TOUGH TIMES

As weeks go I would be hard pressed to find one that has been worse than this one has been and this chart above is a fair depiction of the ups and downs I have had. Computer problems are always a pain in the ass and we all have had them so I will not dwell on that. We can see with the SP 500 chart above the brilliant save by the PPT the other day when it looked like we were really going to roll over. I was heavily short at the time, and kept my stop back because I was really looking for a big decline due to seasonals and cycles and my indicators all being lined up pointing downward.

Alas, our good old friends who have been conspicously absent in recent weeks showed up in the last hour that day and created the moonshot that we have seen. I wound up with just slightly better than a break even trade, except a few stocks that I saw this reversal developing in and front ran the exits and made some money. I just never saw a logical target in the trade even though at one point I was up over 50 ES points per contract. Some trades just are no good, what can I say. I did say I thought getting that next sell was going to be very tricky, and that turned out to be correct.

Once they established that floor there has been a steady bid under the market on the intraday charts. Every time it looked like we might break, the market reversed back up again. I don't really see that as the PPT, they just had that one appearance in my opinion. Every up move is not the government manipulating prices, it is obvious when a huge decline out of the blue reverses in the last hour of a trading day. That is the CSI teams evidence they look for. When a day just stays strong right from the get go or meanders around then goes, that is generally not our good friends playing. We now find ourselves on the verge of a very nice looking upward breakout on the daily chart. It was interesting today that we were comfortably above that trend line until the very end of the day when we dropped off to close back below it. If we get clear of it we could have a good 50 SP points before we hit my resistance levels which are in the 1250 area at the moment. I do not think sells are lined up at the moment, so I am on the sidelines waiting to see if we get to 1250 where I will be looking.

I mentioned that I was short in the Grains, and here is a Soybean Oil chart showing one of those trades. I am surprised with the big stock reversal we have seen that the Grains and a few other markets have stayed very weak. Copper in particular went down a good bit while stocks rallied today, which is somewhat unusual. Maybe we are finally reaching a point where individual complexes will trade on their own, but I am not sold yet. We have had a couple of decoupling attempts that have failed, so this is in a show me situation right now.

Sadly, the next picture is that of the greatest loss in my life that I have ever suffered. Although this is a trading blog, it is also my forum to put out my thoughts, and occasionally I feel compelled to stray a bit. My puppy Reggie died tragically out of the blue this week at the age of 2, and this puts a hole in my heart I cannot describe. I will try and stay on top of my game here for this blog but I cannot promise anything. This is going to take me awhile to get over his loss if I ever do. He was such a sweet soul and was completely fine one day and gone two days later.

Please take the time to smell the roses, none of us are guaranteed tomorrow, so enjoy those who matter to you as much as you can every day of your life. If you are so inclined say a prayer for him, he was a special guy whose life was cut tragically short. I will love him forever.

Sorry for the somber thoughts but I owe it to him to do this. I am thrilled to get some of the emails and comments that tell me that some of you are really benefitting from my commentaries and making some very good profits. In a down moment like this that tells me I am making a difference, and that is all I ever wanted to do.

Good Trading to Everyone