I promise this isn’t a “Go-Have-a-Baby” post that talks about how the greatest thing a human can do is procreate.

I’ve recently come to somewhat believe that. But I won’t be that guy here.

My friend Michael Nauss (@michaelnaussCMT on Twitter) just welcomed his first child into the world – a beautiful baby boy – and I couldn’t be happier for him.

And it got me thinking about all the ways my perspectives on things have changed since becoming a father myself nearly 8 years ago.

The biggest change for me is that I’m only now beginning to fully appreciate the hard work and sacrifice my mother had to go through to raise me and my two younger siblings.

My father left our house and the divorce process began when I was about 7 years old. At that time, my mom was a stay-at-home mom with no source of income. And my dad, while well-intentioned, was pretty much a deadbeat when it came to finances. So she was basically left to fend for herself with no money and no family around to help out. [Read more…]

Volatility is not done with us yet. It ain’t going down without a fight! At the time I’m writing this, $VIX is +15% on the day and +31% since Monday’s close.

This has me back on the hunt for some premium selling opportunities.

And an ETF on our radar that checks the boxes of elevated premium, potential rangebound trading action, and a good fade opportunity is the $XLI Industrials ETF.

Check out this chart of $XLI: [Read more…]

Where do you find your trading headspace?

How do you get to a place where you can immerse yourself in “the Zone” to think deeply about trades, strategies, strategizing, or new ways to approach risk management?

For me, far and away the best way to enter this zone is to go for a long walk – preferably in the mountains or in a forest. Just me, maybe my dog, and the sound of the wind whispering in the trees.

On Wednesday night, I returned from four days in the Redwoods National & State Parks of Northern California. Me and a friend hiked nearly 35 miles total.

I cannot begin to describe how amazingly beautiful this corner of the world is. It was my first time there. I took some pictures and videos, but it does not do it justice. You just cannot feel it the way you do when you’re standing amongst those towering Redwood trees and the deafening silence of the endless foggy forest washes over you. [Read more…]

JC had a great blog post out this week about zooming out. In a nutshell, he was reminding us that zooming out and looking at price action from a wider lens often makes the present murky waters look suddenly clear. It’s easy to get distracted by the day-to-day price action and to look at only the last few months of daily charts and conclude that a stock or an index is in one sloppy clusterjam of price action.

But when you look at that same price action, instead with weekly or monthly candles, the more recent ones will often look like insignificant noise in an otherwise smoothly trending longer term pattern.

In the post referenced above, JC shared several current examples of instruments that look sloppy recently, but the bigger picture is still sitting pretty.

One of the stocks he mentioned is currently giving us a nice pullback to get a nice entry on. [Read more…]