When you trade small cap stocks (or anything really) do you have a clear plan or are you just trading because you can? To break free from serious losses, including account destruction, and enter the realm of professionalism, you must have a clear trading plan in place before entering any position.

In the middle of last week, I found what I thought was a pretty strong case for pattern trading. Rather than post it here, I wanted to see if the stock would fall on Friday first, which would give even more credibility to the idea.
Well, it happened. As part of a Friday, holiday weekend, end-of-the-month [...]

Over the past couple of days I have been looking at a particular small cap oil stock’s chart and felt I had a handle on two-way price action for it. As of this weekend, I was thinking that shorting the stock would be a good idea for a nice 25 cent per share gain and [...]

Here’s a listing of small cap stocks in the oil & gas equipment & services industry. For each stock, I’ve provided a link to Yahoo Finance, Google Finance, FinViz and StockCharts.com. Each link opens in a new window and takes you right to that small cap stock’s page on the site you’ve selected.

iShares S&P Small Cap 600 Value Index Fund (IJS) fell by almost 2% today. In fact, there was a $3 swing in the day’s trading range. A very small portion of the downfall was captured back in after-hours trading, but the stock chart shows an obvious downtrend. What caused the drop and should owners be concerned?

While I don’t own IJS—I’d rather create my own basket of stocks—it is interesting to see what is pulling down this small caps fund as a whole.