Intro Post

I decided to start this blog as a way to combine my passion for stocks and my interest in writing. I want to document my progress as I aspire to develop as a trader, while also sharing stocks that I believe have to potential to deliver strong returns. My ventures in the market over the past few years have had their ups and downs, but through it all the overarching message I've learned is the following: The first step to making progress in the market is cut losses quickly. So many other traders have expressed that same philosophy that the idea is bordering on cliche, but nonetheless I can't help but emphasize it as my number one rule. I've learned first-hand the dangers of letting losses go unchecked, and the psychological trap of hoping a position gets back to break-even usually ends up devastating an account. A disciplined loss-cutting strategy is essential to survival, but alone it's obviously insufficient. On the offensive side, sound stock selection defines superior returns from average results. My intentions aren't to find stocks that are undervalued or overlooked; cheap stocks tend to get cheaper. In strong markets, I want a portfolio full of institutional-quality growth stocks. These are the innovative companies with explosive earnings and sales growth that mutual funds and hedge funds can't get enough of. They support them on pullbacks and propel them to new highs, and evidence of their actions shows up charts. As charts provide a visual display of investors' emotions, the same price patterns have repeated themselves since the market's inception. My goal is not to try and pick a stock's bottom, but rather to buy when it has the greatest probability of continuing higher. To put it concisely, my strategy revolves around buying fundamentally-sound stocks with high EPS growth and high ROE as they breakout to new highs. I look for familiar chart patterns on both daily and weekly time frames, and I typically hold positions for months (unless of course I get stopped out). In this blog, I'll try and identify stocks that meet my defined criteria and share them by posting charts. I'm definitely a chart addict, as I know many others are on Twitter and Stocktwits. Here's to hoping to uncover some of the market's big winners -- feel free to leave comments or give me feedback (@CommAveTrader on Twitter).