Counter-trend trades are lower probability by nature, which means risk management is vital both when they work and when they don't. Taking the loss and reevaluating when the trade thesis is invalidated is something most traders think about, but managing risk on a trade that begins to work right away is just as important and not discussed as often.

Today I want to look at the importance of managing positions that begin working right away, so that we can avoid winning trades turning into losers.

The last two months have not been kind to India's stock market, which is why we've been approaching it from a more neutral perspective for most of that time. Although big selloffs are never fun, the progression of this trend from its start to now has been pretty orderly.

We want to use this post to lay out that progression for educational purposes, as well as update our views on the market now.

This past weekend I was down in San Diego for the annual Trade Ideas Summit. I gave a presentation earlier in the day, which you can watch here, and then sat on panel later in the afternoon with some really smart guys. So I thought it would add value to share this conversation with everyone.

My good friend Sean McLaughlin, who is also the Chief Options Strategist at Allstarcharts.com moderated the panel, which included Brian Shannon and Dr. Brett Steenbarger. This conversation revolves a lot around process. Dr. Brett gave us a ton of insight as to what we can do psychologically to help us...

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

This past weekend we wrote updates for our US and India subscribers, discussing stock market breadth around the globe. When I do these types of updates, we often get asked why we look at international markets both in their local currency terms AND as US-listed ETFs. Why not one or the other? In this quick post we'll walk through our thought process behind it.

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

Cryptocurrencies have enjoyed a nice few days after a long rout, meaning my timeline is now filled with Bitcoin charts and the like. To be honest I've been so busy with charts for Allstarcharts India that I hadn't checked my crypto charts in a while. Well, I'm glad I did because the chart of Ethereum is a textbook example of a core Technical Analysis concept, polarity.

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

This past Wednesday, the founder of Sierra Alpha Research, David Keller, CMT presented to the New York Chapter meeting of the CMT Association on the topic of timeframes. He spoke about how he defines and uses three frequently referenced timeframes: short, medium, and long-term, as well as the common pitfalls he's seen people fall into over the course of his nearly 20 years as a Technical Analysis practitioner.

This past week I came across a potential trade setup in an Indian micro-cap stock that really got me thinking about the question, "Who am I as a market participant?". With all the noise created on a daily basis, it's easy to lose sight of your answer to this simple question, but doing so inhibits your ability to make any decision about markets responsibly.

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

In early April I tweeted about AMD's potential breakdown from its 15-month bull-flag and its potential implications for the stock. In hindsight I'm glad I did because it's great to have this real-time example of my mindset, and the mindset of others in the marketplace, as the pattern played out. It was also a great opportunity to get constructive feedback in the comments section from many of the bulls at the time. Now that I've used my one joke per post allowance, let's move onto how the stock has performed since.

Everyone always wants to talk about how high the stock they just bought is going, or how much money they're going to make on a new position. "JC I think Apple goes to a Trillion Dollar Market Cap!" or "JC Bitcoin is going to $100,000!". These are things I hear frequently, or at least some sort of variation of these comments.

This is perfectly normal behavior. We should not be afraid of it. But more importantly, I think we need to be aware of the implications of these feelings. The thing is, once we are already in a position, our emotions get involved. When our stress levels rise, we act emotionally, rather than logically. This is how we're hard-wired. It would be abnormal for us not to think this way. But again, the important thing is to be conscious of it and not let it dictate our actions.

I thought this would be a good time to share some of my thoughts on position sizing. I've noticed this week many people who never mentioned a futures contract are now opining on the futures market at all hours of the night. I know what that feels like. I've been there. 2008 was an amazing experience for me. It's not the lifestyle that I want to live. Sleeping at night is healthy. If my positions are too big, I'm not sleeping.

To me, the key to avoiding bad decisions is to keep stress and emotional levels low. It's hard to do that when there is too much money involved for you to handle responsibly. So we want to identify how much is too much. It's not an easy answer and most likely something you'll learn over time. When you get that feeling like you've just been punched in the stomach, you're probably too big. You'll know it when you feel it. Most of us have been there, multiple times. 

All-time highs across the board in Small-caps these days. Some are in shock. I personally just don't understand why stocks that are in uptrends going up is anything outside of perfectly normal? I would argue that any other result is what we should consider unusual. If the market teaches us one thing is that trends are much more likely to continue than to completely reverse.

In September I put out a post about small-caps breaking out of year long bases. If you recall, at the time, the sentiment around the market was about how high stocks were and how they could not go much further. My argument at that point was the exact opposite. Small-cap stocks had done nothing for an entire year. To suggest the stock market was too stretched was irresponsible, in my opinion. Not only did we want to be long stocks, we wanted to be "very aggressively long" equities.

Pretty much every day for the past 15 years I've been asked the same question: What should I invest in? The way I get asked is always changing, of course. It's been, "How many houses should I buy in Miami since real estate only goes up?" to, "Which marijuana penny stock should I buy?" to, "Which crypto do I buy" (not if. which one?). The "sexy assets" of each era are all different, but the idea is the same. Because of my interest in markets, this question is constantly fired my way.

The answer I give isn't always well received, but it comes from the bottom of my heart. If you want to invest, where better to do that than in yourself? Go buy a book and spend the time to read it. Go reach out to someone you look up to and buy them a drink, or coffee or lunch and learn from them. Go travel to a far away land and meet with the locals. All of these "investments" are probably going to go a lot further than the litecoin you just bought because your nephew told you it's a good idea and you saw someone talking about it on the tv.

I am really lucky that I learned this very early on and it has helped me exponentially more than I could...