Fly Fishing the Stock Market: How to Search for, Catch, and Net the Market's Best Trades

CHAPTER 12

The Trophy Room

As a little boy, I remember going to the sports store and gazing at the trophy trout on the wall. The fish were all different: fat, long, rainbow, cutthroat, brook, and brown. I remember asking Chet, the old guy behind the counter, about a few that he had caught. Thirty minutes later, I had heard all the details of the stalk, strike, fight, and landing of these monster trout. To this day, I am impressed with how those details were seemingly etched into his memory.

Our successful trades should be no different. They should be written up with charts and vivid details about that particular stock, the general market condition, our analysis, and so on. This way they are preserved and remembered in the form of trophies—the monetary value of which resides in our trading account value. Psychologically, the intangible benefits of remembering these successful trade decisions are numerous. It reinforces positive analysis and trading practices, builds confidence, and helps propel our progress. Whether your trophies are in digital format or hanging on the wall, I highly recommend a “trophy room” for your trading successes.

In SpikeTrade, the weekly winning trade among all the Spikers is written up in such a fashion and is posted on the website under the title “How I Won My Gold.” The following trade illustrations represent a few of those winners for me that were posted in this particular trophy room. Each of them presents, more or less, the trade analysis, trade management, ...