What do outliers have to do with trading?
The word outliers became a popular word I believe, after Malcolm Gladwell wrote the NY Times best seller, “Outliers, the story of success” in 2008. In the book he talks about several successful people and came up with the 10,000 hour rule. His rule said that to achieve world-class success, one needs to practice your craft for 10,000 hours.
The 10,000 hour rule is an interesting idea and one that could apply to trading. But what I want to focus on today is the concept that an outlier is a trade, a trading day, week or month that can make your year.
The selling on Wall Street resumed today. One word comes to mind to describe it…relentless. Declining stocks outnumbered advancing stocks 8.5 to 1. Declining volume however led advancing volume 18 to 1. Now that ratio is pretty negative but in terms of declining volume, not yet close to the peaks in August selling.