Avoiding Stock Market Overload

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In this video, we’re going to be talking about how you can avoid stock market overload. I just figured why don’t we start this presentation and this video with none other than Mr. Jim Cramer which I think honestly, the guy is horrible at picking stocks.

But you got to admit; he’s great as far as keeping you engaged in the market. But it's guys like this and CNBC and Bloomberg and all of these different channels that you can watch where you can get overloaded with information that you’re taking in.

I feel like when people get started in this business, that you feel like you have to be watching all of these news networks and reading the journal and doing all of this stuff just to get all the edge in the market and it’s just not true.

I want to help you avoid stock market overload and walk through what you should be doing instead of calling into Jim Cramer.

Alright, today I want to show you what I look for quickly in the morning to make sure that I have some market understanding and it is really, really quick in the morning.

I don’t want to be going crazy in the morning. I’ve got a daughter, I’ve got a wife. I don’t want to spend hours combing through news articles and research reports to look at market information. It just doesn't work for my system.

The first thing that I’ll look for is any specific news related to a stock that I maybe trading and more importantly, it’s going to only be with stocks that are an undefined risk or naked trades. If I’m trading a credit spread or an iron condor, I don't care what's happening because my risk is defined.

I know how much money I could lose; I know how much money I could make. But if I’m doing something that's more undefined risk in nature, then I might want to quickly check and see if anything is going on with the company that I’m dealing with.

In this case, we just threw in there Goldman Sachs. If you’re trading Goldman Sachs and you brought up the news in Goldman Sachs, you would see that they have earnings, or there’s an analyst that lowered a trading, whatever the case is, but at least you are aware of what's happening in that particular stock.

I don't do this for every single stock that I’m trading. The second thing that I will do every single day is I will go over to a site like Finviz where it’s just has a running scroll of news article titles.

This is great because you don’t get caught up in reading the actual article, but you can just see the headline. The headline is important enough just to know what going on, just having some market understanding.

One of the headlines that just jumps out here is “Russia Cut by Moody's on Oil Fall as Junk Rating Looms.” That’s important. Bonds are cut in Russia. How is that going to affect if we have any trades in RSX which is a Russian EFT?

It’s a really good example. I don’t need to read the whole article. I know that I might need to be looking for something just a little bit different. When it comes to avoiding stock market overload, less is more.

I don't watch any financial news, and I stopped my subscription to Wall Street Journal years ago. Frankly, you just don’t need it. If you want to watch it because you think it’s engaging, fine.

But don't be swayed by what they say on the financial news or what you read in the journal or the economist or any of those things because you don't need it to be successful trading options.

Focus on creating a very short 5 to 10-minute routine to review any relevant (and the keyword here is “relevant”) news that might affect your positions. We’re not going to be reading about social media stocks if we don't have any social media stocks that we’re trading.

We only want to focus on things that are relevant and do this very, very quickly in the morning. Limit this to 5 to 10 minutes and be very effective and laser focused about how you go through the information.

Otherwise, let everyone else worry for you. The market is full of people who are worried, fearful and greedy. Let all of those other people who consistently don't make money worry about what's going on.

Let’s get down to business and focus on the things that we can control as traders in order to make some money. As always, I hope you guys enjoy these videos. If you have any comments or questions, please ask them right below on the lesson page. Until next time, happy trading!