Mission
Most retail traders lose money. Not because they're stupid — but because the field is structured against them. The financial publishing industry leans toward entertainment, and the academic literature (which has the actual answers) is almost never translated into anything operationally useful.
The Morning Market Brief is the bridge. It takes what the academic record actually says about edges, discipline, and risk — and puts it into a daily research routine that a North American retail trader can act on without a Bloomberg Terminal, a quant team, or a year of self-study.
The methodology
Every rule in the brief comes from one of two places:
1. Peer-reviewed academic evidence. Aziz qualification filters. Minervini's Trend Template. Berkman attention-overprice (Berkman et al. 2012). Chordia liquidity dead zone (Chordia, Roll, Subrahmanyam 2005). Longin-Solnik tail correlations (2001). Bekaert-Hoerova variance risk premium (2014). Heston-Korajczyk-Sadka half-hour periodicity (2010). Cieslak-Morse-Vissing-Jorgensen FOMC drift (2019). Each cited inline in the brief's deep-dive section.
2. Practitioner methods that have stood out-of-sample testing. Aziz's Stocks-in-Play framework. Steenbarger's process journaling and two-trade rule. Crabel's opening-range mechanics. Bellafiore's playbook approach. Where practitioner methods don't survive the academic record, they're excluded — even if popular. (See the Excluded Methods list in the brief.)
The full evidence base is a 172-page consultation document — 23 research runs, 33 design decisions, every rule and every exclusion sourced. The brief is the operationalization. The brief is short on purpose; the depth is in the methodology.
What the brief is NOT
- Not personalized advice. Every subscriber gets the identical brief. It does not consider your situation.
- Not a prediction. Shears Capital never claims to know which trades will win — only which setups passed a defined filter.
- Not a stock-picking newsletter. The brief produces qualified candidates with full trade plans; you decide whether and how to act.
- Not a get-rich service. If anyone promises that, walk away from them — and from Shears Capital if it ever pivots that way.
Who this is for
Retail traders looking for an evidence-based daily research workflow, especially:
- People who want to learn the markets while they trade them — the Teaching Corner is built specifically for this.
- People who recognize discipline is the lever that matters most and want it baked into a daily routine.
- People who are tired of newsletter hype and want research-grade evidence.
- People who want their morning workflow to take 5 minutes instead of 2 hours.
- People who care about account-suitability tagging, FX-cost transparency, and platform-specific order types (TFSA/RRSP for Canadian users, IRA/taxable for US, SEDAR+ + EDGAR filings) that most services skip.
If you trade entirely on emotion and want validation for whatever stock is trending today, this isn't for you. The brief will frequently tell you to stand down.
Honest disclaimers
- Past performance is not indicative of future results.
- Shears Capital may hold positions in securities discussed in any given brief.
- This brief is general information for adults aged 18 or older with the legal capacity to enter into a contract. It is not appropriate for everyone.
- See the Financial Disclaimer for the full and binding language.
Questions
Email Shears Capital at admin@shearscapital.com. Every message is read; replies typically arrive within a few business days.