waiting for inspiration as all you are doing is feeding your procrastination.</p><h3>3. THE WORLD'S GREATEST HOBBY WILL REWARD YOU</h3><p>I began investing as a young man and then continued through my entire career as an entrepreneur. It began as a hobby — albeit a serious hobby. At the time, my assets were managed by a professional firm. When I transitioned to making my hobby a full-time avocation, I had already been a very serious student of investing for many years. Unlike some lazier novice investors who flame out early and quickly ( for some that may be a blessing in disguise) I continued to grow and succeed by bumping, grinding and persevering. If we commit ourselves to do what needs to be done and thereby grow as investors, the market will reward us as long as we're willing to apply ourselves. The University of Wall Street will extract its tuition, but graduation pays immense dividends. It's worth it! Investing Hell is reserved for "middle earth" which is where mediocrity resides. Far too many investors are by their own design sentenced to a life of investing mediocrity. Embrace this wonderful hobby! I believe author and professor Stephen R.Covey puts it nicely. "Sow a thought, and you reap an act; sow an act, and you reap a habit; sow a character, and you reap a destiny." As an investor, growth is an obligation. The alternative is not financially attractive. Make the commitment.</p><h3>4. THE METHODOLOGY OF POTHOLES</h3><p>It might seem counterintuitive at first. It's not what a novice investor wants to hear, but you'll have far far more assets in your pocket over the long term if you first focus on what you should NOT do as an investor instead of trying to find the Holy Grail of stock trading methodologies. Once again, take heed of what Buffett and other Marker Wizards have advised. They will tell you that you can indeed outperform the market and actually possess mediocre investing skills — but there's the big if — if you avoid falling into the most common potholes and don't make all the usual mistakes and blunders that investors are prone to do over and over again. The reality is that the Methodology of Potholes will trump the Methodology of Investing, so to speak!</p><h3>5. SIMPLE BEATS COMPLEX</h3><p>Many investors have multiple university degrees, high IQs, and very successful careers. Generally, they are cerebral folks who understand complex stuff. That's why they're attracted to the stock markets and investing in the first place. Here's the conundrum — one that I was myself was guilty of initially. Increased complexity is inversely related to profits. Simplicity (within reason) produces profits and clobbers complexity in most instances. Steve Jobs had it absolutely correct when he said, "Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it's worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains." And you have to admit, Steve Jobs moved mountains. You can as well.</p><p>Till the next blog then, when I'll present you investing essentials #6 through #10.</p><p><br></p><p><em>Trade well; trade with discipline!</em></p><h2><strong>Gatis Roze</strong>, MBA, CMT</h2><p><a href="http://stockmarketmastery.com/" target="_blank"><strong>StockMarketMastery.com</strong></a></p><ul><li>Author, <a href="http://store.stockcharts.com/products/tensile-trading-1" target="_blank"><strong>"Tensile Trading: The 10 Essential Stages of Stock Market Mastery"</strong></a><span target="_blank"> (Wiley, 2016)</span></li><li>Developer of the <a href="https://stockcharts.com/marketplace/chartpacks/stock-market-mastery.html" target="_blank"><strong>"Stock Market Mastery" ChartPack</strong></a><span target="_blank"> for StockCharts members</span></li><li>Presenter of the best-selling <a href="http://store.stockcharts.com/collections/dvds/products/tensile-trading" target="_blank"><strong>"Tensile Trading"</strong></a><span target="_blank"> DVD seminar</span></li><li>Presenter of the <a href="http://store.stockcharts.com/collections/dvds/products/how-to-master-your-asset-allocation-profile" target="_blank"><strong>"How to Master Your Asset Allocation Profile DVD"</strong></a><span target="_blank"> seminar</span></li></ul>We investors are frequently guilty of hearing only what we want to hear. The justification often being "that doesn't apply to me." Or my other favorite line, "Oh, I don't do that." In my previous blog — a tribute to William J. O'Neil, — I said that in the near future I'd share my specific takeaways from all his seminars I attended and his books I read. I absorbed this material from O'Neil over many decades, and in reviewing my extensive notes, I freely admit to paraphrasing his insights.As with so many instances in life, O'Neil may have implied one lesson and I inferred...How William O'Neil - The Legendary Investor - Changed My LifeGatis Rozetag:stockcharts.com,2023-08-26:post-262712023-08-26T00:23:08Z2023-08-26T00:23:08Z<p><img src="https://d.stockcharts.com/img/articles/2023/08/25/8362ebef-541a-4e87-8113-467667414d27.jpg" style="display: inline; margin: 0px 15px; float: left; width: 300px;">I felt it only right to publicly acknowledge and thank William J. O'Neil for the lifestyle I enjoy today. He passed away in May at the age of 90, and I wanted to wait until now to explain how he changed my life. </p><p>William O'Neil was one of my investment mentors, although I only had the special pleasure of meeting him on two occasions. The first time was in 1980 when he spent some time with myself and classmates at the Stanford Business School. It was a life passage for me. Through O'Neil's newspaper, (Investors Business Daily), his books, seminars, and various other "pixie dust free" educational tools, I, too, became a bone fide investor. He was the "knower" and I became the "spongy learner." As a knower and an investing doer, he diligently researched the history of successful equities and then made a fortune applying those insights.</p><p>Herein lies the conundrum. The overwhelming majority of bona fide market wizards are something less than 100% transparent when discussing their methods. O'Neil was the antithesis in his willingness to share why he succeeded and all the specifics. His books and seminars provided the roadmap and his newspaper was the facilitating tool. For myself personally — and I suspect the same for nearly all my readers — it is StockCharts.com in the fast-paced digital era that has now become the superior facilitating tool of choice for successful investors globally. </p><p>O'Neil struck me as a quiet man. More of a listener than a talker. Appropriately, he would often encourage investors to think of the stock market as a conversation. Let it speak to you. Be more a listener than a talker. I always remember what he said: <em>"The stock market is human nature on parade."</em> — words that are never better reinforced than by the ongoing recurrence of historical chart patterns. Thanks to O'Neil, I learned both to embrace technical analysis and to trust the messages my charts shared with me. These proved to be exceedingly profitable skills over the years. </p><p>Life lessons were bundled into his information-packed investment tutorials as well. He always preached positivism. He was an ardent believer in America and the long term growth of its economy and equities. For those reasons, I have always been a growth-oriented investor and have avoided short selling. Praying for a stock to go down has never been in my nature. </p><p>Early on, O'Neil made it clear to me that I needed to leave my ego outside. Personally, not easy to do. The markets will humble everyone, he said. Identifying and acknowledging your mistakes — and then making the necessary adjustments — was a prerequisite for consistent long term success as an investor. His message was clear. Operating without guardrails (i.e. not having a well-defined exit strategy) and letting your ego participate in your trades was certainly an approach doomed to produce mediocre results. </p><p>O'Neil described these elements in great length and detail. My takeaway was something I think of as the "Holy Trinity of Investing." A big part of calling this blog ‘The Traders Journal' is that he convinced me to keep an investing journal. In it, to this day I discuss my abilities to acknowledge my mistakes and cut my losses. My journals recorded my trading mistakes in great detail and my winners as well. Then too, my journals helped discipline me to recognize those mistakes real-time and to avoid repeating them. It's obvious but still profound: acknowledge your mistakes, act, learn from them, avoid them in the future. Sounds straightforward. The challenge is in the execution through all types of markets. Both he and Buffett preached the gospel of avoiding mistakes as paramount to extraordinary results. </p><p>Finally and perhaps most importantly, William O'Neil both inspired and convinced me that in order to truly excel and achieve consistent profits, one needs a detailed roadmap. One that incrementally improves your probabilities over all 10 stages of investing. Our book about <a href="https://store.stockcharts.com/products/tensile-trading-1" target="_blank">"The 10 Stages Of Stock Market Mastery"</a> resulted indirectly from O'Neil's own 7-step program for buying an equity. It's all about discipline and consistently embracing an organized methodology which enables an investor to peel back the vast layers of the market and approach it with a clear lens so one isn't impulsively tempted to buy the "bright shiny thing" in today's news. </p><p>The bottomline is that this brief blog is meant as a tribute to William O'Neil. In the near future, I plan on sharing with you 12 specific takeaways that salute the significant impact O'Neil has had on my own investing roadmap. Until then...William J. O'Neil, rest in peace.</p><p><br></p><p><em>Trade well; trade with discipline!</em></p><h2><strong>Gatis Roze</strong>, MBA, CMT</h2><p><a href="http://stockmarketmastery.com/" target="_blank"><strong>StockMarketMastery.com</strong></a></p><ul><li>Author, <a href="http://store.stockcharts.com/products/tensile-trading-1" target="_blank"><strong>"Tensile Trading: The 10 Essential Stages of Stock Market Mastery"</strong></a><span target="_blank"> (Wiley, 2016)</span></li><li>Developer of the <a href="https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/stockcharts-com-chartpacks/products/tensile-trading-chartpack-by-gatis-roze" target="_blank"><strong>"Stock Market Mastery" ChartPack</strong></a><span target="_blank"> for StockCharts members</span></li><li>Presenter of the best-selling <a href="http://store.stockcharts.com/collections/dvds/products/tensile-trading" target="_blank"><strong>"Tensile Trading"</strong></a><span target="_blank"> DVD seminar</span></li><li>Presenter of the <a href="http://store.stockcharts.com/collections/dvds/products/how-to-master-your-asset-allocation-profile" target="_blank"><strong>"How to Master Your Asset Allocation Profile DVD"</strong></a><span target="_blank"> seminar</span></li></ul>I felt it only right to publicly acknowledge and thank William J. O'Neil for the lifestyle I enjoy today. He passed away in May at the age of 90, and I wanted to wait until now to explain how he changed my life. William O'Neil was one of my investment mentors, although I only had the special pleasure of meeting him on two occasions. The first time was in 1980 when he spent some time with myself and classmates at the Stanford Business School. It was a life passage for me. Through O'Neil's newspaper, (Investors Business Daily), his books, seminars, and various other "pixie dust free"...Investor Lessons from the World Cup in QatarGatis Rozetag:stockcharts.com,2022-12-21:post-248922022-12-21T22:26:05Z2022-12-21T22:26:05Z<p><img src="https://d.stockcharts.com/img/articles/2022/12/21/3e4750da-ebb5-474a-a8e7-03e89f085626.jpg" style="display: inline; margin: 0px 15px; float: left; width: 300px;">Excellence that we investors can learn from and utilize in our trades is all around us. I encourage you to harness that energy. Here's how to use it to motivate yourself to become better as a trader and investor.</p><p>As I watched the World Cup Soccer matches in Qatar, two essential ingredients regularly percolated to the surface. The announcers constantly point these out. The top soccer stars — no matter their teams — combine two essential attributes. The excellence of their soccer skills is an obvious prerequisite, but that alone is not enough. The top stars who are the "go-to" players for coaches have an emotional stability that lesser players lack.</p><p>A case in point was the Brazilian national team's Coach Tite who said in the shoot-out with Croatia that he was saving his best player Neymar da Silva Santos to take the 5th and final penalty shot because "Neymar is the player with the most quality and mental preparedness to take such a high pressure shot."</p><p>As investors, I'm certain that we've all experienced situations when the markets shuffle our emotional deck pretty good — a situation that requires stability, not panic. Top sports stars and top traders excel far beyond average at being more resilient in stressful situations. They've been there before, and they know how to cope and adapt to the moment. They have an unwavering confidence and belief in their skills, their consistency and their ability to remain calm and composed. Their positive attitude often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Or, as they say in soccer, they produce that "magic moment."</p><p>Contrast that to some of the lesser players who are hot-tempered personalities, easily provoked and too often disheartened by setbacks. My experience is that impulsive anger and frustration will beat you down and lead to inferior results — whether on the soccer field or in your trading room.</p><p>With respect to the soccer stars, I've been struck by the dichotomies between their passionate all consuming on-field personalities versus their everyday real-life personalities. It's as if they have developed a powerful personal avatar who takes the field with both the skills and emotional characteristics necessary to play at the highest levels. When they exit the stadium, a transformation happens. This separation of personalities — being on the street versus on the pitch — is often misunderstood by those witnessing these differences. Some stars are labeled aloof or haughty, or they're accused of embracing the dark side. </p><p>The Wall Street Journal (12/13/2022) accused Argentina's Lionel Messi of changing from a quiet genius to a snarling avenger embracing that dark side. Not every soccer star's spicy sauce is like Messi, but the transformations apply to the majority of stars.</p><p>I've written a number of blogs over the years about my "trading vest." It essentially empowers me with the investment personality I need when I'm in the stock market arena. Not unlike "the game face' put on by most professional athletes. The bottom line is that with our private life, we can fly by the seat of our pants and get by okay. But this is the antithesis of our investing life.</p><p>Your personal life may be an ensemble comedy, but when you put on your trading vest, you best engage and completely embrace your personal investing avatar. </p><p><br></p><p><em>Trade well; trade with discipline!</em></p><h2><strong>Gatis Roze</strong>, MBA, CMT</h2><p><a href="http://stockmarketmastery.com/" target="_blank"><strong>StockMarketMastery.com</strong></a></p><ul><li>Author, <a href="http://store.stockcharts.com/products/tensile-trading-1" target="_blank"><strong>"Tensile Trading: The 10 Essential Stages of Stock Market Mastery"</strong></a><span target="_blank"> (Wiley, 2016)</span></li><li>Developer of the <a href="https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/stockcharts-com-chartpacks/products/tensile-trading-chartpack-by-gatis-roze" target="_blank"><strong>"Stock Market Mastery" ChartPack</strong></a><span target="_blank"> for StockCharts members</span></li><li>Presenter of the best-selling <a href="http://store.stockcharts.com/collections/dvds/products/tensile-trading" target="_blank"><strong>"Tensile Trading"</strong></a><span target="_blank"> DVD seminar</span></li><li>Presenter of the <a href="http://store.stockcharts.com/collections/dvds/products/how-to-master-your-asset-allocation-profile" target="_blank"><strong>"How to Master Your Asset Allocation Profile DVD"</strong></a><span target="_blank"> seminar</span></li></ul>Excellence that we investors can learn from and utilize in our trades is all around us. I encourage you to harness that energy. Here's how to use it to motivate yourself to become better as a trader and investor.As I watched the World Cup Soccer matches in Qatar, two essential ingredients regularly percolated to the surface. The announcers constantly point these out. The top soccer stars — no matter their teams — combine two essential attributes. The excellence of their soccer skills is an obvious prerequisite, but that alone is not enough. The top stars who are the "go-to" players...The Pearls Of Wisdom I Took Away From ChartCon 2022: Part 2Gatis Rozetag:stockcharts.com,2022-11-18:post-247222022-11-18T23:58:56Z2022-11-18T23:58:56Z<p><img src="https://d.stockcharts.com/img/articles/2022/11/18/0aff6d8b-f1f8-4e34-b860-faef0f33ca8b.jpg" style="display: inline; margin: 0px 15px; float: left; width: 300px;"></p><p>Gosh, I was pleased that so many of you emailed me with your own pearls of wisdom gleaned from ChartCon 2022. It shows once again that investors can look at the same chart and have vastly different takeaways. Likewise, they can attend the same investment conference and have a diverse spectrum of takeaways.</p><p>You gotta love it! Welcome to our investor ecosystem. In this blog, I'll share more nuggets and gems from the conference — from both the front of the house (what you saw on your screen) as well as the back after the cameras went dark.</p><p><strong>Nugget #1:</strong> Science points us to research that specific routines yield the best results. A recent example is the gym where I workout has new elliptical trainers with optimized science-based routines programmed into the unit. Sure, I can do my own custom thing. But lo and behold, I've discovered that the optimized routines do indeed yield the best results. </p><p>Similarly, David Keller's presentation at ChartCon highlighted the substantial parallels between trading and piloting a plane. Both have comparable consequences if your approach to either is dysfunctional and undisciplined. In a plane, you crash and die. With investing, you nose dive your portfolio and crash financially. It's ominous in both arenas if you try to operate without guardrails such as removing your emotions from the equation, being disciplined with your checklists and focusing on consistent routines. </p><p>Flying and trading are best served with a big dose of stability. Trust me on this! With piloting a plane, there is specific settled science that you must follow to join the essential circle of competence and stay alive. With investing our circle of competence requires a collection of ChartLists and routines which act as our financial fortress to protect our assets and prevent nose dives in our portfolios. </p><p>Your collection of ChartLists, your routines and your discipline to follow the program alleviates the failings that novice investors encounter. Grayson and I have made <a href="https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/stockcharts-com-chartpacks/products/tensile-trading-chartpack-by-gatis-roze" target="_blank">our entire investing ecosystem of ChartLists and routines</a> 100% transparent and available to you if you're interested.</p><p><strong>Nugget #2:</strong> Last week's Nugget #3 described this rule: "Don't read any investment book unless it's recommended by two or more people you truly respect." A corollary to this rule applies to periodicals as well. There are over 7,000 print consumer magazines circulated in the USA. That's a lot of rabbit holes down which you can get very lost. Many are like watering astro-turf and expecting it to grow. At ChartCon, it was evident that most attendees gravitated to the same three periodicals. Yes, we all have other information pipelines on the internet that we tap into. But for the comprehensive global view of business, commerce and economics, the best view from 30,000 feet is rendered by The Wall Street Journal, The Economist and Barron's. Like a best friend, they consistently stand by your side to enlighten and educate you on current affairs and how these events are impacting your assets. </p><p><strong>Nugget #3:</strong> This insight was part observational and part conversational. It resulted from knowing the backgrounds of the attendees in detail. I've known some for nearly four decades — hence the observational portion. The other half was reinforced in conversations focused on longevity and survival in the investment arena. These same principles kept percolating to the top. </p><p>In a bull market, no one needs staying power. Anyone can coast along with the up trend when the going is good. If you only practice coasting, a coaster you'll become. A successful investor's secret attribute is to never coast. Discipline yourself to adhere to your methodology and follow your routines — even as everyone around you is coasting. When the trend changes, the bear easily catches the coasters. You stand a remarkably strong fighting chance of surviving and prospering if you are faithful in watering the seeds of your methodology throughout all the market cycles. With the probabilities at your back, you become the ultimate financial warrior. Warriors don't coast!</p><p><strong>Nugget #4:</strong> Marty Zweig often said, "The market is smarter than I am, so I bend." Rigid perspectives and sizable egos will be dealt with promptly. These have no place in your personality as an investor. Any stock market facing us is manageable if we bring to the table the appropriate emotional attitude. It's our own emotional response that determines our profits and losses. You've achieved Nirvana when you are able to calmly remain humble yet still have this reasonable confidence in your emotional abilities to do the right thing in all types of markets. Yes, it's still about <a href="https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/top-ten-best-sellers/products/tensile-trading-1" target="_blank">Stage 3 — The Investor Self</a>. </p><p><strong>Nugget #5:</strong> Power is a loaded word across infinite disciplines and arenas , but with different meanings in each. For example:</p><ul><li>The power of weather and Mother Nature</li><li>The power of the Presidency</li><li>The power of our laws and legal system</li></ul><p>In our investment arena, I submit to you that power is in large part based on decisiveness. The foundation of such decisiveness rests on multiple pre-formulated scenarios. Multiple plans formed in anticipation of various events that might possibly occur. Bullish and bearish scenarios built during periods of calm and minimal noise. Best fabricated during hours when the market is closed. </p><p>Two powers acting hand-in-hand. "The Power of the Calm" facilitates execution as necessary to utilize "The Power of Decisiveness." A compelling combination that holds a higher probability of producing profits. The reason for this essential partnership is that we investors must embrace the reality that we'll never ever have all the information we'd like about an equity or the markets. We each operate at different percentages of information. Some of us will pull the trigger with 60%, while others hope for 80%. </p><p>We must understand that the stock market is constantly feeding us a diet of bullish and bearish information — albeit each morsel at a higher or lower price. If you wait for 90% of what is known to show up on your plate, the opportunity will have vaporized and your financial meal spoiled. Focus instead on formulating multiple scenarios and doing those things you can to put the winds of probability at your back. Your objective is to clinch and grasp every probability enhancer to become the ultimate "Investor Probabilitarian" who is then able and willing to exercise his or her own "Power of Decisiveness." The foundation of which resides in calm preparation.</p><p><strong>Nugget #6: </strong>By now, I assume I've got your buy-in on the fact that consistent winning performances are built on routines. If you missed that point after two days of ChartCon, I'm shattered. But here's the other 50%. Learn to love the structure, the organization and yes, the routines. When I was training and competing in track and field during college, my norm on most days was two workouts. Sometimes it was tough. But surprisingly, I found the routines intoxicating and productive. </p><p>Similarly, years later with my investing disciplines, I still find my routines intoxicating. Yes, a portion of my intoxication can be directly linked to winning results. I ran some very competitive collegiate races, and likewise I've achieved compelling portfolio results. My routines are not drudgery. My routines are all about producing my next profitable sequel. I'm addicted to the cycle. I'm intoxicated by my routines. Remember, you become what you practice!</p><p><br></p><p><em>Trade well; trade with discipline!</em></p><h2><strong>Gatis Roze</strong>, MBA, CMT</h2><p><a href="http://stockmarketmastery.com/" target="_blank"><strong>StockMarketMastery.com</strong></a></p><ul><li>Author, <a href="http://store.stockcharts.com/products/tensile-trading-1" target="_blank"><strong>"Tensile Trading: The 10 Essential Stages of Stock Market Mastery"</strong></a><span target="_blank"> (Wiley, 2016)</span></li><li>Developer of the <a href="https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/stockcharts-com-chartpacks/products/tensile-trading-chartpack-by-gatis-roze" target="_blank"><strong>"Stock Market Mastery" ChartPack</strong></a><span target="_blank"> for StockCharts members</span></li><li>Presenter of the best-selling <a href="http://store.stockcharts.com/collections/dvds/products/tensile-trading" target="_blank"><strong>"Tensile Trading"</strong></a><span target="_blank"> DVD seminar</span></li><li>Presenter of the <a href="http://store.stockcharts.com/collections/dvds/products/how-to-master-your-asset-allocation-profile" target="_blank"><strong>"How to Master Your Asset Allocation Profile DVD"</strong></a><span target="_blank"> seminar</span></li></ul>Gosh, I was pleased that so many of you emailed me with your own pearls of wisdom gleaned from ChartCon 2022. It shows once again that investors can look at the same chart and have vastly different takeaways. Likewise, they can attend the same investment conference and have a diverse spectrum of takeaways.You gotta love it! Welcome to our investor ecosystem. In this blog, I'll share more nuggets and gems from the conference — from both the front of the house (what you saw on your screen) as well as the back after the cameras went dark.Nugget #1: Science points us to research that...The Pearls Of Wisdom I Took Away From ChartCon 2022: Part 1Gatis Rozetag:stockcharts.com,2022-11-04:post-246242022-11-04T20:11:24Z2022-11-04T20:11:24Z<p><img src="https://d.stockcharts.com/img/articles/2022/11/04/133b87af-13f9-4b80-a67c-72e82d84d9a9.jpg" style="display: inline; margin: 0px 15px; float: left; width: 300px;">I'm going to share with you some of the gems and pearls of wisdom that I personally took away from the recent ChartCon 2022 Investor Conference. You may recall some of these nuggets. Others you won't because they occurred in belly-to-belly discussions behind the scenes.</p><p>Therein lies perhaps <strong>Nugget #1</strong>. Hopefully, with Covid behind us, we'll all venture out more. And with this venturing out and more belly-to-belly moments, come insights of a much more personal nature. We stock market folks need that. Yes, this year's ChartCon was brimming with exceptional market wizards, but their presentations being streamed to a broad audience of investors is — by its very nature — a view from 10,000 feet. </p><p>I feel truly fortunate that after the cameras went dark, I could approach presenters and mine their content over coffee or dinner — thereby discovering those investment gems that are so rare to unearth after all my years in the markets. Perhaps this is <strong>Nugget #2</strong>. I first formulated the <a href="https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/top-ten-best-sellers/products/tensile-trading-1" target="_blank">10 Stages of Stock Market Mastery</a> as a result of attending countless investment presentations. As an attendee, the most crucial and valuable task is to quickly surmise what the speaker's focus is and to compartmentalize his or her presentation correctly. In other words, if the talk is engaged in Stage 1 — Money Management, then you must accept that it's NOT about Stage 4 — Market Analysis. Otherwise, there's a bug in your caviar!</p><p>This was extremely important at ChartCon 2022 because the breadth of topics covered all 10 stages of Stock Market Mastery. As an attendee, to profit most from the topic at hand, you had to quickly deduce which Stage or Stages the material being discussed might belong. <a href="https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/top-ten-best-sellers/products/tensile-trading-1" target="_blank">Our book</a> is based precisely on these ten stages. </p><p><strong>Nugget #3</strong>. A chat with Jon Markman reinforced a rule that I've held dear ever since Bruce Fraser (blogger of "Wyckoff Power Charting") recommended I read Wyckoff's book Reminiscences of a Stock Operator. Soon afterwards, Dr. Hank Pruden also suggested that I read it. The rule is this: Don't read any investment book unless it's recommended by two or more people you truly respect. Note as well, the caveat here is that I said "read" and not "buy." I'll admit that my own library consists of every significant investment book you can name. But on those same shelves, there are hundreds of dark and quirky books that are full of stock market twaddle!</p><p>At the same time, sitting next to the twaddle is Jon's annotated edition of the Reminiscences book which I've read at least six times. But who's counting? It's not that I'm a slow learner. It's that rereading a seminal investment book builds muscle memory and breeds better investment habits. Hopefully, most of you feel that way about our book — <a href="https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/top-ten-best-sellers/products/tensile-trading-1" target="_blank">Tensile Trading</a>.</p><p><strong>Nugget #4</strong>. Our investment arena is blessed with so many colorful and quotable characters. ChartCon was an elite example. What I found interesting is that most of us maintain an archive of our favorite quotes. I believe many have stood the test of time because they are based on a market truism which at first blush might not be apparent to a novice investor. Over coffee breaks, my favorite question to ask other presenters was to query them about their personal favorite stock market quote. I could write an entire blog on their answers alone. Nevertheless, I recall a discussion that yielded this quote. Abraham Lincoln said "A man is just about as happy as he makes up his mind to be." To paraphrase, "An investor is just about as profitable as he makes up his mind to be." In other words, it's up to you to decide how much effort and discipline you are willing to allocate in becoming a consistent and successful investor. You make your mind up, put in the effort, and it will happen. Tomorrow's profits will be as certain as seasonal sunshine. </p><p><strong>Nugget #5</strong>. Were the speakers and moderators confident? Yes, but they were grounded in humility. The commonality being perhaps that we've all been molded by the markets and the markets don't honor egos. We are all somewhat like farmers who must respect and obey the seasons. Our bountiful harvest is determined by the markets. We recognize that markets are bigger than us and it demands of us that we play our role. The markets ensure that as investors we stay grounded and not exaggerate our own place in this ecosystem. I suspect that this helps explain in part why all the presenters were so likable. Wisdom dressed in humility was fashionable at ChartCon.</p><p><strong>Nugget #6</strong>. My observation about two common traits amongst all the speakers is focus and persistence. Each decided to direct their efforts at a particular segment of the market. Then they deployed immense persistence to succeed on their own terms. Persistence is a mindset where you are persisting to learn and be better today than what you were yesterday. Focus demands you ween yourself from the human tendency to charge at the markets as if its a smorgasbord (which it is). Focus is what produces competence and builds intuition. Deciding and knowing what is outside your investing wheelhouse is part of focusing. For myself, I no longer short equities, trade options, futures or derivatives, and never use leverage. My focus is long equities and ETFs, and I've done very nicely, thank you!</p><p>Jay Sherry said, "When you learn a little, you feel you know a lot. But when you learn a lot, you realize you know very little." This quote pretty much describes the group of speakers. For example, the oldest of the group — its not polite to say who — was always the first person on set each morning, always eager to learn. He's the LeBron James of investing, yet he's first to show up at practice! I can only pray I'll have his focus, energy and persistence when I'm his age.</p><p>There are many more nuggets and gems I want to share with you, but I think I'll stop here for now. Back at you in two weeks!</p><p><br></p><p><em>Trade well; trade with discipline!</em></p><h2><strong>Gatis Roze</strong>, MBA, CMT</h2><p><a href="http://stockmarketmastery.com/" target="_blank"><strong>StockMarketMastery.com</strong></a></p><ul><li>Author, <a href="http://store.stockcharts.com/products/tensile-trading-1" target="_blank"><strong>"Tensile Trading: The 10 Essential Stages of Stock Market Mastery"</strong></a><span target="_blank"> (Wiley, 2016)</span></li><li>Developer of the <a href="https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/stockcharts-com-chartpacks/products/tensile-trading-chartpack-by-gatis-roze" target="_blank"><strong>"Stock Market Mastery" ChartPack</strong></a><span target="_blank"> for StockCharts members</span></li><li>Presenter of the best-selling <a href="http://store.stockcharts.com/collections/dvds/products/tensile-trading" target="_blank"><strong>"Tensile Trading"</strong></a><span target="_blank"> DVD seminar</span></li><li>Presenter of the <a href="http://store.stockcharts.com/collections/dvds/products/how-to-master-your-asset-allocation-profile" target="_blank"><strong>"How to Master Your Asset Allocation Profile DVD"</strong></a><span target="_blank"> seminar</span></li></ul>I'm going to share with you some of the gems and pearls of wisdom that I personally took away from the recent ChartCon 2022 Investor Conference. You may recall some of these nuggets. Others you won't because they occurred in belly-to-belly discussions behind the scenes.Therein lies perhaps Nugget #1. Hopefully, with Covid behind us, we'll all venture out more. And with this venturing out and more belly-to-belly moments, come insights of a much more personal nature. We stock market folks need that. Yes, this year's ChartCon was brimming with exceptional market wizards, but their...Five Decades Of Personal Stock Market Passages, Tools, Lessons And Stories: Part 3Gatis Rozetag:stockcharts.com,2022-09-30:post-244422022-09-30T20:42:08Z2022-09-30T20:42:08Z<p><img src="https://d.stockcharts.com/img/articles/2022/09/30/52f3a24c-ab72-4f78-a5da-1ffd2144a8ce.jpg" style="display: inline; margin: 0px 15px; float: left; width: 350px;">When I began investing full-time, my methodology's foundation was based on William O'Neil's CANSLIM® approach. It's a deeply researched and proven strategy. The AAII's own ongoing trading models validate that fact.</p><p>For the next three decades, my efforts were focused on how best to incrementally increase the probabilities of success for each of O'Neil's attributes and to layer on my own enhancers. In reality, our book <a href="https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/top-ten-best-sellers/products/tensile-trading-1" target="_blank">"Tensile Trading: The 10 Essential Stages of Stock Market Mastery"</a> spotlights dozens and dozens of what I'll label "Probability Enhancers".</p><p>When you understand and embrace probabilities as an investor, you find that the emotional burden of losses and the exuberance of profits level out and become more manageable. Grasping probabilities facilitates you taking a present loss knowing that you are now one step closer to your next big win. As you read about my passages, tools and lessons, consider each in the context of offering you a "probability enhancer" which when diligently applied should outperform the market! </p><h2>Passage 1: A Sell Discipline</h2><p>It hasn't been a cake walk, but I've learned to tame my two wild horses — my own inner fear and greed. The first stage was to believe my charts. Embrace that what they were telling me was indeed the truth. The second stage was to convince my ego to partner with me. </p><p>Early on, precious time was lost in this little negotiation as I tried to convince my ego to accept the charts reality before being able to pull the sell trigger. After years of effort, I've achieved the discipline to convince my ego beforehand to recognize what "wrong" looks like within each chart in each position I take.</p><p>When the charts tell me to sell, I don't freeze or begin a new negotiation. I'll react appropriately based on my previous sell scenario. It's less stressful and I'm free to move onward — closer to my next winning trade. An investor's mental energy is the fuel you run on. Vacillation and failure to promptly sell a loser consumes precious fuel that could be used instead on trading your next winner.</p><p>In his book, Trading in the Zone, Mark Douglas describes the four types of investor fears.</p><ol><li>Losing money</li><li>Missing an Opportunity</li><li>Leaving Money on the Table</li><li>Being wrong</li></ol><p>It's essential that you address each one in detail in hand with your ego prior to entering a trade. Understand that this negotiation — this sell discipline — is meant to protect your profits and protect you from yourself. Without it, you are falling prey to the old cliche "shutting the barn door after the horse has bolted" — late to action and after the damage is done. </p><p>I have great respect for Jesse Livermore who I believe was a generational trader. His words remain with me. "My plan of trading was sound enough and won oftener thank it lost. If I had stuck to it, I'd have been right perhaps as often as 7 out of 10 times." Even Jesse Livermore had challenges doing what he knew he should do. My experience is that there are two types of losses. The first type of loss is simply a result of the laws of probability and is to be expected even when you follow your methodology.</p><p>The second type of loss requires much more introspection and brutal self-honesty. Losses that result from ignoring your trading plan or similar bad behavior is what needs to be focused upon and minimized. There is no place for denial in successful investing. Buying is easy. You always have lots of company. Just google stock market books. The overwhelming majority of these books are all about buying. Don't quote me on this, but intuitively the ratio of books on buying equities versus selling strategies is 1,000-to-1. It's always been the way.</p><p>This is precisely why in <a href="https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/top-ten-best-sellers/products/tensile-trading-1" target="_blank">our book</a>, Grayson and I devote an entire chapter to selling methodologies and the requisite mindset and routines to succeed. Remember — your goal is to stay in the game. If you protect yourself on the downside from all the inevitable mini-panics, the rallies will take care of you. This is not the forum to dig into that here in detailed fashion, but I would encourage you to check out <a href="https://stockcharts.com/articles/journal/2015/10/selling-methodology--1--1--3.html" target="_blank">this blog</a> I wrote: <a href="https://stockcharts.com/articles/journal/2015/10/selling-methodology--1--1--3.html" target="_blank">"Selling Methodology: 1 + 1 = 3"</a> (October 16, 2015).</p><h2>Passage 2: Seize The Free 1%</h2><p>This is more an awakening versus a passage. I realized that there is a good deal of low hanging fruit that investors can gather in the way of finding an extra 1% and retiring early. Do the math; that's all it takes. Investing is a game of inches. Yes, it takes only 1%, and if you start young, it's a slam dunk. Warren Buffett is always talking about the magic of compounding. It's absolutely true. </p><p>So where is the 1%? It's all around you hiding in plain sight — simply there for the taking if you focus on costs and fees. This awakening is more of a mindset, an attitude to persistently consider costs, expenses and fees as an investor. I'm living proof that if you embrace my two mantras, you should outperform the market. (a) Embrace all my probability enhancers when you trade equities. (b) Embrace the 1% mentality. Find free money by simply minimizing costs, expenses and fees.</p><p>Let me say again that by embracing these two mantras, you should outperform the market. It's mind-bending how higher fees and expenses create a slow burn of your assets over time. In addition, not acting defensively and thinking about tax minimization also vaporizes those same assets. Remain vigilant because the money management world is expert at enticing you to play the "shiny object game" which yields higher fees for them — lo & behold! It all comes out of your pocket. </p><p>Basic case in point: there are over two dozen ETFs that represent the S&P 500. The Vanguard ETF (VOO) has fees of 0.03% which is basically free. SPY— the SPDR S&P 500 is 0.095% which is three times higher. From there, other ETFs skyrocket to stupid expense levels and some investors buy them. It's sheer madness. It's the same S&P 500 Index! Look at the PerfChart of two S&P 500 index funds — SPY and RYSPX. They both hold EXACTLY the same equities. There's no "expert stock picking" involved here. Had you invested $100,000 in 2003 in SPY and your twin sibling invested the same in RYSPX, nineteen years later you'd have $426,000 while your twin would have only $249,000. The difference would be caused entirely by fees. I'd say your twin's investment in RYSPX is both sticky and stupid — but I digress! </p><p><img src="https://d.stockcharts.com/img/articles/2022/09/30/47a24063-4eee-494b-8a63-322adca1f8cd.jpg" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto;"></p><p>About a decade ago in my class, I bought equal amounts of two identical gold ETFs. The only difference between them was that GLD (the more popular of the two with twice the assets) had 0.40% expenses. IAU is half the size and logically should have had higher expenses. But IAU came in with 0.25% expenses. </p><p>I recently sold both of these ETFs. The profit difference shocked me. I knew there would be one, I wasn't expecting the dollars involved. IAU made me far more money. Do your diligence. It's free money if you do — low hanging fruit which adds to your 1%. This blog is not the place for a granular description of all the low hanging fruit to save you 1% but I'll briefly list a few examples.</p><ul><li>Cash balances — pay attention! One click or phone call can move dollars from zero interest accounts to significant interest income accounts. Don't ignore this free money.</li><li>I've already given you an ETF example. With every ETF, explore alternatives. Try ETF.com.</li><li>Mutual funds — don't get me started! I'm not picking on American Funds, but they offer the exact same funds — in some instances under a dozen or more different ticker symbols. Why? To maximize front-end loads, 12b1 fees, redemption fees, expenses, etc. Beware of money managers that put you in the high fee funds (for their benefit) versus cheaper versions of the same fund.</li><li>Advisor fees — 1% a year doesn't sound like much, but you'd be stunned what it costs you over 10 - 20 years. And remember, all fees are negotiable. So negotiate and renegotiate as your assets grow.</li><li>Think defensively. Think tax minimization. There's a whole population of governmental professionals poised to think of new ways to get at your assets. A top tier estate planning attorney and accountant are a priority for all investors — not a luxury!</li></ul><p>The bottom line: with minimal effort, you can make your money work better for you.</p><h2>TOOL #1</h2><p>An appropriate example of my "probability enhancer" approach is "Seasonality Charts." This tool highlights stocks, ETFs and mutual funds tendency to perform better in some months and worse in other months on a recurring basis. (Check out the ChartSchool articles on StockCharts.com.)</p><p>In your arsenal of Asset Allocation rebalancing tools, put the winds of probability at your back by selling positions into the strongest months of the year (using Seasonality) and accumulating positions during historically weak months. Overtime, selling into strength and buying on weakness delivers profits. In <a href="https://stockcharts.com/articles/journal/2013/12/some-seasonal-goodies-for-you-to-unwrap.html" target="_blank">this previous Traders Journal blog</a>, I identified six equities with historically strong performances in December. A month later in <a href="https://stockcharts.com/articles/journal/2014/01/how-my-basket-of-seasonality-stocks-bested-the-market-by-150.html" target="_blank">this Traders Journal blog</a>, I recapped the actual performance. This basket of six equities with favorable seasonality bested the market by 150% in December. </p><p>Seasonality works! A final example. I looked at four of the largest equities in the S&P 500 over the past 5 years: Apple, Amazon, Tesla and Google. </p><ul><li>All have one month where they had positive price appreciation 100% of the time. Never down in that month.</li><li>All have one weak month or more where either they have never experienced any price appreciation or have only one year out of the past five that had positive price movement for that month. Make probabilities work on your behalf.</li></ul><p><img src="https://d.stockcharts.com/img/articles/2022/09/30/3b2d013b-243f-4916-bdfb-e7fd183fb3cc.jpg" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto;"></p><p>To some of you, this might not seem like a seismic investment recommendation. But many investors see that seasonality is indeed a probability enhancer and multiple enhancers cumulatively add up to an appreciable growth in your bottom line. </p><h2>TOOL #2</h2><p>There are great insights to be had when you focus on the power of varied time frames — analyzing the markets or an equity through a series of lenses, each one a tighter time frame than the previous. I call this methodology "telescope to microscope". Aligning the trends in various periods shifts the odds in your favor. A corollary methodology applies the same principle top down. To further empower your investing probabilities, you only buy in an up trending market. Then look for the strongest sector. Since sectors are a collection of industries, you search out the strongest industry in the uptrending sector. Finally, you gravitate to the best-of-breed stocks in the strongest industry.</p><p>I have a pre-formatted chart style to help you. </p><p><img src="https://d.stockcharts.com/img/articles/2022/09/30/111376b4-0fbf-44aa-a545-d60c7e0afffe.jpg" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto; width: 50%;"></p><p><img src="https://d.stockcharts.com/img/articles/2022/09/30/046382a3-97f7-4308-ae2e-e30c11c38517.jpg" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto;"></p><p><img src="https://d.stockcharts.com/img/articles/2022/09/30/0d71220a-b360-4e6b-ba87-52801d7041af.jpg" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto;"></p><p><img src="https://d.stockcharts.com/img/articles/2022/09/30/e95ac917-69b7-4e8d-acde-04f00baa1b1a.jpg" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto;"></p><p><img src="https://d.stockcharts.com/img/articles/2022/09/30/43d39a30-51b6-4406-b596-e4b9b85852d4.jpg" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto;"></p><h2>FIVE LESSONS</h2><ol><li>Have a "sell strategy". If you don't, the market will assign you one and call it "KABLOOEY." It's both a cliche and a fact that "the first loss is the cheapest" and "mental stops don't work."</li><li>Don't buy 100% of your position all at once. Stage your purchasers in tiers. My personal rule is never to buy a second position unless my first position is profitable. I've witnessed far too many investors who try to catch a falling knife. They buy an equity at $20. It falls to $15, and they buy more — all the way down to bankruptcy. Think logically. If you bought it at $20 and it's now $15, the market is telling that you were wrong. Stop being wrong! Don't do more wrong. Ralph Vince has written a number of books on the mathematics of money management and risk analysis which unequivocally prove that pyramiding both into and out of a position (albeit selling faster than buying) is the scientifically proven optimal strategy. <a href="https://stockcharts.com/articles/journal/2013/01/pyramid-trading-greater-profits-with-less-risk.html" target="_blank">Here's a link</a> to a more detailed blog on the subject.</li><li>Buy "Best of Breed". I like my cars to be fast, reliable and luxurious so my ownership experience is 5-star. I'm the same with stocks. I buy the best because I want my positions to offer a similar 5-star ownership experience. I just don't get it. Why would a pharmaceutical investor not buy Eli Lilly Co. (LLY) and buy Omeros (OMER) instead. I buy only "best of breed" equities because it's not worth buying second or third tier companies. Yes, the price-to-earnings ratio is higher, but so is my peace of mind. </li><li>Know your own bandwidth! Before I attended Wall Street University (i.e. I started trading) and paid lots of tuition to learn how to invest with consistent profitability, my holdings were vast in number. Too vast. After years of judiciously reviewing my winners and losers, I discovered my positive performances were directly coupled to having fewer positions. I now have 10 stocks, 10 ETFs and 10 mutual funds. I never buy or acquire a new position without first removing another. Having said that, if you have Bill Gates' bandwidth, perhaps 20 is fine.</li><li>Be Mr. / Mrs. Adjustable Elastic. The market is always right and the market is always changing. Yes, Mr. High IQ Big Shot — the markets demand compliance. I love to quote Charles Darwin. "It is not the strongest of the species that survives, not the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change." Buy and Monitor — not Buy and Hold — is my mantra.</li></ol><p>Finally, a little story. I had a finance professor in Business School who was renowned on Wall Street for creating the Sharpe Ratio, CAPM — The Capital Asset Pricing Model (including Alpha and Beta) and other common tools. Understandably, he won a Nobel Prize for his work. The point being, he was brilliant, cerebral and frankly sometimes on a totally different tier. He came to class one afternoon and rhapsodically described in fine detail this new theory he had developed. After what seemed like eternity, one of my classmates who had been an investment banker said, "Professor Sharpe, this is interesting but how do we make money with it?" To which Professor Sharpe replied, "I don't know, but isn't it cool?!"</p><p>My point being that investing attracts many brainy folks who wander off intellectually into cerebral frontiers that are indeed interesting but won't help you become a better manager of your money. One prime arena I'll point to is the hundreds of technical indicators that have been created where frankly most should be siloed since they only contribute to more complexity instead of profits. </p><hr style="width: 923px;"><p><img src="https://stockcharts.com/img/articles/2022/09/21/d3d5c774-b2a6-4641-b225-71ab5c53e8b1.jpg"></p><p>p.s. I'm really looking forward to exchanging ideas and thoughts with you October 7th and 8th at <a href="https://mailchi.mp/stockcharts/chartcon" target="_blank">ChartCon 2022</a>. I hope you join all of us at this very special event! <a href="https://mailchi.mp/stockcharts/chartcon" target="_blank">CLICK HERE</a> for more information and to register.</p><p><br></p><p><em>Trade well; trade with discipline!</em></p><h2><strong>Gatis Roze</strong>, MBA, CMT</h2><p><a href="http://stockmarketmastery.com/" target="_blank"><strong>StockMarketMastery.com</strong></a></p><ul><li>Author, <a href="http://store.stockcharts.com/products/tensile-trading-1" target="_blank"><strong>"Tensile Trading: The 10 Essential Stages of Stock Market Mastery"</strong></a><span target="_blank"> (Wiley, 2016)</span></li><li>Developer of the <a href="https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/stockcharts-com-chartpacks/products/tensile-trading-chartpack-by-gatis-roze" target="_blank"><strong>"Stock Market Mastery" ChartPack</strong></a><span target="_blank"> for StockCharts members</span></li><li>Presenter of the best-selling <a href="http://store.stockcharts.com/collections/dvds/products/tensile-trading" target="_blank"><strong>"Tensile Trading"</strong></a><span target="_blank"> DVD seminar</span></li><li>Presenter of the <a href="http://store.stockcharts.com/collections/dvds/products/how-to-master-your-asset-allocation-profile" target="_blank"><strong>"How to Master Your Asset Allocation Profile DVD"</strong></a><span target="_blank"> seminar</span></li></ul>When I began investing full-time, my methodology's foundation was based on William O'Neil's CANSLIM® approach. It's a deeply researched and proven strategy. The AAII's own ongoing trading models validate that fact.For the next three decades, my efforts were focused on how best to incrementally increase the probabilities of success for each of O'Neil's attributes and to layer on my own enhancers. In reality, our book "Tensile Trading: The 10 Essential Stages of Stock Market Mastery" spotlights dozens and dozens of what I'll label "Probability Enhancers".When you understand and embrace...Five Decades Of Personal Stock Market Passages, Tools, Lessons And Stories: Part 2Gatis Rozetag:stockcharts.com,2022-09-21:post-243942022-09-30T20:28:05Z2022-09-21T20:46:18Z<p><img src="https://d.stockcharts.com/img/articles/2022/09/21/8b32b4ca-8c0b-480a-ac6c-3557b92349bd.jpg" style="display: inline; margin: 0px 15px; float: left; width: 300px;">To start, I want to make two points. Investing successfully requires that you remain engaged and motivated. Just because you choose to ignore the markets, the markets won't reciprocate and ignore you. Zig Ziglar said, "<em>People often say that motivation doesn't last. Well, neither does bathing — that's why we recommend it daily." </em>One of my goals is to keep you engaged and motivated.</p><p>My second point follows the first. Investing is all about change. My observation is that often there isn't an immense difference between an average investor and a great investor.</p><p>I've met many passionate but average investors who are only excited about their vision of themselves as being stock market gurus. A few winning trades can do that. Instead, they need to be both passionate and disciplined about learning to be a competent and consistent investor. In other words, embrace both change and personal growth.</p><p>Reality is this. The education of an investor is never done. Dare I say it: we must suffer for our craft. Perhaps think of yourself as a machine learning algorithm. Every investment experience — be it optimal, sub-optimal or negative — should result in an adjustment to the investor's personal algorithm.</p><p>So these two points about ongoing motivation and continuing your education together lead directly to my first life passage and address my two objectives — staying motivated and growing as a person. Coincidentally, this blog's title — "The Traders Journal" — has reflected this ever since I began to write these in 2012 . </p><h2><strong>Passage #1 - Keeping a Journal</strong></h2><p>I started keeping a journal when I was 13 years old. My track and field coach was John Hudson who eventually became Canada's National Coach. He encouraged me to keep a training journal. He assured me that the result would be something he labelled as "crystallized wisdom". Gosh — who wouldn't want that?! It sounded as if Lord of the Rings would speak to me. It did in fact change my life, both in athletics and investing.</p><p>The foundations for my best races were well documented in my journal. I could thereby focus on replicating and improving my preparation for competitions. Similarly, disappointing results were usually explained in the training journal leading up to race. These days digital and hand written journals are common place in sports — be it F1 racing or the NFL, NHL, NBA and MLB. My trading journal today is much more detailed and structured, and <a href="https://stockcharts.com/articles/journal/2016/03/the-1-indicator-professionals-focus-on.html" target="_blank">I've written various blogs</a> describing my journal. I encourage you to keep a trading journal. You will not be disappointed in the value it yields.</p><h2><strong>Passage #2 - What vs. Why</strong></h2><p>When I made the personal commitment to become a full-time investor, I had the sheer good fortune (more like divine intervention) of running a small ad looking for part-time help and having Paul Ferwerda call me. In 1970, Paul was the founder and first president of the Technical Securities Analysts Association (TSAA) in San Francisco. Sorry, New York. The TSAA came first — before the Market Technicians Association (MTA). Paul had retired from Bank of America and turned out to be the ideal mentor for me. He taught me that the market only rewards investors who act upon "WHAT" is happening in the present moment. </p><p>Paul said educated investors can waste precious time and energy focusing on "WHY". The assumption being that you'll be rewarded for knowing why. "WHY" may be more intellectually satisfying, but unfortunately it is often late to school, allowing only "WHAT" to score the higher grades. </p><p>Paul also taught me that the market is a complex auction arena fueled by millions of investors voting with their money based upon their unique information, beliefs and emotions. Eventually with an equity, you might learn exactly "WHY" a price move happened. The most importance for profitability, however, is "WHAT" is happening now. Are the buyers or sellers winning this war? The chart tells you this. The charts do not lie. Trade the "WHAT" — today. You'll learn the "WHY" tomorrow.</p><p>A key corollary Paul taught me was that by trusting the charts, I was liberated to deploy powerful technical tools and focus on putting the winds of probability at my back. But more on that later. For now, trust your charts. <a href="https://stockcharts.com/articles/journal/2012/06/are-you-too-educated-to-be-a-successful-investor.html" target="_blank">Here's a blog I wrote</a> on the topic.</p><h2><strong>Passage #3 - The 5 Stages of Investor Growth</strong></h2><p>The stock market requires humility. Regardless of your IQ or the letters after your name, the stock market doesn't care how smart or educated you are. Yes, you may have a streak of winning trades that all ended with the raising of champagne glasses and a salute to your wisdom. Reality is that the University of Wall Street requires you to pay tuition. The well documented "5 Levels of Investor Growth" is described in detail in our book, <a href="https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/top-ten-best-sellers/products/tensile-trading-1" target="_blank">Tensile Trading</a>. It's widely accepted and was not our creation. It's similar to a college freshman having to complete their sophomore, junior and senior year before graduating. That's how it is. You don't start first year and then pole vault over your sophomore and junior years to land as a senior in your second year. </p><p>Investors similarly start as "novices" with a mixed bag of tools and ideas. There is no jumping levels from "advanced beginner" to "proficient." You might, however, accelerate through the "competent' stage. Nonetheless, you must spend some time in each stage. It's akin to a law of nature! God will be laughing if you believe you've become a Level 4 "proficient" investor in under a year. </p><p>Be humble. Accept paying tuition. We all did. Understand that if you make a disciplined and organized effort, you will progress from</p><ol><li>Novice</li><li>Advanced Beginner</li><li>Competent Investor</li><li>Proficient</li><li>Expert</li></ol><p>The market will reward you as you grow. <a href="https://stockcharts.com/articles/journal/2016/08/one--one--threeanalogue--digital-fundamentals--technicals.html" target="_blank">Read more.</a></p><h2><strong>TOOLS</strong></h2><p>The investor will always be paramount. The tools are secondary. This is why Stage 3: The Investor Self is the most important chapter in <a href="https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/top-ten-best-sellers/products/tensile-trading-1" target="_blank">our book</a>, Tensile Trading: The 10 Essential Stages of Stock Market Mastery. Novice investors don't believe it. Expert investors know this to be true.</p><p>Let me paraphrase from a favorite movie of mine — Bottle Shock. Claude Debussy used a standard piano. Monet used off-the-shelf paint. Rodin's bronze was not a unique metal. But look what they all achieved. It wasn't about the medium — it was about the artist. Investors must embrace the belief that their financial masterpiece can be created with straight-forward off-the-shelf tools. It's about the investor — it's not about the tools. It's always been that way.</p><p>Having said that, today we investors have far too many tools from which to choose. It's analogous to standing in front of a fire hose trying to get a drink of water. It's overwhelming. Herein, too, lies a conundrum. It's counter-intuitive but I've learned over many decades of investing that "simplification tames complexity in the stock market."</p><p>We investors need tools. We need a few tools and we need the right tools. Unlike our capitalistic mantra of "more", investors should strive for the art of reduction with a mantra such as "more with less". Build your investment methodology with a minimalist mindset as if you'd grown up in a Soviet orphanage. Instead of embracing the belief that adding one more indicator or one more fundamental factor will magically reveal to you the Holy Grail, try to understand that additional complexity is like pouring quickset concrete into the only water well in the desert.</p><p>As an example, I'll share my arsenal of tools that reflects my philosophy of simplification. One that is clearly evident in our <a href="https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/stockcharts-com-chartpacks/products/tensile-trading-chartpack-by-gatis-roze" target="_blank">Stock Market Mastery ChartPack</a> and our book. When I look at an equity chart, I want to know five things. I use ten indicators to give me the insights I need. </p><p><br></p><p><strong><em>Q1: WHAT'S THE PRICE ACTION RELATIVE TO THE MARKET?</em></strong></p><p>Tools: </p><ul><li>Price Relative (Relative Strength)</li></ul><p><img src="https://d.stockcharts.com/img/articles/2022/09/21/4289c4fc-a1ec-4f01-a90a-f61c20f7d7f2.jpg" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto;"></p><p><br></p><p><strong><em>Q2: WHAT'S THE TREND?</em></strong></p><p>Tools: </p><ul><li>Draw Trendlines </li><li>Moving Averages </li><li>Average Directional Index (ADX)</li></ul><p><strong><em>Q3: WHAT'S VOLUME TELLING ME?</em></strong></p><p>Tools: </p><ul><li>Chaikin Money Flow</li><li>On-Balance Volume (especially powerful with one-minute data)</li></ul><p><br></p><p><strong><em>Q4: WHAT'S MOMENTUM?</em></strong></p><p>Tools: </p><ul><li>Relative Strength Index (RSI)</li><li>MACD</li><li>Stochastics</li></ul><p><br></p><p><strong><em>Q5: WHAT'S THE PRESENT RISK-TO-REWARD?</em></strong></p><p>Tools:</p><ul><li>Point & Figure Charts</li></ul><p><br></p><p>There you have it. Not much gets by me with this simple toolkit. <a href="https://stockcharts.com/articles/journal/2013/08/tensile-trading-stage-4-how-to-put-the-winds-at-your-back-with-stock-market-analysis.html" target="_blank">Read more.</a></p><p><br></p><h2><strong>FIVE LESSONS</strong></h2><ol><li style="margin: 0px;">It's okay to be wrong. It's unforgivable to stay wrong. — Marty Zwieg</li><li style="margin: 0px;">Monitor and manage your precious time. Routines make this possible. Think <a href="https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/stockcharts-com-chartpacks/products/tensile-trading-chartpack-by-gatis-roze" target="_blank">ChartPack</a>.</li><li style="margin: 0px;">Be aware when you begin to distort market information to fit your own beliefs and expectations. Neutralize these tendencies. You are Switzerland!</li><li style="margin: 0px;">Don't let a string of winning trades result in an inflated opinion of yourself. Stay true to your methodology and disciplines. Warren Buffett often says, <em>"We don't have to be smarter than the rest. We have to be more disciplined than the rest."</em></li><li style="margin: 0px;">For 17 years, Matt Krantz wrote an investment column for USA Today. When he left, he disclosed his "top investing lesson" as follows: <em>"If you want to make money investing, forget the minutiae, stop obsessing, don't procrastinate, just get started."</em></li></ol><p>In addition to the passages, tools and lessons herein, I had promised to include a story in this series of blogs. So here's my story. Over the years, I've had the opportunity to attend hundreds of formal and informal investment oriented gatherings. A little trick that Dr. Hank Pruden taught me (who no doubt attended thousands of these kinds of events) was to quickly ascertain the investment seriousness of whomever I struck up a conversation with. He suggested that I tactfully steer the conversation around to books and then respectfully ask if the person had read Reminiscences of a Stock Operator by Edwin Lefevre. Dr. Pruden's observation was that this gauged the seriousness of the individual with whom you were speaking. </p><hr><p><img src="https://d.stockcharts.com/img/articles/2022/09/21/d3d5c774-b2a6-4641-b225-71ab5c53e8b1.jpg" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto; width: 75%;"></p><p>p.s. I'm really looking forward to exchanging ideas and thoughts with you October 7th and 8th at <a href="https://mailchi.mp/stockcharts/chartcon" target="_blank">ChartCon 2022</a>. I hope you join all of us at this very special event! <a href="https://mailchi.mp/stockcharts/chartcon" target="_blank">CLICK HERE</a> for more information and to register.</p><p><br></p><p><em>Trade well; trade with discipline!</em></p><h2><strong>Gatis Roze</strong>, MBA, CMT</h2><p><a href="http://stockmarketmastery.com/" target="_blank"><strong>StockMarketMastery.com</strong></a></p><ul><li>Author, <a href="http://store.stockcharts.com/products/tensile-trading-1" target="_blank"><strong>"Tensile Trading: The 10 Essential Stages of Stock Market Mastery"</strong></a><span target="_blank"> (Wiley, 2016)</span></li><li>Developer of the <a href="https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/stockcharts-com-chartpacks/products/tensile-trading-chartpack-by-gatis-roze" target="_blank"><strong>"Stock Market Mastery" ChartPack</strong></a><span target="_blank"> for StockCharts members</span></li><li>Presenter of the best-selling <a href="http://store.stockcharts.com/collections/dvds/products/tensile-trading" target="_blank"><strong>"Tensile Trading"</strong></a><span target="_blank"> DVD seminar</span></li><li>Presenter of the <a href="http://store.stockcharts.com/collections/dvds/products/how-to-master-your-asset-allocation-profile" target="_blank"><strong>"How to Master Your Asset Allocation Profile DVD"</strong></a><span target="_blank"> seminar</span></li></ul>To start, I want to make two points. Investing successfully requires that you remain engaged and motivated. Just because you choose to ignore the markets, the markets won't reciprocate and ignore you. Zig Ziglar said, "People often say that motivation doesn't last. Well, neither does bathing — that's why we recommend it daily." One of my goals is to keep you engaged and motivated.My second point follows the first. Investing is all about change. My observation is that often there isn't an immense difference between an average investor and a great investor.I've met many passionate but...Five Decades Of Personal Stock Market Passages, Tools, Lessons And Stories: Part 1Gatis Rozetag:stockcharts.com,2022-08-20:post-242342022-09-30T20:27:52Z2022-08-20T01:03:35Z<p><img src="https://d.stockcharts.com/img/articles/2022/08/19/bdd2fafc-fc10-4a8f-a102-83826cce9903.jpg" style="display: inline; margin: 0px 15px; float: left; width: 300px;">Successful investing calls for much the same prerequisites as those required to become a professional athlete. Fortunately, we investors have a much longer shelf life than pro athletes. Here's how I took advantage of this reality.</p><p>Maturing as an investor does not automatically mean you are becoming a better investor. Experience alone does not grant that badge. Only ongoing rededication and learning will do that. Self mastery and constant attention to your skill set is central to becoming a successful consistent long-term investor. Note, these are two separate objectives.</p><p>As I've said before, profits are the product of practicing persistent and personal discipline and growth. This new series of blogs details my own journey. It's an odyssey that has provided a rich tapestry and lifestyle far beyond my wildest imagination growing up. I'll be taking an introspective inventory of those prerequisites I cultivated which made the most significant contribution to growing my net worth over the decades. At best, it's difficult — or perhaps even impossible — to weigh the importance of each "passage", but I'll give it a shot. </p><p>This journey is one I view as part and parcel of the " virtuous circle of learning" that I've tried to embrace for the duration of my investment life and which has consistently borne fruit. As the title states, it's a sort of quadraphonic symphony. </p><p>The first group will be the 12 indispensable and pivotal "passages" that occurred during my time as a full-time investor. The second group will examine my tool kit. Steve Jobs famously described the wonders of personal computers and explained that humans were not as fast runners as many other species, but a human on a bicycle beats them all. I will share my bicycle with you. Thirdly, I'll provide you with indispensable caveats, lessons and rules I've collected pertaining to trading, investing and the markets. Fourthly and finally, I'll share some stories that don't fit neatly into the previous three segments.</p><p>Please join me in the coming weeks here at the Traders Journal desk. I'll make it worth your effort!</p><p><br></p><p><em>Trade well; trade with discipline!</em></p><h2><strong>Gatis Roze</strong>, MBA, CMT</h2><p><a href="http://stockmarketmastery.com/" target="_blank"><strong>StockMarketMastery.com</strong></a></p><ul><li>Author, <a href="http://store.stockcharts.com/products/tensile-trading-1" target="_blank"><strong>"Tensile Trading: The 10 Essential Stages of Stock Market Mastery"</strong></a><span target="_blank"> (Wiley, 2016)</span></li><li>Developer of the <a href="https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/stockcharts-com-chartpacks/products/tensile-trading-chartpack-by-gatis-roze" target="_blank"><strong>"Stock Market Mastery" ChartPack</strong></a><span target="_blank"> for StockCharts members</span></li><li>Presenter of the best-selling <a href="http://store.stockcharts.com/collections/dvds/products/tensile-trading" target="_blank"><strong>"Tensile Trading"</strong></a><span target="_blank"> DVD seminar</span></li><li>Presenter of the <a href="http://store.stockcharts.com/collections/dvds/products/how-to-master-your-asset-allocation-profile" target="_blank"><strong>"How to Master Your Asset Allocation Profile DVD"</strong></a><span target="_blank"> seminar</span></li></ul>Successful investing calls for much the same prerequisites as those required to become a professional athlete. Fortunately, we investors have a much longer shelf life than pro athletes. Here's how I took advantage of this reality.Maturing as an investor does not automatically mean you are becoming a better investor. Experience alone does not grant that badge. Only ongoing rededication and learning will do that. Self mastery and constant attention to your skill set is central to becoming a successful consistent long-term investor. Note, these are two separate objectives.As I've said...Portfolio Profits Grow From Your Investment Garden: Here's How to Plant, Water And Weed ItGatis Rozetag:stockcharts.com,2022-04-22:post-236192022-04-22T21:58:56Z2022-04-22T21:58:56Z<p><img src="https://d.stockcharts.com/img/articles/2022/04/22/771620ae-8744-4c63-b045-e56b7f13bae0.jpg" style="display: inline; margin: 0px 15px; float: left; width: 300px;">FACT: If investors make money, they remain engaged in the stock market with all its splendor and immense potential. If they lose money, they usually lose interest and move on. Over the past two decades, my role as I've embraced it has been to help you maximize those positive probabilities that make you money.</p><p>If you are willing to get engaged, I will provide you with an entire smorgasbord of probability enhancers. Let's call them Level I enhancers. These are the 10 essential foundations of your investing which Grayson and I wrote about in much detail in our book, <a href="https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/top-ten-best-sellers/products/tensile-trading-1" target="_blank">Tensile Trading</a>.</p><p>For those of you not familiar with our methodology, these are the 10 essential stages:</p><ul><li>Stage 1: Money Management</li><li>Stage 2: The Business of Investing</li><li>Stage 3: The Investor Self</li><li>Stage 4: Market Analysis</li><li>Stage 5: Routines</li><li>Stage 6: Stalking Your Investments</li><li>Stage 7: Buying</li><li>Stage 8: Monitoring</li><li>Stage 9: Selling</li><li>Stage 10: Revisit, Retrieve, Refine</li></ul><p>Every season in sports, you hear the same refrain. Pick your favorite league and you will hear it said that teams need to get back to the basics. The basics and the foundations are always what's important. So too with investing, The 10 foundations of investing must be revisited on a regular basis before one can move on the Level II. This blog is mostly about what I'm labelling Level II enhancers.</p><p>Your investment profits are based on probabilities. There's no such thing as a 100% certainty trade that will generate a profit. But I can confirm from experience that by piling on a number of the key probability enhancers and by consistently investing with the winds of probability at your back, profits will magically appear in your account. </p><p>These Level II Enhancers are what we detail in Stage 4 (Market Analysis) of our book and in Stage 5 (Routines).</p><p>At this juncture, I'd like to step back a bit and share with you the two objectives in my writing the Traders Journal blog for over 11 years. My first goal is to "inform" you. As an educator (and full-time investor), I'm trying to acquaint you with the most useful investment tools and to appraise you of what is required to become a consistently successful and profitable investor. My second objective is to " motivate" you. If I don't excite you to take action or to inspire you with a spark of self-reflection that says "yeah, I want to do better," then my blogs will be little more than bubble gum for the mind. </p><p>So in an attempt to light that spark, I'd like to ask you to focus on your diligence here. Diligence is an attribute that all successful investors possess. There's no such thing as having too much diligence when it comes to investing. Diligence is what facilitates you working constantly towards perfecting your charts, indicators, ChartLists and routines. Diligence is what drives you to sort through the mountains and valleys of investing information. Embrace this reality: profits are the personification of diligence.</p><p>Now back to Level II. It's all about organizing your analysis, charting the most appropriate indicators, devising the most relevant routines and timeframes to fit your personal investment style. Level II is all about the most correct daily, weekly and monthly routines that capture the majority of these probabilities. </p><p>In the StockCharts.com universe, all this is synonymous with your individual collection of ChartLists. Think of it as your garden from which you grow profits. So....it's Springtime. There's much to do to promote new growth and fresh beginnings. It's a great time and an appropriate season to revisit your own garden indoors or out. In the investment arena, the metaphor is your personal assortment of ChartLists. This is indeed your financial garden from whence springs your portfolio's profits. </p><p>Your garden of ChartLists will only bloom profits if you judiciously fertilize it, water it and weed it. Fertilizing it requires that you populate your chartlist with the most appropriate tickers and indicators. Watering it requires that your routines (daily, weekly and monthly) are the best and most time efficient as possible. Weeding it requires that you jettison non-profitable indicators, charts and routines. The wrong ones will cost you precious time and cherished profits. </p><p>In closing, I submit to you that Grayson and I — hand-in-hand with thousands of users in our <a href="https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/stockcharts-com-chartpacks/products/tensile-trading-chartpack-by-gatis-roze" target="_blank">Stock Market Mastery ChartPack</a> community — have been doing precisely this for over a decade. The result is one heck of a healthy garden, and you are always welcome to visit and harvest what you deem most appropriate. Warren Buffett once said, <em>"There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult."</em> The complete antithesis of his quote is the <a href="https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/stockcharts-com-chartpacks/products/tensile-trading-chartpack-by-gatis-roze" target="_blank">Stock Market Mastery ChartPack</a>. It simplifies and routinizes the complexity of the stock market, thereby boiling it down to the essentials. With eye-opening transparency, the <a href="https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/stockcharts-com-chartpacks/products/tensile-trading-chartpack-by-gatis-roze" target="_blank">ChartPack</a> garden will expose you to the most high-leveraged, most appropriate indexes, tickers, charts, indicators and routines for your consideration.</p><p>Unlike life and your average job, investing requires that you maintain the same personality with the same tools and the same routines every single day or week. Unapologetically, the reality is that your ChartLists and your routines are what will determine your success as an investor. The world is yours. GO FOR IT!</p><p><br></p><hr><p><br></p><p>P.S. The latest <a href="https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/stockcharts-com-chartpacks/products/tensile-trading-chartpack-by-gatis-roze" target="_blank">ChartPack</a> update reflects equities added and dropped from ALL key indexes. For example, with the S&P 500, Ceridian, Brown & Brown, and Match Group were added, while Perrigo Company, NOV, Inc. and Union Group were dropped. Index inclusion matters a lot! Just since being added to the S&P 500, Brown & Brown has risen 30% from $56 to $74.</p><p><br></p><p><em>Trade well; trade with discipline!</em></p><h2><strong>Gatis Roze</strong>, MBA, CMT</h2><p><a href="http://stockmarketmastery.com/" target="_blank"><strong>StockMarketMastery.com</strong></a></p><ul><li>Author, <a href="http://store.stockcharts.com/products/tensile-trading-1" target="_blank"><strong>"Tensile Trading: The 10 Essential Stages of Stock Market Mastery"</strong></a><span target="_blank"> (Wiley, 2016)</span></li><li>Developer of the <a href="https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/stockcharts-com-chartpacks/products/tensile-trading-chartpack-by-gatis-roze" target="_blank"><strong>"Stock Market Mastery" ChartPack</strong></a><span target="_blank"> for StockCharts members</span></li><li>Presenter of the best-selling <a href="http://store.stockcharts.com/collections/dvds/products/tensile-trading" target="_blank"><strong>"Tensile Trading"</strong></a><span target="_blank"> DVD seminar</span></li><li>Presenter of the <a href="http://store.stockcharts.com/collections/dvds/products/how-to-master-your-asset-allocation-profile" target="_blank"><strong>"How to Master Your Asset Allocation Profile DVD"</strong></a><span target="_blank"> seminar</span></li></ul>FACT: If investors make money, they remain engaged in the stock market with all its splendor and immense potential. If they lose money, they usually lose interest and move on. Over the past two decades, my role as I've embraced it has been to help you maximize those positive probabilities that make you money.If you are willing to get engaged, I will provide you with an entire smorgasbord of probability enhancers. Let's call them Level I enhancers. These are the 10 essential foundations of your investing which Grayson and I wrote about in much detail in our book, Tensile...How I Combat Disinformation And Prevent It From Corrupting My Portfolio With 5 Essential ToolsGatis Rozetag:stockcharts.com,2022-03-25:post-234742022-03-25T21:49:11Z2022-03-25T21:49:11Z<p><img src="https://d.stockcharts.com/img/articles/2022/03/25/0770d613-e0b7-41bd-a7fb-b385d6c82599.jpg" style="display: inline; margin: 0px 15px; float: left; width: 300px;">Recently, academic researchers have proven and quantified the impact of fake news and how it sways stock prices to the tune of approximately 7% with small-caps, 5% with mid-caps and somewhat less with large-caps. Disinformation and propaganda is all around us. As investors, we must be attuned to how these affect our portfolios.</p><p>The current global environment illustrates this labyrinth of untruths. President Vladimir Putin's propaganda has been so effective within Russia that The Seattle Times recently reported that some 58% of Russians support his so-called "anti-Nazi" justification for invading Ukraine. Another recent example is all the disinformation and anti-vaccination propaganda - undermining both the measles vaccine for children and the COVID-19 vaccination efforts.</p><p>Before I offer you my five tools and the steps I take to protect my portfolio from news fraudsters, I'm reminded of Senator Daniel Webster's quote from his Congressional speech in 1833. <em>"The study of money, above all other fields, is one in which complexity is used to disguise truth or to evade truth."</em> I believe that disinformation, misinformation and fake news are all synonyms. However, in today's politically charged partisan news landscape, I believe it's also synonymous with <em>"something that someone does not agree with."</em></p><p>It is my sincere thinking that the exchange of accurate information is the essential lubricant that facilitates reasonable people to live free and conduct commerce and maintain functional effective financial markets.</p><p>Today, unfortunately, our beliefs have been so eroded that no one trusts anyone anymore when it comes to the news. We've all become leery of the blurred lines between truth and lies. If you are not leery of today's news, you should be.</p><p>I find it fascinating that modern library science courses teach one to think like Sherlock Holmes — teaching "lateral reading" to unearth clues to the truth. Here in Seattle, the University of Washington has a class entitled "Calling Bullshit in the Age of Big Data." The university also hosts an annual event for librarians and teachers called "Misinfo Day." How's that for being mainstream and validating my thesis?</p><p>We know that we must do something to protect our assets. But what can we do as investors? So here's my own personal roadmap to information hygiene.</p><h2>TOOL #1</h2><p>Acknowledge the reality of disinformation and remain vigilant. This takes discipline. Don't let your guard down — ever. If it sounds too good to be true, or it sounds too negative, odds are the truth is somewhere in the middle. And don't get emotional. In our <a href="https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/top-ten-best-sellers/products/tensile-trading-1" target="_blank">book</a>, there's an <a href="https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/top-ten-best-sellers/products/tensile-trading-1" target="_blank">entire chapter on the Investor Self</a> which will help you stay objective and keep an even keel. As Benjamin Graham said, <em>"The market is a pendulum that forever swings between unsustainable optimism and unjustified pessimism."</em> As your market intuition grows, you'll become better at sniffing out the deep fakes.</p><h2>TOOL #2</h2><p>Know the sources of the information. A major red flag for myself is when there's a lack of transparency or the writer remains anonymous. I stick to large credible news sources that are willing to direct me to corroborating sources and links. I will often copy the headline into Google's search engine and see if the results yield other known credible news sources. Only then am I inclined to embrace the news as true. The caveat here is to recognize that every media source has a bias.</p><h2>TOOL #3</h2><p target="_blank">Scientists have designed remarkable algorithms which facilitate machine learning to catch fake news. There are a number of websites that do fact-checking, but my personal favorite is <a href="http://mediabiasfactcheck.com" target="_blank">mediabiasfactcheck.com</a><span target="_blank">. This website has a nifty system of color-coded dots and a scale from zero-to-ten to rate both bias and factual accuracy. That leads to my next tool. The best we can do as investors is to stack the probabilities of truth in our favor. There is no 100% certainty, but we can get close.</span></p><h2>TOOL #4</h2><p>The fourth tool is really to challenge you as investors — you must have a clear and well laid-out methodology. My personal probability enhancer is the 10-stage paradigm I've followed for decades. No single stage can guarantee investment success, but collectively the 10 stages all contribute positive probabilities and together they produce a consistent profitable result. In other words, no single piece of disinformation alone can cause the collapse of your portfolio. It virtually puts the wind at your back and insulates you from fake news, disinformation and disaster. </p><p>For the thousands of you who've read our book, this probability-based approach clearly makes sense. For those less familiar with the 10 stages, I struggle with how best to convince you of the merits that this multi-step approach offers. So I've decided that the easiest way is to simply "make you an offer you cannot refuse." We'll make our <a href="https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/dvds/products/tensile-trading" target="_blank">2-disc instructional blue ray DVD</a> available at a discount of 65% ($49.95).</p><h2>TOOL #5</h2><p>Finally, the most important tool is your charts. Vladimir Putin can spin his propaganda campaign, but the focus needs to be on what he actually does, not on what he says. The same is true in the stock markets. Remember that it's an auction market where buyers and sellers are brought together and essentially vote using their real money with the result being a price chart. They cast an average of 6 Billion votes in a trading day. In statistics, this is called a "statistically significant sample size." Regardless of what the media proclaims, what talking heads shout or the financial fundamentals may report, all of these factors are reflected in the price chart of an equity in question. In other words, your charts won't lie to you. Trust what you see — not what you hear or read.</p><p>As I've repeated so many times before, the stock market is the world's most sophisticated disinformation machine ever created. Trust your charts. </p><p><br></p><p><em>Trade well; trade with discipline!</em></p><h2><strong>Gatis Roze</strong>, MBA, CMT</h2><p><a href="http://stockmarketmastery.com/" target="_blank"><strong>StockMarketMastery.com</strong></a></p><ul><li>Author, <a href="http://store.stockcharts.com/products/tensile-trading-1" target="_blank"><strong>"Tensile Trading: The 10 Essential Stages of Stock Market Mastery"</strong></a><span target="_blank"> (Wiley, 2016)</span></li><li>Developer of the <a href="https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/stockcharts-com-chartpacks/products/tensile-trading-chartpack-by-gatis-roze" target="_blank"><strong>"Stock Market Mastery" ChartPack</strong></a><span target="_blank"> for StockCharts members</span></li><li>Presenter of the best-selling <a href="http://store.stockcharts.com/collections/dvds/products/tensile-trading" target="_blank"><strong>"Tensile Trading"</strong></a><span target="_blank"> DVD seminar</span></li><li>Presenter of the <a href="http://store.stockcharts.com/collections/dvds/products/how-to-master-your-asset-allocation-profile" target="_blank"><strong>"How to Master Your Asset Allocation Profile DVD"</strong></a><span target="_blank"> seminar</span></li></ul>Recently, academic researchers have proven and quantified the impact of fake news and how it sways stock prices to the tune of approximately 7% with small-caps, 5% with mid-caps and somewhat less with large-caps. Disinformation and propaganda is all around us. As investors, we must be attuned to how these affect our portfolios.The current global environment illustrates this labyrinth of untruths. President Vladimir Putin's propaganda has been so effective within Russia that The Seattle Times recently reported that some 58% of Russians support his so-called "anti-Nazi" justification...Sushi Investing, Part 3: A Final Chapter Of The Secrets To SellingGatis Rozetag:stockcharts.com,2022-03-05:post-233612022-03-05T02:07:50Z2022-03-05T02:07:50Z<p>For those of you who've been investing for decades, you'll immediately grasp the significance and truth of Market Wizard Stanley Druckenmiller's quote: <em>"Every great money manager I've ever met, all they want to talk about is their mistakes. There's a great humility there."</em></p><p>As this is the third and final blog in my series "Sushi Investing", about one's selling methodology, I feel the opening salvo once again should address the "Investor Self" (Chapter 3 <span target="_blank">in </span><a href="https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/top-ten-best-sellers/products/tensile-trading-1" target="_blank">our book</a>) upon which every profitable exit strategy must exist. As investors or traders, we must first be able to get our arms around this essential foundational tree. Once the Investor Self is mastered, the exit mechanics are relatively straightforward. </p><p>In <a href="https://stockcharts.com/articles/journal/2022/02/sushi-investing-part-2-how-to-556.html" target="_blank">Part 2 of "Sushi Investing"</a>, I offered a simple yet effective Three Peaks selling methodology. For those of you who did the suggested homework — applying the methodology to 50 charts — you likely discovered both how straightforward and clean this approach is and how surprisingly profitable as well. Remember that profits don't just magically appear in your account created but Market Gods. It's your defensive methodology that takes these profits as they present themselves — while simultaneously cutting off losers when the markets tell you so. A slow burn defense of tearing off the bandage slowly will only cause more financial pain. Don't trip over your own ego in your need to be right. You'll end up as collateral damage instead. </p><p>Okay - let's dive into the granular details of my own exit methodology. A few years ago in the Traders Journal, I produced a popular series of "Action Practice" investing exercises. I think it's appropriate here to invite you to look over those archives. To do so, just search The Traders Journal blog for "Action Practice". <a href="https://stockcharts.com/articles/journal/2017/02/charts-im-stalking-action-practice-11.html" target="_blank">One of the blogs</a> dealt with selling. I would also encourage readers to review another blog I wrote entitled <a href="https://stockcharts.com/articles/journal/2012/06/the-art-of-selling-well-part-ii.html" target="_blank">"The Art of Selling Well: Part II"</a><strong> </strong>in which I describe in more detail the six basic elements of my own selling paradigm. Those elements are:</p><ul><li style="margin: 0px;">Price Relative</li><li style="margin: 0px;">Trend</li><li style="margin: 0px;">Volume-based Signals</li><li style="margin: 0px;">Momentum</li><li style="margin: 0px;">Bearish Patterns</li><li style="margin: 0px;">Personal Money Management Rules</li></ul><p>So let's move on to review the three stocks - Redfin Corp (RDFN), 1Life Healthcare (ONEM), and Pinterest Inc. (PINS) - and examine how the evidence accumulated to shift the probabilities towards a sell decision.</p><p><img src="https://d.stockcharts.com/img/articles/2022/03/04/1a5c22df-4f72-44cb-a38b-1260a5a68c4c.jpg" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto;"></p><hr><p><img src="https://d.stockcharts.com/img/articles/2022/03/04/b46455fd-0bad-480f-b225-5903bf7b706d.jpg" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto;"></p><hr><p><img src="https://d.stockcharts.com/img/articles/2022/03/04/23c352bf-70dd-4bd0-a7b8-20fe391d9ae7.jpg" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto;"></p><p><br></p><p>The bottom line is that as an investor, you must tackle your fears head on, push your ego aside and act appropriately to what the markets are telling you. They are always right!</p><p><br></p><p><em>Trade well; trade with discipline!</em></p><h2><strong>Gatis Roze</strong>, MBA, CMT</h2><p><a href="http://stockmarketmastery.com/" target="_blank"><strong>StockMarketMastery.com</strong></a></p><ul><li>Author, <a href="http://store.stockcharts.com/products/tensile-trading-1" target="_blank"><strong>"Tensile Trading: The 10 Essential Stages of Stock Market Mastery"</strong></a><span target="_blank"> (Wiley, 2016)</span></li><li>Developer of the <a href="https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/stockcharts-com-chartpacks/products/tensile-trading-chartpack-by-gatis-roze" target="_blank"><strong>"Stock Market Mastery" ChartPack</strong></a><span target="_blank"> for StockCharts members</span></li><li>Presenter of the best-selling <a href="http://store.stockcharts.com/collections/dvds/products/tensile-trading" target="_blank"><strong>"Tensile Trading"</strong></a><span target="_blank"> DVD seminar</span></li><li>Presenter of the <a href="http://store.stockcharts.com/collections/dvds/products/how-to-master-your-asset-allocation-profile" target="_blank"><strong>"How to Master Your Asset Allocation Profile DVD"</strong></a><span target="_blank"> seminar</span></li></ul>For those of you who've been investing for decades, you'll immediately grasp the significance and truth of Market Wizard Stanley Druckenmiller's quote: "Every great money manager I've ever met, all they want to talk about is their mistakes. There's a great humility there."As this is the third and final blog in my series "Sushi Investing", about one's selling methodology, I feel the opening salvo once again should address the "Investor Self" (Chapter 3 in our book) upon which every profitable exit strategy must exist. As investors or traders, we must first be able to get our arms around...Sushi Investing, Part 2: How To Sell Equities Before The Expiration DateGatis Rozetag:stockcharts.com,2022-02-12:post-232412022-02-12T00:31:20Z2022-02-12T00:31:20Z<p>Within the stock market, selling profitably is considered an art. In the real world, most folks love art and are happy to talk about it. Institutional investors will talk about the "art of the exit" before they buy an equity. So why is it that individual investors deem it "uncool".</p><p>I believe that part of it has to do with the inner struggles most investors experience when it comes to selling their equities. They can't seem to get their own egos out of the way, and they fail to acknowledge their own demons. As Mark Douglas wrote, most investors get wrapped up in some variation of the Four Fears:</p><ol><li style="margin: 0px;">Fear of losing money</li><li style="margin: 0px;">Missing an opportunity</li><li style="margin: 0px;">Leaving money on the table</li><li style="margin: 0px;">Being wrong</li></ol><p>Most individual investors perceive themselves as intelligent individuals with muscular money managements skills. Often they've been winners in other arenas of life, and winners are not wired to focus on their losses with a radical candor the markets demand. </p><p>Once again, I'm reminded of Charles Darwin's famous quote, <em>"It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change." </em>Your losses require — indeed clamor for — introspective review. I've always envisioned my losses as tuition paid to the University of Wall Street. But God forbid if I pay tuition twice for the same lesson! </p><p>There are two ways I deal with my trading losses. The first type of loss is usually the result of the laws of probability, and my methodology expects these. I expect it. I don't like it, but my thinking is that I'll take this small loss and now I'm one step closer to my next big gainer.</p><p>The second type of loss is altogether something else. Losses that result from ignoring my trading plan or my selling disciplines and thereby falling into some bad behaviors of human nature requires serious introspection and brutal self-honesty. I know better. And I know I mustn't let it happen again. </p><p>So now building upon all these foundations learned from the Dennis Rodman defensive basketball metaphor (Part 1) to embracing the "Investor Self", how did you make out with the selling role-play in last week's blog with respect to Redfin (RDFN), 1 Life Healthcare (ONEM) and Pinterest (PINS)?</p><p>I heard from a number of you who felt this was an extremely valuable exercise. In fact, in the two-day Stock Market Mastery seminars that Grayson and I taught before the pandemic (and hope to do so again), we'd spend hours on the three stages dealing with Exit Strategies and Selling disciplines (i.e. <a href="https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/top-ten-best-sellers/products/tensile-trading-1" target="_blank">Stage #3 -The Investor Self; Stage #8 - Monitoring; Stage #9 - Selling</a>). As homework, attendees were asked to paper trade 50 equities and execute their selling methodologies. The comprehension and absorption were immediate. Yes, the cliche applies: "<em>practice makes perfect".</em></p><p>In a spirit of full disclosure, I've decided to make this a three-part blog. Candidly, my motivation is threefold.</p><ol><li style="margin: 0px;">I benefit from revisiting my own exit disciplines.</li><li style="margin: 0px;">Acquiring the skills necessary to execute timely sells is an extremely high-leverage activity and produces consistent profits. It warrants the effort. </li><li style="margin: 0px;">For those readers who are truly committed to up their investing game, I'd like to help facilitate that with a bit more foundation building — which I call homework. So here's the Game Plan. Before I present Part 3 of this series, I challenge you to execute the following curriculum:</li></ol><ul><li style="margin: 0px;">Paper trade 50 equities from your past investment or pick 50 from the <a href="https://StockCharts.com" target="_blank">StockCharts.com</a> scan list of new lows. Apply the three peaks sell methodology and then apply your personal exit strategy.</li><li style="margin: 0px;">Read the three chapters in <a href="https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/top-ten-best-sellers/products/tensile-trading-1" target="_blank">our book</a> which I listed above.</li><li style="margin: 0px;">Review some of the 13 Traders Journal Blogs that I've written and <a href="https://stockcharts.com/articles/journal/toc.html" target="_blank">archived</a> under Stage #9 - Selling.</li><li style="margin: 0px;">Watch <a href="https://youtu.be/9FnO3igOkOk" target="_blank">this short video clip</a> of the famous scene from the movie "A Few Good Men" where Tom Cruise demands Jack Nicholson tell him the truth. Colonel Jessup (Nicholson) responds with radical candor: "You can't handle the truth....etc." It's a flawless parallel to the stock market. The markets talk to you truthfully each day. Are you able to hear, accept and act upon those truths? Find a mirror. Stare into it. Say to yourself, <em>"I can now handle the truth — give it to me!!"</em></li></ul><p>If you do these four steps, you'll be ready for Part 3 of Sushi Investing. In the meantime, here is our three-peaks "basic" selling methodology. Back test it on your own past trades. Don't let its simplicity fool you. That's its strength. When you see the three peaks, you know how and when to sell. Then it's merely having the discipline to pull the trigger.</p><p><img src="https://d.stockcharts.com/img/articles/2022/02/11/ad59b8df-29e5-41b3-aa75-760398d83e1b.jpg" onclick="window.open('https://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=RDFN&amp;p=D&amp;yr=1&amp;mn=5&amp;dy=0&amp;i=p95834749931&amp;a=1106690761&amp;r=1644625800836')" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto;"></p><p><img src="https://d.stockcharts.com/img/articles/2022/02/11/368693e4-d389-444c-8038-b4e0e47d9959.jpg" onclick="window.open('https://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=ONEM&amp;p=D&amp;yr=1&amp;mn=5&amp;dy=0&amp;i=p55375118475&amp;a=1106694727&amp;r=1644625819932')" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto;"></p><p><img src="https://d.stockcharts.com/img/articles/2022/02/11/7301139b-fb9e-43be-9d72-3e46612f62df.jpg" onclick="window.open('https://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=PINS&amp;p=D&amp;yr=1&amp;mn=5&amp;dy=0&amp;i=p57250793002&amp;a=1106673481&amp;r=1644625833288')" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto;"></p><p><br></p><p><em>Trade well; trade with discipline!</em></p><h2><strong>Gatis Roze</strong>, MBA, CMT</h2><p><a href="http://stockmarketmastery.com/" target="_blank"><strong>StockMarketMastery.com</strong></a></p><ul><li>Author, <a href="http://store.stockcharts.com/products/tensile-trading-1" target="_blank"><strong>"Tensile Trading: The 10 Essential Stages of Stock Market Mastery"</strong></a><span target="_blank"> (Wiley, 2016)</span></li><li>Developer of the <a href="https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/stockcharts-com-chartpacks/products/tensile-trading-chartpack-by-gatis-roze" target="_blank"><strong>"Stock Market Mastery" ChartPack</strong></a><span target="_blank"> for StockCharts members</span></li><li>Presenter of the best-selling <a href="http://store.stockcharts.com/collections/dvds/products/tensile-trading" target="_blank"><strong>"Tensile Trading"</strong></a><span target="_blank"> DVD seminar</span></li><li>Presenter of the <a href="http://store.stockcharts.com/collections/dvds/products/how-to-master-your-asset-allocation-profile" target="_blank"><strong>"How to Master Your Asset Allocation Profile DVD"</strong></a><span target="_blank"> seminar</span></li></ul>Within the stock market, selling profitably is considered an art. In the real world, most folks love art and are happy to talk about it. Institutional investors will talk about the "art of the exit" before they buy an equity. So why is it that individual investors deem it "uncool".I believe that part of it has to do with the inner struggles most investors experience when it comes to selling their equities. They can't seem to get their own egos out of the way, and they fail to acknowledge their own demons. As Mark Douglas wrote, most investors get wrapped up in some variation of the Four...Sushi Investing, Part 1: The Secret To Producing Profits Before The Expiration DateGatis Rozetag:stockcharts.com,2022-01-28:post-231562022-03-05T01:56:30Z2022-01-28T22:31:32Z<p><img src="https://d.stockcharts.com/img/articles/2022/01/28/bfd1c046-a3ce-4b9f-b0ac-a1e8c4075dae.jpg" style="display: inline; margin: 0px 15px; float: left; width: 300px;">Profits are the product of practicing a persistent pilgrimage towards perfecting your sell disciplines. To paraphrase a sports cliche, without an exceptional defense you won't win championships. Michael Jordan has unequivocally stated that without the defensive wizardry of Dennis Rodman, the Chicago Bulls would not have been world champions in 1996, '97 or '98.</p><p>The analogy to profitable investing is crystal clear. On your personal team, your portfolio is always dependent upon a strong sell methodology. In my own 30 years of investing and trading, I've personally embraced a number of sports metaphors with rewarding results. This NBA basketball example is one of my favorites. </p><p>Back to our "take action" type of guy as Michael Jordan referred to Dennis Rodman. Even Phil Jackson - the Zen Master coach of the Bulls — admitted that it was profoundly difficult for him to accept the fact that the Bulls needed Rodman who had a reputation as being difficult and high maintenance. Jackson did, however, finally acknowledge Rodman's unusual skill set and that it was exactly what the Bulls needed. The Chicago Bulls organization was also banking on Coach Jackson's special coaching skills to make it all come together. </p><p>Against all norms at the time, Coach Jackson allowed Dennis Rodman to miss practices. Jackson embraced the reality that Rodman was a unique and different kind of player. While the team did drills on the court, Rodman spent his time pouring over films of his adversaries before each game. This was the brilliance of a defensive savant who was arguably one of the greatest defensive players in NBA history. Lost in the media focus on his tattoos, piercings and parties is the fact that Rodman researched in exhaustive detail and in great depth every adversary he was about to face — including opposing star players such as Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and James Worthy. He meticulously studied how they played, their weaknesses and subtle tendencies so he'd know how best to defend against them. </p><p>In doing so, Rodman turned his defensive focus, focus, focus into a craft all his own. By studying and memorizing the inclinations of each opponent, he could predict how they'd react and move even before they actually did. Getting into the weeds of defensive basketball may not sound sexy, but it certainly paid off for Rodman and helped win the Chicago Bulls multiple championships. It became an intellectual challenge for Rodman and a great source of pride. He investigated and analyzed how the ball would bounce and spin off missed shots by specific players from different angles on the court — thereby turning rebounding and defense into an art form. He showcased his ability to be where he knew the ball would go before it got there.</p><p>The parallels for us as investors to Rodman's remarkable legacy are many.</p><ol><li>Before you ever buy an equity, learn its tendencies and personality, and by understanding these markers, put in place your defensive strategy. Tactics come before trades. In other words, know where the exits are before you go into the building.</li><li>Rodman knew how much space to give each and every offensive player, and it was different for each of them. The same is true for stocks.</li><li>Michael Jordan referred to Rodman as a "take action" type of guy. With your sell methodology in place, there's no excuse for complacency. You, too, must take action when the market moves against you.</li><li>Rodman explored and then rehearsed in his mind's eye how he would deploy his specific defensive skills set at game time. As investors, we must research and rehearse our trades as well. Visualize your exit before you have to leave. </li><li>Defense and rebounding win NBA championships. Defense and a proactive selling methodology win profits and minimize losses in the markets.</li><li>Rodman was renowned for his focus during a game. When others lost focus, he pounced. We investors must remember that if we lose our focus on the market, the market will not lose focus on us. </li></ol><p><br></p><p>The bottom line is this. <strong>Every equity position in your portfolio has to earn its place.</strong> By the word "earn", I mean that you deem a particular stock more worthy than the thousands of other equities in the market. And it doesn't stop there. Monitoring (<a href="https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/top-ten-best-sellers/products/tensile-trading-1" target="_blank">Stage 8 in our book</a>) is that part of the your investing methodology that focuses on regularly revisiting a stock's "earnship". Think of it as a double entendre.</p><ol><li>Is your present equity still more "worthy" than the thousands of other options in the market?</li><li>Consider its earnings as part of its "earnship"</li></ol><p>Think about its quarterly earnings — both its projections and its actual reported earnings — since this is ultimately what drives a stock price. </p><p>My point is that at some moment your stock will cease to be worthy. Enter your selling methodology. Don't just sit and pray, waiting for some desired outcome. Other equities will become more worthy if you take your eye off the ball you own. You must put your ego aside, respect this fact, and act decisively to make a change. Let me say that again. Get your ego out of the way. Where the market is telling you that you are wrong, you must stop being wrong. Sell your position in part or in whole. </p><p>I suppose a synonym for this whole dance is to let relative strength — or relative worthiness — be your mantra. Better yet, think of it as "Sushi Investing". When it starts to smell a bit off, it's probably past its expiration date and needs to be sold quickly. "Discount Sushi" is not a restaurant you want to frequent! Sushi and stocks are similar in this respect.</p><p>Next week in Part 2, we'll delve into specific mechanics and examples of two specific selling methodologies. In the meantime, I ask you to role play using the six Dennis Rodman defensive principles and apply your own selling tools to these three stocks: Redfin Corp (RDFN), 1 Life Healthcare (ONEM) and Pinterest (PINS). Yes, call it homework! Next week, we'll explore each of them in great detail.</p><p><br></p><p><em>Trade well; trade with discipline!</em></p><h2><strong>Gatis Roze</strong>, MBA, CMT</h2><p><a href="http://stockmarketmastery.com/" target="_blank"><strong>StockMarketMastery.com</strong></a></p><ul><li>Author, <a href="http://store.stockcharts.com/products/tensile-trading-1" target="_blank"><strong>"Tensile Trading: The 10 Essential Stages of Stock Market Mastery"</strong></a><span target="_blank"> (Wiley, 2016)</span></li><li>Developer of the <a href="https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/stockcharts-com-chartpacks/products/tensile-trading-chartpack-by-gatis-roze" target="_blank"><strong>"Stock Market Mastery" ChartPack</strong></a><span target="_blank"> for StockCharts members</span></li><li>Presenter of the best-selling <a href="http://store.stockcharts.com/collections/dvds/products/tensile-trading" target="_blank"><strong>"Tensile Trading"</strong></a><span target="_blank"> DVD seminar</span></li><li>Presenter of the <a href="http://store.stockcharts.com/collections/dvds/products/how-to-master-your-asset-allocation-profile" target="_blank"><strong>"How to Master Your Asset Allocation Profile DVD"</strong></a><span target="_blank"> seminar</span></li></ul>Profits are the product of practicing a persistent pilgrimage towards perfecting your sell disciplines. To paraphrase a sports cliche, without an exceptional defense you won't win championships. Michael Jordan has unequivocally stated that without the defensive wizardry of Dennis Rodman, the Chicago Bulls would not have been world champions in 1996, '97 or '98.The analogy to profitable investing is crystal clear. On your personal team, your portfolio is always dependent upon a strong sell methodology. In my own 30 years of investing and trading, I've personally embraced a number of sports...The Evolution And Essential Foundations Of The Stock Market Mastery MethodologyGatis Rozetag:stockcharts.com,2021-12-17:post-229502021-12-17T21:56:54Z2021-12-17T21:56:54Z<p><img src="https://d.stockcharts.com/img/articles/2021/12/17/b2955ed9-90a2-4b4f-9a1d-8f145d72b747.jpg" style="display: inline; margin: 0px 15px; float: left; width: 300px;">This past week, Grayson and I had the special pleasure of being interviewed by David Keller who, in the video, posed many pithy questions as to the evolution of our <a href="https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/must-reads/products/tensile-trading-1" target="_blank">Stock Market Mastery methodology</a>. </p><p>We each reflected on the investing foundations differently, but all three of us agreed on the gravity and relevance of routines. The emphasis on a framework and disciplined structure is touted by essentially every profitable money manage as the key to investing success. So as we close out this year and look to a new year, my wish for you is that you open your eyes, ears and mind to the many wisdoms the markets are offering you. </p><div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"><iframe class="embed-responsive-item" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/EG2fFJ-xdi0" frameborder="0" width="640" height="360" allow="accelerometer;autoplay;encrypted-media;gyroscope;picture-in-picture;" allowfullscreen="true"></iframe></div><p><br></p><p>It has been my observation that wise investors have a humility both personally and intellectually. It comes from an accumulation of their trading experiences and knowledge of interacting with the markets over years. This intuition can't be developed in isolation. It's their interactions and participation that result in the enlightenment that we call "market wisdom". After years of diligence, these investors earn our accolades as we label them "wise beyond their years".</p><p>The interview is unique in that it presents three investors from three different generations as we each explore our respective orientations. I'm confident this video will contribute to your own personal accumulation of market knowledge and wisdom. <a href="https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/stockcharts-com-chartpacks/products/tensile-trading-chartpack-by-gatis-roze" target="_blank">Here's a link</a> to the specific tools we discuss.</p><p><br></p><p><em>Trade well; trade with discipline!</em></p><h2><strong>Gatis Roze</strong>, MBA, CMT</h2><p><a href="http://stockmarketmastery.com/" target="_blank"><strong>StockMarketMastery.com</strong></a></p><ul><li>Author, <a href="http://store.stockcharts.com/products/tensile-trading-1" target="_blank"><strong>"Tensile Trading: The 10 Essential Stages of Stock Market Mastery"</strong></a><span target="_blank"> (Wiley, 2016)</span></li><li>Developer of the <a href="https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/stockcharts-com-chartpacks/products/tensile-trading-chartpack-by-gatis-roze" target="_blank"><strong>"Stock Market Mastery" ChartPack</strong></a><span target="_blank"> for StockCharts members</span></li><li>Presenter of the best-selling <a href="http://store.stockcharts.com/collections/dvds/products/tensile-trading" target="_blank"><strong>"Tensile Trading"</strong></a><span target="_blank"> DVD seminar</span></li><li>Presenter of the <a href="http://store.stockcharts.com/collections/dvds/products/how-to-master-your-asset-allocation-profile" target="_blank"><strong>"How to Master Your Asset Allocation Profile DVD"</strong></a><span target="_blank"> seminar</span></li></ul>This past week, Grayson and I had the special pleasure of being interviewed by David Keller who, in the video, posed many pithy questions as to the evolution of our Stock Market Mastery methodology. We each reflected on the investing foundations differently, but all three of us agreed on the gravity and relevance of routines. The emphasis on a framework and disciplined structure is touted by essentially every profitable money manage as the key to investing success. So as we close out this year and look to a new year, my wish for you is that you open your eyes, ears and mind to the...Eight Things You Can Do To Boost The Profitability Of Your Own ChartListsGatis Rozetag:stockcharts.com,2021-11-27:post-228412021-11-27T00:57:15Z2021-11-27T00:57:15Z<p><img src="https://d.stockcharts.com/img/articles/2021/11/26/b88c163a-da10-4e3d-870a-4c10ef259c85.jpg" style="display: inline; margin: 0px 15px; float: left; width: 275px;"><strong>Yes - believe it!</strong></p><p>The organization of your ChartLists is an extremely high leverage investing activity that YOU control. It does and will determine your profitability. Hence, it's worthy of your time and effort. As I often quote the entrepreneur and investor Michael Dell, <em>"You don't have to be a genius to be successful. You just need a framework."</em></p><p>So in that spirit, I'd like to share eight simple yet high-leverage things you can do to boost your organization and fuel your profitability in the process:</p><h2>#1</h2><p>Two weeks ago, I wrote <a href="https://stockcharts.com/articles/journal/2021/11/supercharge-your-routines-with-945.html" target="_blank">a detailed blog</a> about understanding the "trumping hierarchy" within ChartLists. If you use the symbol "!" and the "#" as prefixes when you name your ChartLists, the "!" will trump the "#" and be placed above it. In <a href="https://stockcharts.com/articles/journal/2021/11/supercharge-your-routines-with-945.html" target="_blank">the blog</a>, I describe ten of these symbols and how to use them to enhance the order of the equities in your ChartLists.</p><p><strong>SUGGESTION</strong>:For those of you who have downloaded our ChartPack in the past and wish to keep your existing lists and comments as is, you should rename those ChartLists by simply installing a prefix of your choice as the new ChartPack only overwrites or replaces ChartLists of exactly the same name.</p><h2>#2</h2><p>Simplifying the complexity of the market and boiling it down to a manageable number of ChartLists which I can then review has regularly produced powerful profitable returns. As the old advertising adage goes, I never go anywhere without them. My essential ChartLists are my Permission to Buy ChartList, Market Dashboard ChartList, and Permission to Sell ChartList, to name just a few.</p><h2>#3</h2><p>I keep a ChartList of the 250 of the most active ETFs based on volume. By slicing and dicing and sorting this ChartList, I'm able to literally have X-ray vision into the market's present sentiment and money flows.</p><h2>#4</h2><p>Fact: There are software bundles in the investor universe with over 300 different charting indicators. The more the merrier is fine for Thanksgiving but it should not be the basis of your investment methodology. Your ChartLists only need ten indicators. I have my favored ten which I understand intimately and which tell me trend, volume, momentum, risk and reward. Pick your own ten but show some restraint!</p><h2>#5</h2><p>For twenty years, I taught my post-college classes that the stock market operates based on the "Law of Groupings." Individual ‘Bubble" stocks may levitate by themselves for short periods of time, but those are low probability trades. The most profitable stocks from an investor's standpoint are those with the highest probability of making you money with the fewest downside probabilities. Most have similar characteristics. Those stocks are usually the "Best of the Breed" within their industry group populated with sister stocks in the same industry. This specific Industry is usually one of the top Industry groups within its Sector.</p><p>For example, the Healthcare Sector (XLV) is one of the eleven Sectors that comprise the total market. That Sector (XLV) is comprised of five Industries: Medical Supplies; Pharmaceuticals; Medical Equipment; Biotech and Healthcare Providers. Year-to-date (YTD), the best Industry Group has been Healthcare Providers. Six stocks within this Industry Group are up 157% to 437% YTD. That's the "Law of Groupings" at work.</p><p>My point is this principle which is detailed in our book, <a href="https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/top-ten-best-sellers/products/tensile-trading-1" target="_blank">"Tensile Trading"</a>, is also the basis of monitoring all my equities (including ETFs and Mutual Funds). Every position gets its own ChartList populated with the appropriate Sector ETF, appropriate Industry Group and a collection of the most appropriate Sister Stocks. So, the rule is that you monitor the entire family of stocks, not just the one you own. In the case of ETFs and mutual funds, the family composition is similar but obviously unique when you construct those ChartLists.</p><h2>#6</h2><p>I've often had retired professionals attend my seminars and make pronouncements such as "I'm here for the day to have you teach me exactly what you do." Okay then, let's get started and tomorrow you can teach me how to be a plastic surgeon! My point being that learning how to become a consistently profitable investor takes dedication, hard work and lots of experience. In my mind, the best tool for that is the name I gave to this blog over a decade ago: The Traders Journal. A personal journal of your experiences is the ticket. To that end, don't overlook the Comments section of each ChartList. It's an ideal place to record specific lessons and observations about your equities and past trades very much akin to the majority of the ChartLists in our new Stock Market Mastery ChartPack which are jam-packed with educational insights in the Comments section of many ChartLists.</p><h2>#7</h2><p>History matters. I keep a ChartList of all the market tops and bottoms going back over 40 years— with extensive notes, observations and commonalities listed in the Comments section beneath each chart. As Mark Twain once said, <em>"History doesn't necessarily repeat itself, but it often rhymes." </em>Use this ChartList to your advantage as Twain suggested. </p><h2>#8</h2><p>Before I pull the trigger to buy an equity, it has cascaded through my four ChartLists — having been investigated, analyzed, dissected and debated. In other words, it's been thoroughly vetted. These four ChartLists are labelled as follows:</p><ul><li>Likes</li><li>To Watch</li><li>To Stalk</li><li>To Buy</li></ul><p>For me, it's a routine and consistent system that has decreased risks and increased probabilities in executing profitable trades and minimizing my losers.</p><p>So there you have the eight insights regarding ChartLists that I feel have contributed mightily to my own success for over 30 years of investing. The bottom line is that your ChartLists are worthy of your dedicated focus and your precious time. The rewards are there. For those of you who've read our book, these eight principles will be familiar. You know of the synergy between the book and the ChartPack. Others of you might wish to save yourself hundreds of hours to organize, populate and format all the same ChartLists that Grayson and I use. To delegate all that work to us, simply download the newly revised <a href="https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/stockcharts-com-chartpacks/products/tensile-trading-chartpack-by-gatis-roze" target="_blank">Stock Market Mastery ChartPack</a>.</p><p><br></p><p><em>Trade well; trade with discipline!</em></p><h2><strong>Gatis Roze</strong>, MBA, CMT</h2><p><a href="http://stockmarketmastery.com/" target="_blank"><strong>StockMarketMastery.com</strong></a></p><ul><li>Author, <a href="http://store.stockcharts.com/products/tensile-trading-1" target="_blank"><strong>"Tensile Trading: The 10 Essential Stages of Stock Market Mastery"</strong></a><span target="_blank"> (Wiley, 2016)</span></li><li>Developer of the <a href="https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/stockcharts-com-chartpacks/products/tensile-trading-chartpack-by-gatis-roze" target="_blank"><strong>"Stock Market Mastery" ChartPack</strong></a><span target="_blank"> for StockCharts members</span></li><li>Presenter of the best-selling <a href="http://store.stockcharts.com/collections/dvds/products/tensile-trading" target="_blank"><strong>"Tensile Trading"</strong></a><span target="_blank"> DVD seminar</span></li><li>Presenter of the <a href="http://store.stockcharts.com/collections/dvds/products/how-to-master-your-asset-allocation-profile" target="_blank"><strong>"How to Master Your Asset Allocation Profile DVD"</strong></a><span target="_blank"> seminar</span></li></ul>Yes - believe it!The organization of your ChartLists is an extremely high leverage investing activity that YOU control. It does and will determine your profitability. Hence, it's worthy of your time and effort. As I often quote the entrepreneur and investor Michael Dell, "You don't have to be a genius to be successful. You just need a framework."So in that spirit, I'd like to share eight simple yet high-leverage things you can do to boost your organization and fuel your profitability in the process:#1Two weeks ago, I wrote a detailed blog about understanding the "trumping hierarchy" within...The Biggest Update In A Decade - Introducing The Totally New, Totally Revamped "Stock Market Mastery" ChartPack!Grayson Rozetag:stockcharts.com,2021-11-20:post-228092021-11-20T01:55:53Z2021-11-20T01:55:53Z<p><img src="https://d.stockcharts.com/img/articles/2021/11/19/ef911b65-8d33-482a-ad4f-70065b6ce864.jpg" style="display: inline; margin: 0px 15px; float: left; width: 300px;">It's not often you get to say something is the biggest moment in a decade – the biggest change, the biggest update, the biggest overhaul. But here we are, introducing the most monumental evolution of our <a href="https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/stockcharts-com-chartpacks/products/tensile-trading-chartpack-by-gatis-roze" target="_blank">"Tensile Trading" ChartPack</a> since the launch of the original version. In fact, this update is so huge that we've even changed the name...</p><p><strong>My friends, it's a thrill to finally introduce the new-and-improved, totally redesigned </strong><a href="https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/stockcharts-com-chartpacks/products/tensile-trading-chartpack-by-gatis-roze" target="_blank"><strong>"Stock Market Mastery" ChartPack!</strong></a></p><p>To be honest, I'm not even sure it's fair to call this an update. This is a complete overhaul. It's a massive redesign from the ground up. We've gone through every chart, every list, every little corner of the ChartPack to restructure, re-organize, and rebuild a dramatically enhanced version of this supremely popular tool. <strong>As a result, we've created the latest and greatest StockCharts account enhancer out there.</strong></p><h2>How We Got Here</h2><p>Now, it's no secret that Gatis and I are active traders and investors. We're true market geeks who have devoted our lives to technical analysis and the financial markets. As all good traders and investors do, both of us have continued to learn, grow and evolve as technicians over the past 10 years since the first iteration of the ChartPack came out. Throughout the years, the ChartPack has followed along, growing and evolving over time as our processes and routines have shifted. And thanks to the thousands of ChartPack users out there in our StockCharts community, some good ol' fashioned feedback from the people has also helped the ChartPack move forward each quarter.</p><p>That said, it's been a long time since Gatis and I have stepped back and really asked ourselves, <em>"Is the ChartPack everything that it could truly be? Does is fully reflect our approach to the current markets? Are there elements from our process, our routines, our strategies and our unique ChartList organization that haven't been incorporated into the ChartPack?"</em></p><p>So a few months back, Gatis and I sat down to answer those exact questions. We decided to launch into a wholesale redesign. We've spent countless hours pouring over every little detail in the ChartPack, carefully reviewing, updating, changing, modifying and expanding along the way. We've taken that decade worth of process evolution and blended our StockCharts accounts together to create a new-and-improved ChartPack design that more completely and accurately reflects our shared approach to trading and investing. After all, the ChartPack is our way of sharing our very own charts, lists, styles and routines with all of you!</p><h2>Two Valuable Ways To Utilize The ChartPack</h2><p>The way I see it, there are two very real ways to use the <a href="https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/stockcharts-com-chartpacks/products/tensile-trading-chartpack-by-gatis-roze" target="_blank">"Stock Market Mastery" ChartPack</a>. The first is to take it for exactly what it is, as delivered and as installed. If you've read our book, <a href="https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/top-ten-best-sellers/products/tensile-trading-1" target="_blank">"Tensile Trading"</a>, you've bought into the 10-stage investing roadmap, and you want to use the very same charts and ChartLists that Gatis and I follow exactly as they come, well that is a totally real and totally valid use of the ChartPack. And the good news is, since it's a complete copy of our actual accounts - one that you can plop right over into your own StockCharts account with one click - you'll find it delightfully easy to install the ChartPack and start using these tools to follow the markets in exactly the same way that we do.</p><p>But there's a second totally valid way to use this ChartPack. You can embrace it as a source of data and inspiration. Use it as a source of symbols. Use it as a source of lists. Use it as a source of organized market analysis groups and pre-populated ChartLists that you can build from. If you're looking for a simple way to fill out your StockCharts account with a complete collection of every list you could ever want to have, well, our <a href="https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/stockcharts-com-chartpacks/products/tensile-trading-chartpack-by-gatis-roze" target="_blank"><strong>"Stock Market Mastery" ChartPack</strong></a> is the easiest, most exhaustive starting place you're going to find.</p><p>When you install the ChartPack, you'll instantly gain a vast collection of organized ChartLists pre-filled with charts, symbols and up-to-date market groups. For example, instead of manually building out lists for all of the major index components, install the <a href="https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/stockcharts-com-chartpacks/products/tensile-trading-chartpack-by-gatis-roze" target="_blank"><strong>"Stock Market Mastery" ChartPack</strong></a> and you'll get lists with all of the individual stocks in the S&P 100, S&P 500, S&P 400, S&P 600, NASDAQ 100, Dow Industrials, Dow Transports and Dow Utilities. From these lists, you can start to customize, modify and re-organize as you please.</p><p>In this way, the <a href="https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/stockcharts-com-chartpacks/products/tensile-trading-chartpack-by-gatis-roze" target="_blank"><strong>"Stock Market Mastery" ChartPack</strong></a> can be used as a starting place to build out a full-featured StockCharts account of your own. Bring in your own indicators, your own chart settings, your own names and symbols and ultimately create a collection of ChartLists that reflects your specific routines. All of that is possible, and all of that is made far easier without having to start from scratch and build everything yourself.</p><h2>Take A Tour Of All That's New</h2><p>So enough talk. Time to see the ChartPack in action! On today's edition of <a href=" https://youtu.be/dXOwZaqePnU" target="_blank">"StockCharts In Focus"</a>, we took a tour through all of the lists that are included in the totally new, totally revamped <a href="https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/stockcharts-com-chartpacks/products/tensile-trading-chartpack-by-gatis-roze" target="_blank"><strong>"Stock Market Mastery" ChartPack</strong></a>. You'll see exactly what comes with this extensive collection of carefully crafted, expertly designed ChartLists, and you'll hear more about how the ChartPack can help enhance and streamline your StockCharts experience.</p><div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"><iframe class="embed-responsive-item" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/dXOwZaqePnU" frameborder="0" width="640" height="360" allow="accelerometer;autoplay;encrypted-media;gyroscope;picture-in-picture;" allowfullscreen="true"></iframe></div><p><br></p><h2>More Special Content Coming Soon!</h2><p>One last note! Gatis and I will be sitting down with David Keller in early December to talk more about the latest version of the ChartPack and share our thoughts on why it's such a valuable resource for all StockCharts users. We'll be sure to keep you posted here in <em>The Traders Journal</em>, so stay tuned for that special presentation coming in just a few weeks!</p><p><br></p><hr style="width: 923px;"><h2>BONUS – The ChartPack Is ACP Ready</h2><p><img src="https://stockcharts.com/img/articles/2020/07/24/a716e92e-d3b8-479f-9320-856bfaa3125b.jpg" style="display: inline; float: left; margin: 0px 15px; width: 288px;">As you've surely heard, StockCharts has recently launched a new interactive, full-screen Advanced Charting Platform - <a href="https://stockcharts.com/features/acp/" target="_blank"><strong>StockChartsACP</strong></a><span target="_blank">. This powerful all-in-one charting and analysis package brings you true dynamic charting with the ability to scroll back and forth through time, drag indicators and overlays up, down and around your charts, manipulate the y-axis with your cursor and much more. In short, the future of Technical Analysis and the next generation of StockCharts technology.</span></p><p>Now, one important feature of the new platform is the ability to view ACP versions of your existing saved SharpCharts. You can open the ChartLists sidebar (on the right) and click the "SharpCharts" tab to see your current ChartLists. You can then click on each symbol in the list to see an ACP chart that will very closely match the saved SharpChart. The ChartLists drawer at the bottom of the screen also allows you to access your existing SharpCharts ChartLists, including all those in the ChartPack. These features provide a great way to explore the new world of ACP, or quickly get set up with some of your favorite indicators and other chart settings.</p><p><strong>What this means for all you ChartPack users is that you can easily explore the ChartPack in ACP, right out of the box.</strong> When you install the latest version of our ChartPack, all of the ChartLists and associated SharpCharts will be installed into your StockCharts account. You'll then be able to head over to ACP and browse through dynamic versions of all the charts included in the ChartPack. </p><p><br></p><hr style="width: 923px;"><h3>Already have the ChartPack? <u>Here's how to upgrade:</u></h3><ol><li>Log in to your account, then visit the "<a href="https://stockcharts.com/h-mem/chartpacks.html" target="_blank">Manage ChartPacks</a><span target="_blank">" page </span><em target="_blank">(accessible from the bottom of the Members Dashboard or from the "</em><a href="https://stockcharts.com/youracct" target="_blank"><em>Your Account</em></a><em target="_blank">" page)</em><span target="_blank">.</span></li><li>In the table that appears, find the entry for the <strong>"Stock Market Mastery ChartPack"</strong> <em>(if you don't see the Stock Market Mastery ChartPack listed, that means that you haven't purchased it. </em><a href="https://store.stockcharts.com/collections/stockcharts-com-chartpacks/products/tensile-trading-chartpack-by-gatis-roze" target="_blank"><strong><em>Click Here</em></strong></a><em target="_blank"> to do so now)</em><span target="_blank">.</span></li><li>Click the "Re-Install" button next to the Stock Market Mastery ChartPack to start the update process</li></ol><p>The download should take about 10 seconds, after which you can explore the new ChartLists and other updates!</p><h3>New to the ChartPack? <u>Here's how to install it:</u></h3><p>If you'd like to add the <strong>Stock Market Mastery ChartPack</strong> to your StockCharts account, <a href="http://store.stockcharts.com/products/tensile-trading-chartpack-by-gatis-roze" target="_blank"><strong>Click Here</strong></a><span target="_blank">.</span></p><hr style="width: 923px;"><p> </p><p><em>Chart on, my friends. </em></p><h2><strong>Grayson Roze</strong></h2><p>VP of Operations, <a href="https://stockcharts.com/" target="_blank">StockCharts.com</a> </p><p>Author, <a href="https://store.stockcharts.com/products/trading-for-dummies-4th-edition" target="_blank">Trading For Dummies</a><span target="_blank"> (Wiley, 2017) </span></p><p>Author, <a href="https://store.stockcharts.com/products/tensile-trading-1" target="_blank">Tensile Trading: The 10 Essential Stages of Stock Market Mastery</a><span target="_blank"> (Wiley, 2016) </span></p><p>Co-Founder, <a href="https://stockmarketmastery.com/" target="_blank">StockMarketMastery.com</a> </p><p>Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/graysonroze" target="_blank">@GraysonRoze</a> </p>It's not often you get to say something is the biggest moment in a decade – the biggest change, the biggest update, the biggest overhaul. But here we are, introducing the most monumental evolution of our "Tensile Trading" ChartPack since the launch of the original version. In fact, this update is so huge that we've even changed the name...My friends, it's a thrill to finally introduce the new-and-improved, totally redesigned "Stock Market Mastery" ChartPack!To be honest, I'm not even sure it's fair to call this an update. This is a complete overhaul. It's a massive redesign from the ground...