Joe’s Rules

1- Try your best to stay away from the market for the first 15 minutes, I call that period the “wild wild west”, you will usually get a better price if you wait for the dust to settle, that goes for longs and shorts. My experience tells me that you will get a better entry if you are patient, strong stocks usually pull back to a more buyable level,same with short ideas. If we miss an idea that’s OK there are 3000 tradeable stocks and we will find another one.

2- I will usually give advice on exiting a recommendation either on Twitter and/or a blog post. I won’t always give an exit because I don’t want to limit your upside, you should know what kind of profit satisfies you.I usually always recommend though, the sale of 1/3 to 1/2 of your position when a stock breaks out from my trigger price. Example, if a recommend to buy a stock at $40 and it breaks out and trades to $41-42 take 1/3 to a half positon off the table. We are trying to capture short term gains here, I don’t buy and hold. Some stocks will move higher after the partial sale, that’s OK you will still have a half or two third position remaining.

3- After we take a partial gain I will usually raise our stops so we are protected.

4- We NEVERr average down on a stock and we NEVER chase a stock

5-If a stock triggers, and moves higher but you missed it, it’s OK to buy/short on pullback to the trigger price but I prefer you don’t, part of our advantage is catch the “actual” breakout.

6- We will have periods where we have a good run and then things can get a little cooler, when the market is in a strong uptrend we will be mostly long with some short exposure, when the market is in a downtrend we will probably be mostly short with reduced long exposure. That’s why it is so important to honor stops.

7- Be diversified, meaning have exposure to all the names on the list as a percentage of your portfolio. You may pick the one that fails.

8- We will trade opportunistically, we are warriors not lambs.

9- I shun conventional wisdom and NEVER listen to the pundits, I think the financial media is dangerous to a traders health.

10-I never watch the financial media during trading hours, or ever for that matter.

11-Economists never traded and they are usually wrong.

12- Don’t EVER buy a “tip”, it’s like borrowing someones Chapstick, you don’t know where it started.

13- If you have a request for me to a review a chart, please e-mail me or make a request on StocktwitsTV on Tuesdays and Thursdays at noon. I trade like you during the day, so I won’t be able to respond during market hours.

14- JP Morgan said ” I will never buy at the bottom or short at the top, but I will make my money in that 60% area” I feel the same way.

15-The market is the one place where following trends and not making them is cool.

16- Join Disqus on bottom of any blog post, it’s a great way to interact with other traders on the site, it’s also the best way to reach me as comments to Disqus get forwarded to my e-mail.