When I was a financial reporter, I struggled like everyone else to learn how to trade better.
But I had a real breakthrough when my bosses sent me to cover a convention of pro traders who meet every winter in Florida.
Chatting with a group of them off camera, I asked one: What’s the advantage of trading the same thing — one particular stock, an index, a commodity contract — day after day?
Isn’t it better to spread out your bets instead?
I’ll never forget what he said:
“It’s like a fingerprint. Line up a bunch of them on a sheet — they all might look the same at a glance.”
“But stare at just one under a microscope, and you see how different they really are.”
“That’s my advantage,” he said. “I know what I trade — really, really well.”
That conversation stuck with me.
It made me a better investor and speculator.
I stopped trying to chase after every hot stock. Instead of trying to make dozens of correct buying and selling decisions, I only needed to be right on a few.
So I was pleased when I learned from my colleague Mike Carr that he was developing a service based on the same idea. It just launched today.
Mike calls it his One Trade strategy. You should check it out.
Put the Odds in Your Favor With This Strategy
Instead of figuring out which of 10,000 U.S.-listed stocks to profit from, there’s just one.
Mike trades the same exact ticker symbol every week, uncovering the associated options to deliver the highest-probability gains.
The idea is, it doesn’t matter whether the market is headed up or down. By trading just that one symbol’s options, his readers are in a position to potentially benefit in either direction.
Is it going to work every single time? No. Nothing does in the markets.
But that’s the whole point of trading something on a systematic, week-by-week basis.
It’s about trying to put the odds in our favor by only focusing on just one position — and understanding the best odds for how it trades (as another trader told me long ago) … really, really well.
Best of Good Buys,
Editor, Total Wealth Insider
