Keep Trading SimpleTrading doesn't reward clever. It rewards simple.
Most traders lose to complexity: too many indicators, too many strategies, too much risk, too many decisions. ShortBusTrading takes the direct route: strategies with a handful of rules and published evidence, risk you can survive, and the discipline to leave the rest alone. No secret systems. No fourteen-indicator charts. Just the simple stuff that works, explained plainly.
Why simple beats clever
Trading is one of the few fields where adding effort in the obvious direction (more indicators, more strategies, more screen time, more trades) reliably makes results worse. Every added parameter helps a system memorize the past instead of surviving the future. Every added strategy thins your sample and your skill. Every added hour at the screen manufactures trades that didn't need to exist.
The evidence points the other way. The strategies with the longest public track records (trend following and momentum) are structurally simple, and the people who ran them for decades say so in print. When Jack Schwager interviewed the best traders of a generation for Market Wizards, the confessions rhymed: simple method, small risk, iron discipline.
The most famous demonstration is the Turtle experiment: in 1983, Richard Dennis taught complete beginners a simple breakout system in two weeks and handed them his own money. The group reportedly made over $175 million. The rules were never the secret; they've been public for decades. Following them was.
That's the entire pitch of this site: your edge won't come from being smarter than the market. It comes from a simple system, honest risk, and actually doing what the page says, especially on the days it's uncomfortable.
- Stage 1The collector. New trader loads the chart with indicators and joins three signal groups. Every loss gets a new tool.
- Stage 2The hopper. Five strategies in six months, none traded twenty times. The system is always the problem; the sizing never is.
- Stage 3The blowup. An oversized "sure thing" meets a losing streak. This is where most trading stories end.
- The exitThe subtractor. One strategy, one page of rules, 1% risk, a journal. Boring. And finally, measurably, improving.
Six ways to trade simply
Simple trading isn't one strategy; it's a set of constraints that make any strategy survivable. These six do most of the work.
Trade with the tide
One long moving average answers the only market question that matters: up or down? Long above the 200-day, cash below it. No forecasting, no narratives, just which side of the line you're on.
Slow the charts down
Daily and weekly charts carry the same trends as the 5-minute with a fraction of the noise, the costs, and the chances to make a mistake. Patience is the retail trader's only structural edge.
Risk 1%, every time
Decide the stop first; let the formula pick the size. At 1% a ten-trade losing streak is an annoyance instead of an ending, and every system has ten-trade losing streaks.
One setup, mastered
One market, one setup, one timeframe, one hundred journaled trades before you judge or change anything. Specialists compound lessons; samplers restart at zero every Monday.
Rules on one page
Market, entry, stop, size, exit, review, written as if–then statements a stranger could execute. A plan that lives in your head renegotiates itself in real time.
Journal and review weekly
Seven fields per trade, thirty minutes a week. The journal finds the two habits leaking most of your money, and grades you on the one thing you control: execution.
Simple strategies, explained plainly
Every strategy on the blog has published evidence behind it, rules that fit on an index card, and an honest section on what it costs.
The 200-day moving average: the only trend filter most traders need
One line answers the most important question in trading: is this market going up or down? What the filter does, what it costs, and how to run it in twelve decisions a year.
Read the article → MomentumDual momentum: a complete strategy you trade once a month
Three ETFs, one comparison, twelve decisions a year. Antonacci's dual momentum may be the most strategy per rule in the public literature.
Read the article → MomentumBuying 52-week highs: the simple trade that feels wrong
Your gut says a stock at a yearly high is too expensive. Decades of momentum research say the opposite. Why new highs keep working, and the plain rules for trading them.
Read the article →The essential simple-trading library
Eight books, all pulling the same direction: simple methods, small risk, thinking in samples, and the discipline that holds it together. In reading order.
The classic all-in-one foundation: psychology, charts, risk control, and record-keeping, written by a psychiatrist-trader who insists on discipline over brilliance.
View on Amazon →The definitive book on why traders with winning systems still lose, and how thinking in probabilities turns a simple edge into consistent execution.
View on Amazon →Schwager's legendary interviews with the best traders of a generation. The recurring confession: nearly all of them run simple methods with ruthless risk control.
View on Amazon →A hedge-fund manager publishes a complete diversified trend-following strategy: rules, results, and brutal honesty about the drawdowns that come with it.
View on Amazon →The complete case for the simplest serious strategy in the public literature: one momentum comparison, three index funds, twelve decisions a year.
View on Amazon →The deepest treatment of the least glamorous edge: expectancy and position sizing matter more than any entry signal you will ever find.
View on Amazon →A famous fund manager reduces value investing to a two-factor formula a teenager can run, and explains why it works precisely because it's hard to stick with.
View on Amazon →The 1923 classic on Jesse Livermore. A century old and still the best book ever written about sitting still while a trend pays you.
View on Amazon →