Swing/Trend Trader with 40+ years of experience who likes to share trading ideas and hard learned words of wisdom. Tweets opinions only.

Oakville, Ontario
Joined December 2008
The edge is simple. Executing it consistently is not. After more than 50 years in the markets, I've learned that successful trading isn't about finding secret indicators or predicting every market move. It requires: • a proven edge • disciplined execution • sound risk management • emotional resilience The market teaches these lessons eventually. The Trader's Journey was written to help traders learn them sooner.
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You can't build confidence by avoiding every situation that makes you uncomfortable. Take calculated risks. Execute your plan. Accept the outcome. Over time, you build a track record of what you're capable of.
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One of the biggest changes in my trading came when I stopped asking: "Do I think this trade will work?" And started asking: "Does this trade meet my criteria?"
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The space between realizing you might be wrong and accepting that you're wrong matters. That's where ego enters the trade. You don't need to prove your analysis was right. You need to protect your capital when it wasn't.
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Fear wants certainty. Greed wants more. Ego wants to be right. Your trading plan doesn't care about any of them. Follow the plan.
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The space between emotion and action is where much of trading psychology lives. You can't always control the first reaction. You can learn to control what happens next.
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The market will test more than your strategy. It will test your patience. Your ego. Your tolerance for uncertainty. Your ability to do nothing. That's why trading is as much about understanding yourself as understanding markets.
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Dwight @SetYourStop I am looking forward to it. Your work is fantastic. Anyone interested in joining can sign up with CATA link. See you there.
Join me TONIGHT, 8–10 PM ET, with the Canadian Association for Technical Analysis! 📡 @prrobbins I’ll share how our proprietary momentum scanner at SetYourStop helps identify developing momentum and asymmetrical setups. 📝 Hope to see you there! 👇 canadianata.ca/content.aspx?…
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The space between a big winner and your next trade matters. Success creates its own emotional risks. Overconfidence. Bigger size. Lower standards. Don't let one great trade convince you the next one can't lose.
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Confidence isn't believing your next trade will work. It's knowing you'll be okay if it doesn't. That's a very different kind of confidence.
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To my fellow Canadiens
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Trading doesn't reward certainty. It rewards preparation. The goal isn't to eliminate uncertainty. It's to make good decisions in the presence of it.
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What's harder for you?
27%Taking the loss
31%Sitting through a winner
22%Waiting for the setup
19%Stopping after bad trade
230 votes • Final results
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Thank you Julian @BlogJulianKomar for sharing this honest account of trading for the community.
2026 has been a frustrating year for me as a trader. And after more than 20 years in the markets, I can tell you that dealing with frustration is still one of the hardest parts of trading. You spend hours studying charts, researching companies, building watchlists, reviewing trades, and preparing for the next opportunity. You put in the work. Every single day. But then you look at your equity curve. Sideways. Or even worse, down. You get stopped out again and again. Breakouts fail. Stocks look promising one day and fall apart the next. And what makes it even more frustrating is that there are still a few stocks making huge moves. You see them. You know they're out there. But somehow, you're not catching them. That's frustrating! And I would be lying if I said that it doesn't affect me. Of course, I start asking myself questions. Am I doing something wrong? Should I change something in my strategy? Why am I putting in so much effort without seeing better results? The real danger starts when frustration begins to influence your decisions. You want to make back your losses. You become less selective. You start taking trades you would normally reject. And after getting stopped out several times, you suddenly hesitate when a genuinely good setup appears. I've experienced this before, and I know how destructive that cycle can become. So how do I deal with it? For me, the most important thing is to rebuild confidence through evidence. I go back to my trading journal and review my decisions. I want to know whether I'm making mistakes or whether the market environment simply isn't rewarding my strategy. I study my successful trades. I look at historical big winners and remind myself what exceptional opportunities actually look like. I spend time researching and testing my trading edge. Not because I want to reinvent my strategy after every losing streak, but because I want to understand what works, what doesn't, and where I can improve. I also look at my long-term equity curve. It's easy to lose perspective when you focus only on the last few weeks or months. And there's one distinction I've learned to make: Feeling frustrated doesn't automatically mean my trading strategy is broken. If my statistics show that my edge is deteriorating, I need to investigate and make adjustments. But if I'm following my process and the market simply isn't offering the kind of opportunities my strategy needs, I have to accept that too. That doesn't make the frustration disappear. But it helps me avoid making emotional decisions that could turn a difficult period into a disastrous one. One of my biggest lessons from more than two decades of trading is that good opportunities eventually return. I don't know exactly when. And I certainly don't want to waste my capital trying to force profits out of a market that isn't cooperating. My job during these frustrating periods is to protect my capital, keep improving, and maintain enough confidence to act decisively when the right opportunities finally appear. Because the last thing I want is to survive a difficult market, only to be mentally exhausted and unable to take advantage of the next great opportunity.
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You don't need to trade every day to be a trader. You need to be prepared every day and disciplined enough to recognize when there is nothing to do.
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Most trading mistakes don't begin with a bad setup. They begin with: "I'll make an exception this time."
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The space between feeling fear and moving your stop matters. Fear wants relief. Your trading plan wants discipline. Which one is making your decision?
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Thank you so much, George @MisterSpread, for these recommendations. I’m always excited to see my book included on someone’s list. Really appreciate it!
Books I recommend for trading & technical analysis I've received this question quite often, so here is my must-read list for people who start their trading journey or even for more experienced traders who want to add more knowledge to their arsenal: I would start with: • New Trader, Rich Trader by @SJosephBurns and • Trader' s Journey by @prrobbins Continue with: • Technical Analysis of Stock Trends by Robert D. Edwards and John Magee • Technical Analysis and Stock Market Profits by Richard W. Schabacker And finish of with: • Trading in the Zone by Mark Douglas There are many other great books out there, but reading these should build a strong foundation upon which you can add the other layers after. 🫡
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I always enjoy David’s @DavidCoxRJ quarterly newsletter, so I was thrilled to see my book featured in the October issue’s Book Corner. Grateful for the thoughtful recommendation! And don’t just skip to the Book Corner. The whole issue is well worth reading.
Replying to @DavidCoxRJ
the full 13-page issue is on our website: financiallyinsync.com/we-com…
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Congratulations on the breakthrough.
Human psychology and behavior, success and failure, get learned over time. I learned a lot of it inside the markets and outside them. I could see the pattern and still run it. Gambling. The profitless years. A story that felt reasonable every time. Knowing was not the same as stopping. I took a leap of faith and changed. Looking back, I ask what I was doing and how it got that far. I am glad I got away from that old self. I do not want to know how dreary it would have stayed.
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I guess that means you don’t read books anymore?
How we learn is shifting fast. Mediums taking over reading. AI Chatbots: Instant, tailored. Video:High-density visual learning . Audio & Podcast. Micro-Essays & Threads: on Substack/X. Move is clear: from passive, slow reading to fast, interactive, and multimodal learning $spy
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