212: Trading Triumphs - Brent Penfold's Journey to Success

Welcome to the first podcast episode for 2018, happy new year! I hope that you had a great Christmas or holiday season and all the best for 2018. In this podcast episode we’re talking about the impacts that large institutions can have on the markets, especially on stocks, and how certain institutional behaviours can indicate potentially big moves in prices. Our special guest is Jason Bodner from Macro Analytics for Professionals (MAP). His previous experience working some big institutional orders has given him some valuable insights that I’m sure we can all find useful, so in our discussion today you’ll hear: How institutional activity can indicate potentially big moves and the signals to look out for, How the techniques of scouting out players on a sports team can apply to stock selection too, 3 basic factors that can quickly identify when institutions are working a big trade, plus loads of other signals to watch for as well, How mixing technical with fundamental factors can give you a more complete picture than just technical or fundamentals alone, Plus much more.   Disclaimer: Trading in the financial markets involves a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. All content produced by Better System Trader is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute trading or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

7 Jan 201846min

Well here we are, another year gone (and so fast too!). I’m glad you could join me for this final episode for 2017, where we’ll be reviewing all of the special guests we had on the show this year, the topics and insights they've shared plus their top trading lessons. I think this is a great way to look back, to be reminded of some of the key points, and all of the amazing knowledge our guests have shared with us this year. Also, thanks for all of the emails of support and appreciation throughout the year, I’m glad that what we’re doing here has been so helpful! I hope you have a great Christmas and holiday season and all the best for 2018... It’s going to be a massive year! Happy trading, Andrew   Disclaimer: Trading in the financial markets involves a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. All content produced by Better System Trader is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute trading or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

24 Dec 201734min

Our guest for this podcast episode, Dimitri Speck, first became interested in the markets as a child when he found gold while diving at the beach. And even though trading isn't usually as easy as just picking up gold off the ground, Dimitri has spent years diving deep into the markets and uncovering hidden and consistent anomalies that traders and investors of all styles can profit from. In this episode he's going to share some of these powerful insights with us, including: How understanding Intraday behaviours can help you to get better prices and additional edge on trade execution, The 4 specific hours of the day that would have given you most of the last 10 years of S&P returns (hint: it's probably not what you think), The 1 market event that has produced almost the entire S&P performance over the past 20 years in just 6% of the days, The challenges of accurately measuring these anomalies which could give you misleading results, The 3 simple techniques traders of all styles can use to apply these behaviours to their own trading, Plus much more.   Disclaimer: Trading in the financial markets involves a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. All content produced by Better System Trader is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute trading or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

10 Dec 201735min

A few weeks ago we organised a family holiday for December. We booked a luxury villa in Port Douglas and we’re all really excited to get there and start enjoying the holiday. Last year the Huffington Post published an article about vacations, and shared a study in a journal claiming that just planning or anticipating your trip can make you happier than actually taking it. I’m not sure if anticipating a holiday is more fun than actually taking it (I guess that depends on whether you have to take your kids or not...), but there is definitely value in anticipation, which ties in quite nicely with this podcast episode. Our guest today is John Carter, and John is going to share with us the value of anticipation in trading, and how anticipating market action and the “pain points” of other market participants can give us an edge in trading. Some of the topics you'll hear are: How anticipating the actions and pain points of other market participants can give you an edge, A simple but powerful mental switch that can crush the fear of executing trades, The subtle clues the TICK and volume data give to indicate if a trend or range bound day could be more likely, How to identify potential false breakouts and how ‘stop runs’ can actually improve your trading results.   Disclaimer: Trading in the financial markets involves a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. All content produced by Better System Trader is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute trading or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

26 Nov 201733min

I can’t believe it’s only 4 weeks until Christmas! We’ve got the Christmas ads running on the TV here already... The local grocery store has the Christmas decorations up... And they’re even playing Christmas carols - can you believe that? At home my 5-year-old daughter is already priming me for what she wants from Santa this year, which by the way is pretty much everything on TV right now! 2017 has gone by really fast and we’re coming into a time of reflection and rest, time to take a break if you can, and so I wanted to take a few minutes in this weeks Trading Thought to talk about balance, both in trading and in life. Pretty early on in my trading journey I was absolutely consumed by trading. I lived and breathed it, it was all I could think about and all I wanted to do was quit my corporate job and trade for a living. By day I was working a full-time job in a bank, and at night I was staying up late to day trade the ES. I joined a trading room and my wicked plan was to get a few hours sleep after my day job so I could then trade the US session during the night, and then when the US markets closed I would have a brief rest before I went off to work for the day. Sounds crazy right? Well at the time I thought it was a great plan, but I’m sure we can all see how poor it really was. You can probably guess what happened too. It wasn’t sustainable. I was only able to do it for a short period of time before lack of sleep impacted not only my trading, which sucked by the way, but it also started impacting my day job and it also pissed off my girlfriend at the time because... I wanted to watch 1 minute bars more than watch a movie with her! So, at that time there was no balance in my life, and my trading, health, relationships and life really suffered. In this weeks Trading Thought, I want to share some thoughts from Linda Raschke on how Balance can make us better traders. Then after that I have a small announcement to share, so take a listen to some nuggets of wisdom from Linda first.   Disclaimer: Trading in the financial markets involves a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. All content produced by Better System Trader is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute trading or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

24 Nov 20178min

The Petronas towers in Malaysia are the tallest twin towers in the world at 452m (1483 ft) tall. Because of the ground underneath the building site, they had to put in some deep foundations, up to 114m (374 ft) deep. Without these deep foundations, the building would run into problems. In fact, during construction, at around the 72nd floor, they discovered that tower 2 was leaning 25 mm (0.98in) from vertical, so to correct that lean the next 16 floors were slanted back the other way. They even hired specialist surveyors to check the lean of the tower twice a day until the building was completed. Now obviously the foundations anchor the building and keep it from falling over, and even though they’re not visible, they’re probably the most important part of the construction. When you look at constructing a portfolio of strategies, there are a couple of key concepts, or foundations to consider as well, so that you have a solid portfolio, one that will hopefully weather all types of hostile conditions and produce higher returns with reduced drawdowns. In this weeks Trading Thought we’re going to hear from 2 guests, who will explain how they construct portfolios and some mistakes that traders sometimes make during portfolio construction, which you need to be aware of. Take a listen as we start with Gary Hart from Trendfinder Trading Systems explaining the benefits of a portfolio of strategies and we take it from there.   Disclaimer: Trading in the financial markets involves a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. All content produced by Better System Trader is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute trading or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

17 Nov 20178min

And we're back for the final episode in this 3-part series on building Mean Reversion strategies with Cesar Alvarez from Alvarez Quant Trading. In the 1st episode we discussed the goal of Mean Reversion trading, how to select a trading universe, a number of effective techniques to measuring Mean Reversion and how to combine indicators to identify better quality trades. In the 2nd episode we discussed market classification, trade ranking, exits, order types, position sizing, risk control and much more. In this 3rd and final episode, Cesar answers all your questions, covering a wide range of topics, including: Mean Reversion in markets outside of Stocks, Controlling risk during market sell-offs, gaps and being overweight in particular sectors, Performance of Large caps vs Small caps, Ranking Mean Reversion setups, Shorting strategies, Readjusting strategy parameters and measuring robustness, Balancing Mean Reversion in a portfolio of other trading styles, Tail risk, leverage, options, performance monitoring and so much more!   Disclaimer: Trading in the financial markets involves a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. All content produced by Better System Trader is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute trading or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

12 Nov 201744min

A few weeks ago I got the fright of my life. I found myself in a situation where I could potentially be crushed by a car, or perhaps even a bus or truck. Find out what happens and how it applies to tracking the performance degradation of trading strategies (before they kill your account).   Disclaimer: Trading in the financial markets involves a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. All content produced by Better System Trader is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute trading or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

10 Nov 201710min