Mark Hates Apple and He Took the Buy Signal Anyway
- Olivia Voz
Mark hates trading Apple.
If you’ve ever heard him talk about it, you know I’m not exaggerating.
So today I’m on with him going through charts, and he says, out loud, that he’s getting a signal to buy Apple.
And I’m like, you? Apple? And he’s like, I know, I know, but it’s there. And he didn’t argue with it.
He didn’t talk himself out of it. The guy who’s been dunking on this company for years looked at the signal and took it seriously, because the signal didn’t care how he felt.
And watching him do it, I realized he was doing the one thing almost nobody in this business can do, and the people who can’t are the ones who eventually blow up.
It’s not a strategy, it’s not a setup, and you won’t find it on a chart. Once you see it, you’ll start catching yourself breaking it every single week.
Pros don’t let their opinion touch their signals.
Mark thinks Apple is boring and overpriced and whatever else, and he’s allowed to think that, and he’s probably right. None of it matters. When the money shows up, the money shows up, and the signal doesn’t know he hates the stock. So he takes it. Not because he changed his mind about Apple. Because his mind about Apple was never part of the system.
It’s the same reason the good ones don’t trade their politics.
You can hate who’s in the White House, you can hate the Fed, you can think the whole market is a casino run by crooks, and if your signal fires, you take the trade, and if it doesn’t, you don’t.
The second your feelings about a company or a president or a sector start deciding which signals you listen to, you’re not trading your system anymore. You’re trading your mood, and your mood is the worst trader you’ll ever meet.
Most people do this without knowing it.
They love a stock, so a weak setup looks strong enough. They hate a stock, so a real setup looks like a trap. They’ve got an opinion about where the market should go, so they only see the signals that agree. And every one of those is the same mistake: letting what you think get in between you and what you see.
For what it’s worth, I didn’t take Apple today.
Not because I disagreed with Mark, but because I pulled up the chart and didn’t have a read of my own, and I don’t trade somebody else’s read. That’s a different rule, and I’ll do a whole email on it another day. Today is about his.
This is the chart. Look at it without an opinion about the company and tell me what you see. That’s harder than it sounds, and it’s the whole job.
One more thing, and this comes from Mark.
When money starts showing up in Apple it’s usually because it’s leaving somewhere riskier, big and boring and safe, and with the way the chips got smoked today, that’s a tell I’m watching into next week.
Him and I are lining up something special for you next week.
Rock On,
Voz
