D.R. Barton Archives - Van Tharp Institute

Cause and Effect: Thinking Differently for Traders and Investors By, D. R. Barton, Jr.

June 23, 2022 June 23, 2022 / 7 minutes of reading / Leave a Comment

When I was studying and training to get my degree in chemical engineering, the process of decision making was quite “yes or no”. Learn the rules of the physical world and then apply them. Learn how molecules combine and separate. Learn how mass and energy get transferred from place to place. Learn what is economical and what is not. And along the way, learn how to study hard and get a good passing grade—the higher the grade the better your job choices. However, once I was out of school and …

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Short Term Rally or More? By, D. R. Barton, Jr.

June 9, 2022 June 9, 2022 / 2 minutes of reading / Leave a Comment

Just some quick thoughts today! The S&P 500 has managed what, at this stage, can be called a bear market rally of between 9% and 10%, including a 6.6% pop the last week of May. Many traders and investors are longing for the historically rapid push we saw after the March 2020 lows: An analyst’s note from Stephen Suttmeier, out of Bank of America, earlier this week gave three conditions for this rally to continue. It was a bold enough call for us to take a look at each one …

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An S&P 500 Bear Market: How to Cope With All the Differing Opinions By, D.R. Barton, Jr.

May 26, 2022 May 26, 2022 / 4 minutes of reading / Leave a Comment

The broader U.S. markets sold off earlier this week into bear market territory. I’ve been overwhelmed by how negative everyone has been about this decline – and not only the media. Just recently the American Association of Individual Investors Bull/Bear spread hit its worst level since 2009 with the bullish component at an amazing 30-year low (data back to 2017 shown below): There is so much competing data out there about where the market goes next; I thought we could all step back and look at data overload with a …

An S&P 500 Bear Market: How to Cope With All the Differing Opinions By, D.R. Barton, Jr. Read More »

My Favorite (and Most Used) Entry Edge. You Can Use It, Too. By, D. R. Barton, Jr.

May 19, 2022 May 19, 2022 / 6 minutes of reading / Leave a Comment

More than two decades ago, Van introduced me to the concept of “parts” of our personality—roles that compete for our attention and influence over our decision-making. If you’re not familiar with that concept, this is a psychological construct that I’ve found quite helpful for understanding how we make decisions. You may have a safety part, a joy-seeking part, a big spender part, and a pleaser part—all acting from their perspective in our own best interest. While perhaps not a clinically exact description of personality, it is a useful model. Under …

My Favorite (and Most Used) Entry Edge. You Can Use It, Too. By, D. R. Barton, Jr. Read More »

Guessing Is NOT a Good Thing for Traders and Investors. Do This Instead. By, D. R. Barton, Jr.

May 12, 2022 May 12, 2022 / 4 minutes of reading / 1 Comment

Through the years (okay, decades) I had the joy and pleasure of teaching many classes with Van. Even though he was a mentor to me early in my transition from chemical engineering to the financial markets, he and I always had the type of relationship where conversations could range from deep intellectual or spiritual discussions all the way to crazy fun diatribes about pop culture. We also LOVED to play his trading simulation games, sometimes jumping in with students. There was one trading simulation game that I loved to play …

Guessing Is NOT a Good Thing for Traders and Investors. Do This Instead. By, D. R. Barton, Jr. Read More »

Inflation: How We Got Here and One Low-Risk Play By, D.R. Barton, Jr.

April 29, 2022 April 29, 2022 / 5 minutes of reading / Leave a Comment

My guess is that many people reading today’s article haven’t before experienced inflation in the way that it’s showing up now—as higher prices for regular stuff you buy. And if the stuff you buy is a home or a car, those prices are not higher, they are a whole lot higher. Same for gasoline or lots of food products. Houses in my neighborhood are up 30% or more year-over-year. Used car prices have zoomed up almost 40% in 2021 (though the rate of increase slowed a bit in March 2022 when the …

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Bitcoin and Cryptos: Are They Still Their Own Asset Class? By, D.R. Barton, Jr.

April 21, 2022 April 21, 2022 / 6 minutes of reading / Leave a Comment

I’m really excited for spring to come to my home state of Delaware here on the east coast of the U.S. But after one warm spell last week, we’ve been hit with chilly weather and even had frost warnings over the last couple of nights. Despite the short-term weather, my backyard is starting to come alive. I found two weeds growing in a mulch bed and had to look them up to see what they were before pulling them. One I found was a common chickweed. It has shallow roots …

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What I’ve Learned From Waves (So Far): Inflation Edition By, D.R. Barton, Jr.

April 14, 2022 April 14, 2022 / 10 minutes of reading / Leave a Comment

“If you want to know everything about the market, go to the beach. Push and pull your hands with the waves. Some are bigger waves, some are smaller. But if you try to push the wave out when it’s coming in, it’ll never happen. The market is always right.” —Market Wizard, Ed Seykota After the big U.S. Consumer Price Index report was announced yesterday (April 12, 2022), inflation is front of mind for almost everyone. The CNBC headline screams, “Inflation climbs 8.5% in March, highest level since December 1981”. That’s …

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What the Fed Said (A Month Ago) De-FANGs Big Tech By, D. R. Barton, Jr.

April 8, 2022 April 8, 2022 / 3 minutes of reading / Leave a Comment

The magnitude of day-to-day and intraday market moves is a bit mind-blowing at the moment. Yesterday (Wednesday, April 6, 2022) gave us a great case in point. Microsoft (MSFT), which has been the on-again/off-again market capitalization champion over the last 23 years (more on that below), got slammed. And so did the rest of Big Tech—the group formally known as FANG. In fact, MSFT itself dropped well over -3% yesterday losing about $115 Billion in market cap. Said another way – in one day, MSFT lost the equivalent of one …

What the Fed Said (A Month Ago) De-FANGs Big Tech By, D. R. Barton, Jr. Read More »

What Happens After the First U.S. Rate Hike? By, D. R. Barton, Jr.

March 28, 2022 March 28, 2022 / 4 minutes of reading / Leave a Comment

By the time you read this, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) is almost a lock to have raised interest rates for the first time since my dad’s birthday in 2018 (that’s December 19th, for those of you who don’t know him well). I said that it is almost a lock that we get a rate increase today and here’s why: Traders who are hedging positions or speculating on the FOMC outcome currently (as of pre-market Wednesday) give the Fed a >96% probability for raising rates by one quarter of …

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D.R. Barton

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