12/7/2025 - Here is a very important concept: Any success you experience as a trader will be a leveraging of success you've already experienced in some other area of life. Success is a function of what you love (your passions) and what you're good at (your talents). The strengths that have made you successful in the past are what you have to draw upon to find success in markets.Now you understand why it is so damaging to look for gurus to follow for your market success. There are many would-be gurus out there and they're in the social media business of gathering followers. But following them almost certainly takes you away from yourself. A true mentor or coach would get to know you and what has made you successful and then help you leverage that to find success in markets. There's a saying, "If you find the Buddha on the road, kill him". The real Buddha is something that can only be found within you. Anyone claiming to be your source of enlightenment is by definition false.What are *your* strengths; *your* sources of meaning, passion, and success? How can you succeed in trading by being more of who you already are when you're at your best? These are a few of the topics we'll explore in Wednesday's webinar. Details for signing up are in bold text below. Thanks for your interest!======================12/7/2025 - I've participated in recruitment/hiring at several large hedge funds and with quite a few hedge fund teams. The number one predictor of a good hire (and an eventual successful trader) is my reaction to their description of their trading processes. If I am surprised by the uniqueness of what I'm hearing and am struck by the innovation of what I'm hearing, that is a great predictor of success. Great traders do things greatly, and that means going beyond the herd. But I'm not sure we can do things greatly if we don't understand the strengths that make up our potential greatness. What makes us different, special, unique, and successful? Can we truly build something great if we spend all of our time fretting about shortcomings and problems?In the upcoming Zoom webinar on Wednesday at 4:15 PM (see below), we'll discuss strengths and I'll share a questionnaire that helps us identify the sources of our greatness. If our trading is not a reflection of what we do distinctively, we'll never achieve distinctive trading results. Hope to see you on Wednesday!===================12/5/2025 - What makes us stand out--and what makes us outstanding--are the strengths we bring to our relationships, our work, and our personal pursuits. Research in positive psychology tells us that utilizing our strengths is what makes us flourish, providing us with energy, enthusiasm, and fulfillment. Unfortunately, many times we're so caught up in our challenges and problems that we lose sight of where our strengths actually lie. Too, we might know what provides us with joy, meaning, and purpose, but we can't figure out how to tap into those things in our trading.On Wednesday (December 10th) at 4:15 PM ET (after the NYSE close), I will conduct a Zoom webinar on the topic of strengths. I'll share an online questionnaire from research I've conducted at hedge funds and will help you score it and interpret and apply the results--to life and to trading.The webinar is free and I won't be trying to sell you any coaching services. Email me at steenbab at aol dot com and I'll send the Zoom link; registration will be limited.Let's go!====================12/4/2025 - So here's what I'm investigating in my recent research: We can identify market breadth by tracking the number of stocks in an index that are trading above various moving averages: 5 day, 10 day, 20 day, etc. We can also identify breadth within sectors by tracking the number of stocks in that sector trading above various moving averages. All good: we can see if the market is stretched and if individual sectors within the market are stretched. That allows us to backtest how the market and sectors have behaved in those stretched conditions.Here's the new part: What do we learn from the variability of sector breadth? In other words, what does it tell us when sectors have very similar breadth and when their breadth is quite different at a given point in time? Might that variability be one way of quantifying rotational environments (sectors with highly variable breadth) versus trending ones (sectors with very similar breadth)? Might the trending/rotational environment be an important variable in forecasting future price movement?I have more research to do, and it's looking like differentiating rotational environments will be promising: how the market is rotating may be just as important as the fact that it is rotating. The point here is that when we investigate new things and look at markets in new ways, we rejuvenate our trading.When we team up with others who explore unique ways of looking at markets, we keep each other energized and engaged--and that is the best environment of all for our trading psychology. ====================== 12/3/2025 - Successful traders ask unique questions, and that helps them generate new edges in their trading. When I left the recent team meeting, I found myself pondering the cyclical up-and-down behavior of market indexes and wondering if shifting variability in the action of various index components is a marker for cyclical shifts. For example, do we see more dispersion of price behavior in the components of the NYSE as we move from bull trends to topping behaviors to reversals to bottoming action? Of course, this leads to all sorts of experimentation with measuring dispersion. Do we do that by tracking the individual stocks? The sectors and subsectors within the index? How much dispersion and lack of dispersion is significant in signaling trend shifts?I've already spent hours on the research and will spend a good amount of weekend time on it as well. What is significant with respect to trading psychology is that asking fresh questions has recharged my interest in trading. I find myself excited each day to see how dispersion and market behavior unfold in real time. The excitement comes, not from P/L and certainly not from doing little psychological and stress management exercises, but from innovation and the joy of participating in a process of discovery.When I read the journals of traders, I find some of them constructive and informative. Rarely do I find them inspiring. Rarely do I find traders truly excited about building and doing new things. It's not the presence of stress and uncertainty that destroys traders; it's the absence of the joy of discovery and innovation.====================== 12/2/2025 - What goes into your trading that stands out? That is truly insightful and unique? What do you do in markets that is special? Too often, traders look for easy answers by following "gurus" and end up doing nothing distinctive themselves. Is this a formula for success in any area of life? If you aren't doing something special in your trading, why would you achieve special results? Innovation, creativity, the ability to perceive unique opportunity: those make for success in any entrepreneurial effort. When we see and do unique and special things, our experience is exciting, meaningful, and purposeful. Our efforts give us energy. We can work on our psychology all we want, but if we're not innovating and inspiring ourselves by finding new and better opportunities, then all we'll accomplish is being more relaxed and level-headed in our mediocrity.Those who achieve outstanding results do so by standing out, even in the smallest details of their work. I recently met with a group of successful traders and listened to what they think about and how they think. I went away with my head spinning, fresh with new ideas to research and pursue. The best mentors stimulate us to ask questions we've never asked before. More to come...