Stocks

  Why Tracking 5,000 Companies Puts You in an Elite Class of Retail Investors Most people think of retail investors as casual market participants — individuals who follow a handful of stocks, check the news occasionally, and make decisions based on headlines or social media sentiment. But there is a tiny, almost invisible subset of retail investors who operate at a completely different level. If you maintain a structured database of 5,000 companies , you are not just “active.” You are performing work that resembles a small quant shop , a research desk , or a data engineering team inside an institutional fund. This scale of tracking is not normal. It is exceptional. The Reality of Tracking 5,000 Companies Most retail investors track between 10 and 50 stocks . Even highly engaged traders rarely exceed a few hundred. Once you cross the 1,000‑company threshold, you are no longer managing a watchlist — you are maintaining a research universe . At 5,000 companies, you ar...

📉 The Earnings Dip and the Rebound: Why the Old 7% Stop-Loss Rule No Longer Works Every trader has felt it — the frustration of seeing a stock collapse right after earnings, trigger your stop-loss, and then skyrocket days later. The truth is, most companies release earnings after the market close , not before the open. Those few minutes after the report drops can cause wild swings in the after-hours session and at the next day’s open. This summer I learned that the hard way with AppLovin (APP) . On August 6 2025 , APP closed at $390.57 just before its earnings release. Expecting volatility but not disaster, I placed a stop-limit order at about $362 — roughly 7% below the close , following the textbook rule. After earnings, APP initially dropped sharply, my stop was triggered, and my shares were sold for $362 . But within only five days , by August 11 , the stock had rebounded to $475 — a gain of more than 20% from my exit price. That single trade confirmed ...

The Nuanced Relationship Between Federal Reserve Rate Cuts and Stock Market Performance A direct and simple answer to the query "historically when there are rate cuts how many times the stock market was down?" would be misleading without a deeper, contextual analysis. While a historical count can be provided, the market's response to monetary policy is not a simple binary outcome. The evidence shows that the reaction is a complex function of several critical variables, including the underlying economic conditions, the degree to which a policy change has been anticipated, and the central bank's forward guidance. This report deconstructs these factors to provide a comprehensive understanding of the interplay between Federal Reserve policy and equity market behavior. The Macroeconomic Drivers of Rate Cuts The Federal Reserve's decisions on monetary policy are governed by its dual mandate: maintaining price stability and fostering maximum employment. When economic da...

Patents and the Stock Market: An Unconventional Guide In the world of finance, we're all trained to look at the numbers. We pour over balance sheets, income statements, and cash flow reports, trying to make sense of a company's past performance to predict its future. But what if there's a powerful, forward-looking indicator hiding in plain sight? Welcome to the world of alternative data , where savvy investors are looking beyond traditional financial metrics to uncover a company's true value. One of the most compelling and underutilized sources of this data is a company's patent portfolio . It's a common and a smart idea to use patent data for financial analysis. Here's why this strategy is so much more than a futile attempt. Patents are a Forward-Looking Indicator Think about it: a quarterly earnings report tells you what a company has already done. A new patent filing, on the other hand, gives you a sneak peek into what the company is working on right now....