The StockTwits® Edge: 40 Actionable Trade Set-Ups from Real Market Pros

CHAPTER 2

Trade, Trend, Tail

Keith McCullough, @KeithMcCullough

Keith's messages and links on StockTwits have stood out from day one. Most professionals do not think sharing is useful to them, but Keith does and for that our community has embraced him. Keith runs a virtual hedge fund in an innovative way—by offering full-blown research and not trading any positions. His firm's sole focus is to provide investors with deep, knowledgeable research and ideas as if he were running the money himself.

MAKE MONEY OR GO HOME

I didn't learn anything useful about trading markets in school. The proverbial hockey stick in my learning curve came by doing. The only struggle that matters is coming to terms with the reality that trading markets isn't something you learn in a textbook. Experience is earned by making mistakes.

I had spent just enough time on the sell side to realize that I didn't want to be there anymore and was hired by a hedge fund manager by the name of Jon Dawson who was, at the time, breaking up with another hedge fund manager by the name of Art Samberg. As Samberg moved along to start one of the largest hedge funds in the game (Pequot), that left poor Jon saddled with guys like me: inexperienced and aggressive, young and naive. I had the perfect skill set to learn the hard way—by making mistakes using live ammo.

My first three years as an analyst, being groomed to be a portfolio manager (PM) on the buy side, were down markets for stocks—2000, 2001, and 2002—so I effectively ...