From the Desk
Research, guides and honest reviews from a working trading desk. Backtests show their method. Buying guides name what is wrong with each option. Nothing here is padded to hit a word count.
Sunday Prep: An Election, Apple, the Chip Reports and a Jobs Number
Nine sectors beat SPY last month and the index still fell, because tech and communication services are carrying it down. The calendar, the levels that matter on SPY and QQQ, and eight names worth a plan this week.
Read it- Article13 min
Sunday Prep: The Fed, Five Big Reports and a Market Buying Defense
Tech has been leaking for a month while energy, utilities and staples did the lifting. The calendar, the levels that matter on SPY and QQQ, and eight names worth a plan this week.
- Strategy Lab14 min
Opening Range Breakout: What 142,348 Trades Actually Show Original data
We backtested the 5-minute opening range breakout over 142,348 trades, then measured 3,106 real fills at one-second resolution. It is roughly breakeven, and the median fill costs nothing.
- Guide5 min
Sympathy Stocks: How to Trade a Move That Started Somewhere Else
A sympathy move is a stock that runs on another company's news. How the read-across actually works, where to look, and the four ways the trade goes wrong.
- Guide54 min
Day Trading: How to Day Trade for Beginners
Our long-form introduction to trading stocks: the principles, the mechanics, and the habits that separate a repeatable process from a hunch.
- Guide14 min
The Best Day Trading Books for Beginners
Thirteen day trading books worth your time, each with an honest note on what is weak about it. Cut down from a much longer list, because most reading lists are padded.
- Guide4 min
The Best Technical Analysis Books, Judged on Testability
Some of these books describe rules you could test and find worthless. Others describe patterns that can never be wrong. Only one kind can make you better.
- Guide13 min
The Best Day Trading Platforms
Day trading platforms compared by what you actually trade: futures order flow, equities, or options. Updated for a landscape where TD Ameritrade no longer exists.
- Guide14 min
The Best Laptops for Day Trading
The best laptop for day trading is rarely the fastest one. What matters is monitor support, the OS your platform runs on natively, and avoiding an unsupported Windows build.
- Guide11 min
The Best Free Stock Charts for Day Trading
Free stock charts that are genuinely usable for day trading, and the catch nobody mentions: free almost never means free real-time consolidated data.
- Guide4 min
Bull vs Bear Markets: What Actually Changes
A bear market is a 20% fall and a bull is the rise after it. The useful part is that they are not mirror images: the asymmetry, the daily tells, and why a 50% loss needs a 100% gain.
- Guide5 min
Choosing an Online Brokerage for Active Trading
The broker decides what you are permitted to do. The platform is only software, and you can change it. These are the questions that actually separate one firm from another.
- Guide5 min
Day Trading Tips That Survive Contact With Data
Most day trading tips are folklore with a confident tone. These come from 142,348 of our own simulated trades, and several of them contradict the advice everyone repeats.
- Guide9 min
Day Trading Under $25,000: The PDT Rule Is Gone
FINRA abolished the pattern day trader rule and the $25,000 minimum on 4 June 2026. What replaced it, what your broker may still enforce, and why account size still matters.
- Guide4 min
How to Find Day Trading Stocks (Instead of Reading a List)
A published list of today’s best stocks is stale before it indexes. The four filters that build a real watchlist, and why the screen is the easy half of the job.
- Guide4 min
The Best Time of Day to Buy Stocks, Measured
The first half hour moves 3.2x as much as the quietest one, and the closing auction is enormous without being volatile. Measured across 60 symbols and 6.5 years of minute bars.
- Guide11 min
The Best Day Trading Apps
The day trading apps worth using, ranked by who each one suits, with the weaknesses named. Re-checked against a brokerage landscape that consolidated hard.
- Guide5 min
How to Become a Day Trader Now the PDT Rule Is Gone
The $25,000 gate was removed on 4 June 2026. That changes who is allowed to start, and nothing at all about what the job actually requires.