How the analysis works
Methodology & process
Two years of trading across fifty-plus names taught me that a method matters more than any single call. This page lays out how I actually research, the tools I trade with, the signals I read, and the rules that keep me disciplined. The honest answers, including the mistakes that shaped them.
Two years of independent investing
I started before the market opened. By 6:30 most mornings I was already up, checking what had moved overnight while the rest of the house was still asleep. It wasn't discipline at first. I was just curious, and the curiosity didn't really switch off.
My first trade was Newmont, the gold miner.
I bought it because gold felt safe and the name was one I recognized, which is about the least sophisticated reason there is. It drifted sideways for weeks while I checked the price far too often, and I eventually sold close to where I got in, having learned nothing about the company and everything about myself. That was the lesson: recognizing a name is not the same as understanding a business, and boredom is not a reason to trade.
I didn't know much going in, and it showed. But it got me hooked on the question underneath all of investing, which is figuring out why something is worth what it costs, and being willing to be wrong about it. The losses taught me more than the wins. A win can just be luck, and it's easy to take credit for it; a loss makes you go back and find the actual mistake.
Over two years, that's what changed the most, not the picks, but the process around them. I started writing my reasoning down publicly and ended up with more than a hundred articles, mostly because putting an argument in writing makes its weak spots obvious. The early mornings are still there. They just mean something different now: less about catching the next big mover, more about trusting a method I've actually tested.
The platforms I trade and research on
I use three tools deliberately, each for what it does best, rather than relying on any single one.
Separating where I research from where I execute keeps the analysis honest, the chart work happens before the trade, not as a justification after it.
My research framework
I evaluate an idea in a deliberate order, fundamentals first to decide whether a company is worth owning, then technicals to decide when. The sequence matters: a strong chart on a weak business is a trap, and a great business at the wrong moment is dead money.
First I ask what the company actually does and how it makes money, whether revenue and margins are growing, and how its valuation compares to peers in the same sector rather than the market as a whole. Only once a name passes that filter do I move to the chart to time an entry.
In practice, the three things I check first are revenue growth, profit margins and the trend in them, and how the valuation compares to direct competitors rather than the whole market. The fastest way to make me walk away, no matter how clean the chart looks, is a business I can't explain simply: if I can't say in a sentence how the company makes money and why that will keep working, I don't own it.
The signals I read
On TradingView I lean on a focused set of indicators rather than cluttering the chart. Each answers a different question.
RSI (Relative Strength Index)
Measures whether a stock is overbought or oversold on a 0 to 100 scale. I use it to avoid chasing extended moves and to spot exhaustion.
CM Ultimate RSI (Multi-Time-Frame)
A version of RSI read across several timeframes at once, so a daily signal is confirmed (or contradicted) by the longer trend before I act.
MACD
Tracks momentum and the relationship between two moving averages. Crossovers help me read whether momentum is building or fading.
VWAP (Volume-Weighted Average Price)
The average price weighted by volume across the session. It shows where the real money transacted, and often acts as intraday support or resistance.
Accumulation / Distribution
Reads whether volume is flowing into a stock (accumulation) or out of it (distribution), a clue to what larger players are doing beneath the price.
WaveTrend with Crosses
An oscillator that flags potential momentum turning points. I treat its crosses as alerts to investigate, never as automatic buy or sell triggers.
I lean most on the multi-timeframe RSI, because a signal that only shows up on one timeframe has burned me before. Reading it across the daily and weekly together filters out a lot of noise, and I treat any single indicator as a reason to look closer, never as a reason to act on its own.
Risk rules
Process protects you from yourself. The rules below exist precisely for the moments when conviction or fear would otherwise take over.
I size positions so that no single trade can do serious damage to the whole portfolio, scaling risk down sharply for the more volatile, speculative names. I decide my exit before I enter, both the level that proves me wrong and the one that takes profit, so the decision is made with a clear head rather than mid-move.
Concretely, I keep any single position small enough that a bad outcome is an inconvenience, not a disaster, and I cut that size down sharply for the speculative, high-volatility names where I'm really just taking a small shot. I set the level that would prove me wrong before I buy, so the exit is a decision I made calmly in advance rather than one I'm forced into during a sell-off.
Advanced: reading options & gamma Advanced topic
This section goes beyond beginner material, it's here for readers who already understand the basics and want to see how options positioning can move stocks. If you're just starting out, the Learn tab is the place to begin.
The Greeks, briefly. An option's delta is how much its price moves when the stock moves one dollar. Gamma is the rate at which that delta itself changes, essentially the acceleration of an option's sensitivity. A high-gamma option reacts faster and faster as the stock moves.
Why gamma becomes a market signal. The dealers who sell options must hedge by buying and selling the underlying stock. When dealers are long gamma, their hedging works against price moves, selling into rallies, buying into dips, which dampens volatility and tends to pin a stock near heavily-traded strikes. When dealers are short gamma, hedging amplifies moves instead, buying into strength and selling into weakness, which can turn an ordinary move into a violent one.
Calls, puts, and gamma walls. Heavy call activity clustered at a strike can create a "gamma wall" that behaves like a magnet or ceiling for the price; concentrated put activity can do the same on the downside. Watching where that positioning sits is one way traders anticipate whether a stock is likely to stay pinned or break out.
Options involve substantial risk and are not suitable for most beginners. This is an explanation of mechanics, not a strategy recommendation.
What I've learned
The biggest lesson is that temperament beats prediction. My worst results came from abandoning the rules above in the heat of a move, and my best from sitting still when the process said to. Indicators and analysis matter, but they're only as good as the discipline to actually follow them.
The most expensive mistakes I made all came from the same place: acting out of impatience or fear instead of following the plan I'd already written down. The rule that came out of it is simple and the hardest one to keep: decide what you'll do before the moment arrives, then actually do it. Two years in, I'm convinced that's worth more than any single good call.
